{"id":26682,"date":"2018-12-20T18:11:40","date_gmt":"2018-12-20T23:11:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=26682"},"modified":"2018-12-20T18:11:40","modified_gmt":"2018-12-20T23:11:40","slug":"starry-starry-night-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=26682","title":{"rendered":"Starry Starry Night"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1878\/0085\/products\/diy-paint-by-number-kit-for-adults-on-canvas-sunflowers-van-gogh-1888-40x50cm-16x20inches_1024x1024@2x.jpg?v=1545139966\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>We just spent a couple hours watching the latest movie about the Impressionist painter Vincent Van Gogh. I can&#8217;t recommend it exactly. It was slow, painterly, anguished. It depicts the famous painter&#8217;s last year or so. Years ago I saw the Kirk Douglas treatment <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Lust_for_Life_(film)\"><strong>Lust for Life<\/strong><\/a> but I skipped the movie <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rottentomatoes.com\/m\/vincent_and_theo\"><strong>Vincent and Theo<\/strong><\/a> about the painter and his brother Theo which never quite made it to the top of my must-watch list despite generous reviews. <\/p>\n<p>The painting above was one of my Mother&#8217;s favorite paintings. She put a magazine reproduction of it on our walls.<\/p>\n<p>A few years ago I read that a recent Van Gogh biography theorized that instead of dying by suicide Van Gogh was shot by a couple of stupid kids. That is how the makers of this movie kill him off. <\/p>\n<p>But that&#8217;s sort of besides the point. This movie attempts to portray the greatly underappreciated Van Gogh, the <em>real<\/em> Van Gogh, whose paintings would a hundred years on sell for millions. I think Willem DeFoe&#8217;s portrayal in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=oYGBMfyrd5w\"><strong>At Eternity&#8217;s Gate<\/strong><\/a> is believable and unsentimental. The famous ear episode was probably spot on. <\/p>\n<p>On the other hand, Vincent the man comes across as a bit of a naif and I am not certain that was accurate. I read a snippet of a letter he wrote extolling his joy at sampling the wares at a brothel. The impression that this carnal anecdote offers runs counter to one of my favorite songs, Starry Starry Night by Don McLean. Like Van Gogh&#8217;s paintings the real story, no matter what it was, does not diminish my appreciation of <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/oxHnRfhDmrk\">McLean&#8217;s song<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>But art is subjective. <\/p>\n<p>When I was visiting my Mother during her dementia and singing to her I once sang the whole of McLean&#8217;s song to her because it was about one of her favorite artists. Afterwards, I asked her if she liked the song. She didn&#8217;t.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We just spent a couple hours watching the latest movie about the Impressionist painter Vincent Van Gogh. I can&#8217;t recommend it exactly. It was&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[127],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26682"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26682"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26682\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26683,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26682\/revisions\/26683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}