Wheatfield With Crows – The Last Painting of Vincent Van Gogh (maybe).

Vincent Van Gough was not rated when he was alive, unlike, though maybe a tenuous link, Jimi Hendrix, yet through death both are still very much alive and have become house hold names. It seems that death can be the making of you, hell maybe if I croak with a fantastic photo to my name, maybe I’ll go down in the history books, but I very much doubt that, I refer to the history book of course, not the dying bit, that’s a given. I was looking at the print in the wall of my living room of Van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night Over The Rhone’ and then thought of the first episode of John Berger’s ‘Ways of Seeing’, he showed a couple of painting in silence and then told the story, background information or in this case, that of ‘Wheatfield With Crows’, some say that this was the last painting of Van Gogh and that this was the place or similar to where he shot himself in the stomach, dying 2 days later in his bed, however I have read that others say that there were several more paintings after this one. Looking at a photograph of the original, and again referring to John Berger, the painting has such texture and atmosphere, but is still unlinked when viewed on a computer screen; I can only imagine what it must be like to stand in front of it, seeing the thick heavy brush strokes put on over one hundred years ago. Also how the image changes from giving vivid imaginations of running through it, or an image conjured up from reading a book to having an air of sadness that is quite troubling, yet like looking at an optical illusion, the mind can only concentrate on one image or in this case one set of emotions, flicking, even if it is just for half a second, from wonder and awe to sadness and possibly even an emptiness knowing that this was the last one or one of the last and the circumstances that lead to the end, but then flicking back to joy of thinking of all the other wonderful paintings he created. This I feel is the power of a painting or a photograph, a film or moving picture is static and a photo is constantly moving, shifting; a film dictates how you should feel with colour and music or sometimes that lack of both, we watch a comedy to laugh or cheer us up or a thriller to be whisked away into life of espionage that 99% of us can only dream of or read in books, yet a photograph depending on your mood, the weather, the lighting on the surface, even our age and life experiences from one day to the next, year to year can change how we interact with a ‘static’ painting or photo, so next time when looking at a painting you like and have seen before, think how you are reacting or interacting to it from last time, I’m sure it’ll have changed in your minds eye.