Van Gogh and Wolfli: Two Artists of Two Movements

Today, the focus of this blog entry will be to take a look at a group of artists that you may or may not have heard of. They are Vincent Van Gogh and Adolf Wolfli. The fact is, while both these artists had nothing to do with each other , the fact is that there were some pretty interesting similarities between the two artists.

Okay, but first off, who the hell are they, right? Well, people will have to have heard of Vincent Van Gogh at some point in their lives, but Adolf Wolfli is almost unmentioned in many places. The real hardcore artists and historians who have delved into his life and times are perhaps the only real people who have any real knowledge of who he is, but the vast majority of people all over the world do not. Well, here in this blog, I will take the time to both introduce them and their work, but also to inform the reader of how these two artists are relevant to one another.


Vincent Van Gogh (1853 - 1890)

Vincent Van Gogh led a rough and painful life as an artist. Born in Holland in 1853, Van Gogh was born to religious parents who actually had lost an earlier son named Vincent in a miscarriage. Unbelievable as it sounds, Vincent's mother would take him to the grave of his dead unborn older brother as a child, and it was from here that Vincent is said to have developed his strong bouts of depression and feelings of isolation. Growing up, he was almost always attracted to older women, including two of his cousins, but was never able to marry. Ironically, he did not pursue art as a vocation until the last ten years of his life (when he began to achieve critical acclaim), and as a result was often struggling financially with other jobs. In the end, he tried desperately to find camaraderie with other fellow artists, but even this went wrong; his friend Paul Gaugin argued constantly with him, commissions fell through due to his erratic behavior with his financiers, and he suffered from gonorrhea and mental depression, culminating in the cutting off of his left ear. In 1890, Van Gogh went into a field in Auvers-sur-Oise, near Paris, France (where he was undergoing treatment for his mental illness), pulled out a pistol, and shot himself. He died two days later in agony, in the presence of his brother Theo, his sole companion and benefactor over his life.

At left is a painting made by Van Gogh called Van Gogh's Bedroom in Arles, painted in 1889 several months before he died. Van Gogh through out his later life began to paint as he saw the scene, not just as he had known or been taught. He would often say that he was more inclined to draw the impression of what he saw, thus the birth of the style of art that he championed, called Impressionism. You could tell that he does retain some sense of perspective, but notice that it is both skewed and that there is more than one perspective line. The table in the left of the painting, for example, follows a different perspective, and the chairs point in the opposite direction as well. In terms of color, the dreary color schemes reflect both his mood and the mood of the scene; Van Gogh became largely depressed in his later years, and it was in this room that he and Gaugin (both represented in paintings at top) bickered constantly over every little thing. But there is also a sense of brightness and possible hope, represented by the painting of the rising sun in the painting above the bed.

Now on a personal note, this piece is one of my favorites, and if you have ever seen the anime series Samurai Champloo, in episode 5, the origin of the painting near the door on the left is (humorously) explained to be an influence to Van Gogh.

It's certainly amazing that for such a moody guy, Van Gogh could find the inspiration to paint with bright colors, but that is exactly what gets painted here in his work called Sunflowers (1888). This work was actually the fourth in a series of paintings that Van Gogh painted, called the Arles Sunflowers (the other was the Paris Sunflowers), and this version sits in the London National Gallery. As hard to believe as it is, Van Gogh and Gaugin fought over this series of paintings. In 1887, Gaugin had been given two earlier Paris versions by Van Gogh in exchange for one of his Martinique landscapes, but as relations soured between the two, Van Gogh refused to give him any more, while Gaugin claimed that they were painted with himself in mind and therefore were his. This version, the fourth, represents the flowers in a full "gloriously bright phase" of bloom, but some appear to be wilting. Another possible nod to his relationship with Gaugin? Even so, the bright colors seem to represent the tranquil beauty that is reminiscent of a pastoral scene, albeit lacking the lapsarian aroma that is found in those paintings.


Adolf Wolfli: (1864 - 1930)

If you have ever heard of the saying, "born under a bad sign", you could very well apply that to Adolf Wolfli, who suffered from numerous bouts of rotten luck. By the age of ten, young Adolf had been orphaned and abused physically and mentally and he was only just beginning on his road to torment. At fourteen he was arrested on suspicion of child molestation, and was inducted into the army in 1880 where he endure more harsh abuse from his superior officers. When he was discharged, he wound up in prison again for molestation charges, but he had already begun to show the telltale signs of dementia and nuerotic schizophrenia. In 1895, Wolfli was admitted to the Waldau Clinic to basically be put away in the asylum ward. From there, Wolfli's story ended in seclusion.

Or so one would think, but the real story of Wolfli's art life and his eventual influences were just about to start. Soon after he arrived in the clinic, Wolfli began to ask for sheets of paper and coloured pencils, and with them he would begin to draw works of art that to this day become wonders. Drawing day and night, Wolfli managed to accomplish 50 pencil sketch drawings within two years. Below is one such example,

Notice the fine detail that is placed in the piece. Wolfli defines sharp points and curves remarkably brilliantly. Aside from that, the colors all reflect in tone and texture. Yes, this is hardly the kind of piece you would expect to come from a mental patient, but Wolfli does indeed give the viewer an jaw-dropping look at what he could do as an artist, and what's more, it appears that he did this all with plenty of patience and meticulous planning. The pace and precision he used astounded his guards and doctors, so much so that one of them, a Walther Mortgenthaler, collected his works into a book about Wolfli in 1921.

Wolfli's arrival on the art scene could not have been more opportune, for by the early 1920's, outsider art was in its genesis. This happened to coincide with new art movements, primarily the arrival of Surrealism and Dadaism, while making milestone effects on several artists. Jean Dubuffet, considered the "champion of art brut (raw art)", began to take an interest in art created by mental patients in 1954, and Wolfli's was first and foremost in his list of influences.


In the piece at left, called Irren-Anstalt Band Hain, Wolfli again conveys the same techniques he employs in the above piece. Wolfli was known to be erratic when it came to his drawing; he would stay up at night and finish not only his drawings but his pencils too (some stories even tell of him taking the pieces of lead and holding them between his fingernails!), often using up a full set in less than a week. And Wolfli did not just finish with one drawing, but would use up the entire page until he was satisfied. The name given to the style that Wolfli utilized was called horror vacculi, which basically derived from the belief that "there can be no empty space in nature". Any white spot left in the drawing would have two black dots marked on it, which he called "birds".

Adolf Wolfli died in 1930. His works of art were housed originally in Berne and now rest in the Fine Arts Museum in that same city.

Now, For the Similarities

Well, first off, a good look at their work would show that they are heavy users of light lines and thick, often opaque colors. Van Gogh's works tend to be lighter and more pastoral landscape scenes (an influence from his days with Gaughin but also stemming from his years as a landscape artist), while Wolfli employed skewed, bizarre angles, often from perspectives that were just as bizarre. Their work also showcased their apparent madness issues, as both Wolfli and Van Gogh were known to work erratically and obsessively on their works. The level of their work indicates that they did not approach this without giving some attention to detail. As well as that, one must take into consideration that they ended up being influential artists who left their mark on later artists who employed similar approaches to their artworks. As the Fauves and Abstract Impressionists followed after Van Gogh, the outsiders and Surrealists contained several aspects of Wolfli in their paintings and classic works. Quite impressive to me, I must say.