Van Gogh and the End of Nature

Rapid industrialization profoundly shaped the “subjects, concerns, and... materials” of Vincent van Gogh’s art, according to this revealing study from art historian Lobel (John Sloan). Focusing on the brief period between van Gogh’s “retreat” from Paris to the French countryside in 1888 and his death two years later, Lobel explores how van Gogh used pigments derived from industrial waste, such as arsenic, for “vividness and intensity”; adorned his “natural landscapes” with factory smokestacks, railroad depots, and telegraph poles; and frequently depicted pollution and resource waste, as in his watercolors of abandoned quarries. Loebel suggests the latter paintings symbolize “our willingness to make use of the earth, leaving scars as we go, and then move onto other things,” though he doesn’t go so far as to claim that message as van Gogh’s intended one. While readers will have to decide for themselves whether the author’s interpretation reveals more about his own environmental concerns than van Gogh’s, the fine-grained analysis and lively prose delight. Art history buffs will want to add this to their bookshelves. Illus. (July)