I recently went to the Van Gogh Museum. It is a great museum. Vincent Van Gogh is definitely one of my favourite painters. I consider paintings such as The Harvest, The Sower and The Starry Night to be among the most beautiful paintings in the world. Unrelated, I also like the new album by Aesop Rock (including tracks such as On Failure).
A new permanent collection at the museum is the Pokémon Paintings. Yes, that is correct. Pokémon at the Van Gogh Museum. Pokémon. Why? Here is the official description from the webpage:
To celebrate the museum’s 50th anniversary, Pokémon and the Van Gogh Museum have launched this collaboration. Together, they developed various educational activities based on the shared link with Japanese art and culture: Pokémon is a Japanese pop culture icon and Japanese prints were a significant source of inspiration for Vincent van Gogh.
Pokémon is Japanese pop culture. Vincent Van Gogh was inspired by Japanese prints. One plus one equals two, or something like that. I like Pokémon (or, mostly the first 151 Pokémon, i.e., Generation 1) and I like Vincent Van Gogh, so I was curious about what I would think about this particular exhibition. It has now been several weeks, and I am still not sure what to think about it.
Luckily, I did not to go the museum for this particular exhibition. If I had, I would have to queue for ~30 minutes to see the paintings up close. I could see them at a distance and that was more than enough. The paintings are not great and the only interesting aspect of the paintings is the juxtaposition between Van Gogh and Pokémon. That is, the paintings are not interesting because of a link between Van Gogh and Japanese prints, but because of the lack of a link between Van Gogh and Pokémon.
Here is an example of one of the paintings, a reinterpretation of Bedroom in Arles with a few Pokémon:
I do not have an issue with how much space Snorlax (the sleeping Pokémon) is taking up in this painting. What I do not like in this painting is that it ignores everything that makes the original painting so great. Most importantly, there is a lack of shadows in the original painting, but you can easily see the shadows in this new version. Van Gogh worked a lot with shadows, light, colours, etc., and this painting looks more like a cheap copy with a few Pokémon.
Would I rather be without the Pokémon Paintings? No, I believe they serve a good purpose. They can bring people to the museum, especially kids, that would never consider going to the museum. Come for Pikachu, stay for the paintings. In other words, it is great to see the Van Gogh Museum explore creative ways to motivate people to visit the museum in the 21st century.
On the wall with the paintings, there was a quote from a letter Vincent van Gogh sent to his brother Theo in September 1888. The full quote is: “And we wouldn’t be able to study Japanese art, it seems to me, without becoming much happier and more cheerful, and it makes us return to nature, despite our education and our work in a world of convention.” Sure, I guess it is good to become much happier and more cheerful.
As a meta experience, however, while of course unintended, it also left me with a feeling of restlessness seeing depictions of Van Goghs decaying mental health to the backdrop of kids having fun with their Pokémon Adventure. I am sure Van Gogh would have felt the same way.