Pencil Sketches Star Van Gogh – PPC

Pencils and Pop-Culture: Pencil Sketches Star Van Gogh

It would be a herculean undertaking to add up the total number of square feet dedicated in museums to paintings and sculpture, versus the floorspace housing pencil sketches. However, it’s safe to say that paintings and sculpture would have sketches beat by a long shot. It’s difficult for us to take a sketch seriously – after all, what separates a sketch by a great master from one of our own notebook margin doodles? The implication seems to be that there is less skill required of sketching than is required in other art forms.

One look at the recent exhibition of Vincent Van Gogh’s sketches, currently on display at The European Fine Art Fair in Maastricht, the Netherlands, should dispel any doubts about the skill needed to be a pencil artist. These eighteen sketches, rarely displayed in public, were made during the course of Van Gogh’s ten-year career as an artist, and perhaps give us insight into Van Gogh’s own artistic process. As Marije Vellekoop, the Van Gogh Museum’s head of collections, research and presentations,  told  The New York Times, “When he had periods when his health was not too good, before his breakdown, he would draw sometimes because going outside with all your painting materials is much heavier and harder work than just going outside with a pad or a sketchbook.”

It seems poignantly fitting that these sketches, perhaps made during a period of emotional and mental fragility in Van Gogh’s life, are equally fragile themselves. Most pencil sketches are only shown for a few months, even weeks, at a time, since sunlight and dust intensify their deterioration. There is a beauty in that fragility; unlike a painting, proud and secure under its layers of oil and varnish, a pencil sketch stands vulnerable to the capricious march of time. Perhaps, just as a hand-written note allows us to express sentiments that seem too personal for cold electronic communications, a pencil sketch allows us to strip away the bombast and pomposity of paint and oil to reveal our own private truths.

Van Gogh’s sketches communicate a pared-down, simplified vision that has the impact of a perfectly written haiku. When distilled into a series of undulating lines, a pool of color, and a smudge of shadow, the sketches allow us to see past the mystique of the tortured visionary most famous for “The Starry Night,” and gain a deeper appreciation for Van Gogh as an extraordinarily talented, all-too-human, deeply inspired man.