The Bedroom, 1889 by Vincent van GoghWe had the pleasure of seeing Vincent van Gogh's The Bedroom and Egon Scheile's The Artist's Bedroom at the Neue Galerie last week. We'd always loved the perspective, colors, and intimacy of both bedroom paintings...
But this viewing did something else. It reminded us of Jack's Think Big from the Smallest Coolest Apartment contest! In all three rooms, we see highly personal spaces enriched by care and a mindful eye. We were tickled to stumble on such a striking resemblance between these century-old paintings and Jack's small cool apartment.
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So glad to see you featuring these interior paintings by Van Gogh! I am crazy about painting interiors these days, they are such undervalued subjects, but say so much about us and the way we live. Thanks for the terrific blog and keep up the great work!
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These painting fit well with Christopher Alexander's ideas of bed rooms in his book A Pattern Language. Alexander talks about segregating private sleeping space - as much as possible - from the chore of storing and maintaining clothes. The two uses have been integrated so frequently in recent decades it takes something like these paintings, with their sense of stillness and refuge, to remind me what a serene, personal refuge a sleeping space can be.
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Ah, yes--the bedrooms of two SUCH stable people! And no offense at all intended to anybody, but how can the colors or the compositions be separated out from the anguish (even agony) that informs these two paintings? Sort of like using a road kill as inspiration for a color scheme. Nothing wrong with it, if that's your schtick, but there's something just not right, either!
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