Oil, emulsion, wood and ears (cut from Van Gogh prints) on table-top with castellated framing.

102x65x8cm

£3,800

A posthumous collaboration and reimagining of Sunflowers by Vincent Van Gogh (1888).

Scholars talk about Van Gogh’s paintings in terms of him showing the soul of nature and working people. It is curious therefore that large sections of the museum housing this legacy is designed like a soulless airport terminal full of flat-screen TVs and low value merchandise.

This contemporary curatorial contradiction continues elsewhere with technology in one form or another employed wherever one sees his work in public today. What would Vincent make of this? Being an emotional man with strong opinions about art, one theory is that it might drive him to cut off his other ear.

We will, of course, never know… but here are his, now famous Sunflowers – dead, with the last of the soul (colour) drained from them, with another opinionated artist’s name (from the ‘copy and paste generation’) scrawled over the vase, encouraging you to look at another watered-down version of Vincent’s genius through a brightly lit screen.

Whilst it is disguised as such, this is not an attack on the museum, more an observation wrapped in a joke, an object born of the curatorial critique of many modern museums who have the impossible job of trying to please everyone. In fact, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam was the place that made many realise his work was truly something special by seeing it for the first time in the flesh. What are any of us but a host of contradictions?