Applying a reading to a piece of art

Applying a Reading on a Piece of Art

Response: The Night Cafe, Vincent Van Gough

"Two influences work on us, an outer one and one from within us" (Bahr 117). This idea that Expressionism in art is a depiction of the artist's inner reality as much as an exterior reality is manifest even in the post-Impressionist work of Vincent Van Gough entitled The Night Cafe. The swirls of color portraying the hazy lighting and the indistinct features of the cafe's inhabitants create the impression of being in a smoky, dingy bar and also suggest the dissolute lives of the drinkers and pool players. But the portrait is not merely of light and shade -- the circles around the lights, for example, seem like a fantastic creation of the artist, as is the slightly drunken swaying of the lines that show the cafe. The artist's attitude about the cafe is ambiguous. On one hand, there are scenes of drinking and gambling, and the blurry images of the inhabitants suggest people who are frittering their lives away. Yet the light is warm that illuminates the room. The sense of refuge and relief from reality is the kind of sensation someone may get in a pub -- and the drinker's anonymity and loneliness. Both are simultaneously depicted in The Night Cafe.

Through art, human beings make sense of nature and separate themselves from nature. Art has elevated human beings: the artist "draws his own God and sets them up against nature," wrote the art critic Hermann Bahr about the early Expressionist movement (Bahr 118). This was a radical assertion at the time, given that so much of art history had attempted to depict nature (including the human form) as it 'really' was in 'reality.' According to Bahr, Impressionism is false because it attempts to leave out the human, inner element and instead only depicts what the eye sees. It is, in essence, no better than the realism that it was reacting to -- Realism creates a photographic representation or an idealistic representation of life, while Impressionism uses color and shading to similarly focus on the visual.

Moving away from Impressionism, artists like Van Gough sought to encapsulate inner truth as well as external reality. The Night Cafe is not merely a visual impression; it is also an impression of the artist's feeling about the life depicted at the cafe. And it reveals Van Gough's inner self, given that his sense of warmth derived from the world as well as cafe's anonymous nature and the focus upon drinking and gambling are simultaneously depicted in the envisioned world. "The eye of the Impressionist only beholds, it does not speak" (Bahr 118). Bahr calls Impressionist paintings merely a gramophone, or a reproducer of the experiences of others, while Expressionism attempts to deeply explore the artist's self.

Looking at Van Gough's angst-ridden swirls, it is easy to see this notion of art as an expression of the self, rather than a recorder. Van Gough, even though he is not actually depicted in the painting, is clearly not a mere dispassionate observer but actively involved in the world because of the emotions it calls forth within him. Also, his decision to include specific persons in the cafe -- a couple talking, a man bent over a bottle in despair, two splayed-out men sitting together, drunk, and a man in white at the pool table, shows the diverse range of emotions, from lust to disgust, within the artist. The portrayal of these indistinct figures in the smoke reveals just as much about Van Gough's inner state as it does about the people or even the cafe.