Lemons, Grapes, Pears, and Apples by Vincent Van Gogh579703

If ever there was an electrically charged painting this is the one. Vincent Van Gogh painted this in his final years and you can see from the intensity that is emitting from this "still-life" that it is not still at all.

The thing that I have always noticed about the works of Van Gogh is that they almost always just want to jump out at you. His work is always pulsating with vigor and life even with such dark and gloomy images such as "The Potato Pealers". In this wonderful painting that hangs in the Art Institute of Chicago you are give a great deal to work with.

The entire image is the subject of the painting, for there is no special detail or lighting given to any object in the painting. Everything that you see on the table is to be considered. I would like to draw your attention to the pulsating waves that are radiating from the center of the fruit display. Each one of the rapid strokes is carefully dipped into paint that compliments not only the adjacent wave but the cluster of the fruit. These pulsating waves are crucial to understanding the work for this is how Van Gogh expresses himself and that which he paints.

He is not a painter of "realism" by any stretch of the imagination for his vision is far greater than that of copying an image and replicating it with oils on to a canvas, his mind and vision were far greater. The images that you see here are in reality speaking to you, calling out and letting you know that they are here. When you look at them you lose notice of the fact that the execution of the rendering of the fruit is almost crude. The refinement of detail is not the concern, what is the concern is the force of life behind the fruits and more importantly the force of life in the viewer that perceives this sensitivity.

A person that is not familiar with this kind of painting would quickly dismiss it as the work of a beginner, which is not the case whatsoever here. What makes this painting live is the lighting, the color, the position of the fruits, and the frequency of the pulses of lines emitting from the center. If you could imagine for a moment that the pulses were missing from the painting - just never painted, then the piece would be dead for it is in the radiation pulses that you have the heart beat of the painting.

Stephen F. Condren - Artist.