Van_Gogh_Prisoners_Excersize

Vincent van Gogh: Prisoners exercise, oil on canvas [pic] The Oil Painting on Canvas from Van Gogh, The Prison Exercise Yard, is a masterpiece which was created in 1890 and is just one example of Van Gogh's creative copies. He recreated this image from Gustave Dore's original painting that has the same name. This painting was made while Van Gogh "imprisoned" himself, in the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum in Saint Rémy, 5 months before his committed suicide, after his long struggle with physical and mental illness. Dark brick walls rise out of the shadows, reading towards the sky and sun which lie far out of the frame. The painting is showing a situation in a small angular courtyard. On the sides of the yard are walled in, with small arched windows which are put high above, so that no prisoner is able to reach them, and have a chance so escape. At the bottom of the walls, which seem endlessly high, marchers a slow and morose circle of prisoners, doing their daily exercise. It is the prisoner with blond hair which immediately catches our eye, and determine so the main focus, center of the frame. While all others characters in painting are wearing hats, the blond man walks bear headed, and it seems as he is trying to angle away from the path of the circle, and intends to leave it. While watching the painting I can notice three gentlemen, two with top hats which are appearing to be speaking to each other. Their top hats suggest they must be from a upper middle class at the beginning of the 20th century. Another one who is reading or just looking at something seems to be wearing a uniform. While the prisoners are marching, on their abysmal circle, those men are looking with indifference, or are just looking away. The painting is showing two mentalities, two ways of life, juxtaposed on top of each other. On one hand the prisoners grim reality of paving stones of the courtyard. On the second hand, the visitors, which appear uninterested in the lonely depressed walk of the men in front of them. The silent never ending march of the prisoners is a sad sight layered in meaning. The theme of Vincent Van Gogh painting is the exercise yard in a prison, reflecting the monotone and depressive lifestyle of a prisoner, without any perspectives. When we look at the painting our eye is first focused on the lightest spot on the painting, which is situated near the arched window on the middle of the whole frame. Next to the window, on the right side there is a vertical line which is leading our eye to the darker part of the painting, which is showing us the endless circle of prisoners, and then leads us to the main character of this scene, the man with blond hair, which is put in the central lower visual, and absolute center of the painting, right below the arched window, which a mentioned at the beginning. The main composition components are the greenish line next to the arched window, and the imaginary line, which can be seen as the border between the yellow and green part of the painting. Those two components, are giving us to assume that van Gogh used golden section for the composition for his painting. But if we make a imaginary symmetrical line, which is drawn vertically, and is going through the window and the blond hair man, we could assume it is symmetrical arranged. But if we look closely, we can notice that it is not like that. Because on the right side there are 3 figures and windows added, to make this composition asymmetrical and dynamic. The mentioned lines, which are the specialty of van Gogh, are used for contour lies, edges and coloring of the characters. He is using small paint brush wide lines, changing the direction of the used lines. The main colors of the painting are green and yellow, with exception of used blue (jacket of the man standing next to the circle), red (cap of the man in uniform) and grey (windows, part of the wall) points. Van Gogh is not using the tones of colors to represent us the shadows of the prisoners, but he is using dark and light blue, purple and peach colors, which are made because the sun light is coming high above frame. We call this technique of using wide range colors of representing shadows the technique of modulation. He is using darker colors for representing the object that are further. This usage of coloristic perspective he was successful of making the illusion of space in his painting. We get a glimpse of the answer in the painting if we look up. Above the dreary, marching men there is day light flooding the walls. The light comes from above -from outside the prison yard. The reason because I decided to choose this painting as an example of post-impressionism, because of the used theme, way of composing, and the usage of the personal touch, in this case, his used lines for showing us his seeing of Gustave Dore’s painting. He perfectly showed us the difference between the depressive and sorrow life of the prisoners, and the careless people in this world. But this one blond haired man, has still faith in changes, and is willing to make them, even though the only way is to walk away from the circle of prisoners.