Lecture 11 : ‘Art for Art’s Sake’, Modern Art to Design, Vincent van Gogh, Cubism
Van Gogh spent his early life working for a firm of art dealers, and after a brief spell as a teacher, became a missionary worker in a very poor mining region. He did not embark upon a career as an artist until 1880, at the age of 27. Initially he worked in somber colours, until an encounter in Paris with Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism accelerated his artistic development. He produced all of his more than 2,000 works, including around 900 paintings and 1100 drawings or sketches, during the last ten years of his life. Most of his best-known works were produced in the final two years of his life, and in the two months before his death he painted 90 pictures.
