Post-impressionism
We went to see the Van Gogh exhibition in the Frankfurt Städel museum. Actually it is not only about Van Gogh but also about his painter friends who developed new styles based on the then predominant impressionism. The exhibition has been organised by the Saint Louis Art Museum and the full name is Vincent Van Gogh and the painters of the petit boulevard.

There were three pictures which really impressed me. The first one was by the man himself. One of his last works called Stairway at Auvers from 1890. It is actually on the cover of the catalog. As so often with Van Gogh the colours are very impressive. In this painting there are many variations of green together with some yellow, blue, red and white. It is not a light radiating picture as for example the Sunflowers. But it is still quite bright. In the middle there are the yellow stairs which an old man with a walking-stick descends. In the front there are two pairs of women, two older women dressed in dark green and two young women dressed in white. I do not want to go on with the description as I am not very good at it. What I like about the painting besides the colour composition is that it is so full of details (almost crammed) and that I did not know it before. With pictures it is like with music. If you have seen them too often you get tired of them. When looking at that painting I get the impression Van Gogh knew that he was going to die soon and he tried to put as much of himself into it as possible. That is why it is slightly crammed.

Charles Angrand, of whom I had not heard of before, painted the Seine at Dawn in 1889 (that was the year when Nietzsche became mad). That is a picture reminding me a lot of Monet as you see a man in a boat on the Seine with the silhouette of Paris in the background.The style is already kind of pointillistic. This painting is a chef d'oeuvre of understatement. There is hardly anything to see. It is very inconspicuous. Just dots in green, yellow, white and different blue tones. From the distance everything is pale blue, but really pale. In the original the boat was surrounded by a halo which I cannot see anymore on the reproduction.

The last painting I liked is the View of Collioure from 1887 by Paul Signac. Another painter I did not know before but I am quite a peasant concerning the visual arts. He seems to be the painter who excelled most in pointillism. In the said picture he melds blue and pink red so that the result is amazingly warm and serene. A funny thing was that the art historian speaking at the audio guide talked all the time of orange roofs etc. But in the original the roofs were obviously pink or pink red. Afterwards I had a look at the postcard and the catalogue. There I saw that the reproduction really was a little orange. It seems to be almost impossible to have authentic colour reproductions. What I like about pointillism is that it is a different perspective towards the world. Everything is not continuous anymore but much more fragmentary and isolated. But when you have a look from the distance you cannot see it.