Sunflowers by Van Gogh Poster Print

Still Life: Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers Painting by Vincent van Gogh For expressionism is not simply a way of seeing things: it is also a way of making them, of painting them. An expressionist does not paint "flat" and in pure tones--he breaks up his tones and applies them with a liberal brush. It is striking indeed to find in Rembrandt, Hals, and the Van Gogh of the Nuenen period, the same concern for realism, the same sense of light and feeling for expressive detail, combined with a use of impasto that is no less expressive. In short, even the most detached and idealistic Dutch painters bear the mark of their national cultural traditions. Vermeer, however abstract, came under the infleunce of Caravaggio, that is to say, of realism; and, in our own time, Mondrian's abstractions represent an unusual aesthetic puritanism with a social bias.