Let’s see, Rocky was a boxer who refused to fall down in his first championship fight, despite a terrific pounding, because he wanted to be the first ever to go the distance with Apollo Creed. Van Gogh was a painter who cut off part of his ear over a prostitute. Or for some other reason having to do with the demons in his head.
Rocky was a loser who wanted to prove himself. Then became a winner, for awhile, at least. Van Gogh was a loser who wanted to prove himself, and never did. Instead, in 1890, at the age of 37, he walked out into a field of wheat and shot himself in the chest with a revolver. And survived. Only to die of an infection caused by the wound 29 hours later.
Van Gogh’s final words, “The sadness will last forever.”
Then he became famous. While he was alive he sold one painting. Now his paintings sell for millions of dollars.
Van Gogh was real. Rocky was fiction created by Sylvester Stallone and vaguely based on the life of Chuck Wepner, a rugged white boxer, who once put Muhammad Ali on his ass.
When you think of Rocky you think of him bloody and battered and shouting, “Adrian.” Or you think of him with his arms raised at the top of the steps in front of The Philadelphia Museum of Art while the Rocky theme blares. When you think of Van Gogh, you think of tulips and thick gobs of paint, of color, and insane genius, and the incident with the ear. Rocky drank raw eggs. Van Gogh smoked a pipe.
And here’s the connection. Beginning on February 1st, you can walk up the steps that Rocky made famous, you can enter the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and you can find Vincent Van Gogh. Better yet, you can travel to Philadelphia with your friends and find Van Gogh together.
The Carroll County Arts Council is hosting a bus trip to the Philadelphia Museum of Art on Thursday, April 19, 2012 to see “Van Gogh, Up Close.” So consider yourself duly warned in advance. You don’t want to miss it.
The exhibit includes over 40 Van Gogh landscapes, flowers and still lifes painted during his last five years. Here’s what the Philadelphia Museum of Art has to say about Van Gogh, Up Close.
Vincent van Gogh was an artist of exceptional intensity, not only in his use of color and exuberant application of paint, but also in his personal life. Drawn powerfully to nature, his works–particularly those created in the years just before he took his own life–engage the viewer with the strength of his emotions. This exhibition focuses on these tumultuous years, a period of feverish artistic experimentation that began when van Gogh left Antwerp for Paris in 1886 and continued until his death in Auvers in 1890.
Radically altering and often outright abandoning traditional painting techniques, van Gogh created still lifes and landscapes unlike anything that had ever been seen before. He experimented with depth of field and focus. He used shifting perspectives and brought familiar objects “up close” into the foreground. And he produced some of the most original works of his career; works that dramatically altered the course of modern painting.
Through some 40 masterpieces borrowed from collections around the world, Van Gogh Up Close is the first exhibition to explore the reasons and means by which this impassioned artist made such unusual changes to his painting style in the final years of his life.
They don’t talk that way about Rocky.
You can take in the exhibit at your own pace with an audio tour, and you’ll have time to tour the rest of the museum and eat lunch before heading back to Carroll County. Be sure to pose on the steps. Maybe you’ll run into Rocky.
For more information, contact: Susan Williamson – Susan@CarrollCountyArtsCouncil.org – 410/848-7272.
Oh yeah, the bus leaves Westminster at 8 am and returns at 5:00 pm. Advance reservations are required. Tickets are $65 or $60 for Arts Council Members & Seniors. The price includes motor coach transportation, museum admission, audio tour, light snack and driver gratuity.
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