I had a migraine this week when I first heard aboutthe Van Gogh Museum’s forthcoming collaboration with Pokemon.
The Sunflora looked delighted.
I wondered: wasn’t van Gogh amongst the unhappiest people to ever hold a brush?
Is that match-up particularly harmonious?
Then I grumped off for a lie-down.
That was my first thought.
Luckily I had others later on.
I am increasingly wary of gatekeeping, particularly when I find myself settling into it.
My next thoughts, anyway: actually, might Pokemon and van Gogh make for an interesting combination?
And haven’t art and commerce lived close together for most of their separate histories?
More important, is there such a thing as a bad way of connecting with art?
When it came to art and artists she was wildly partisan.
She loved Constable, for example, and absolutely hated Turner.
Good times, ma.)
(She has actually been more embarrassing in an art gallery than this.
At the time I was confused by this, but now I sort of love it.
If you’re going to be into art, cleave to it.
Love the things you love and love them ferociously.
I was ready to have thoughts, to be partisan in my own way.
Now, thirty years later, I take my own kid to the National Gallery!
Speaking of which, my daughter often seems as bored as I was, but for different reasons.
She’s frustrated rather than bored.
You sit and watch as they strobe past, arranged into narratives and set to booming music.
My daughter, though, was absolutely rapt.
There’s no bad way into art, I think.
I had never really engaged with van Gogh much before.
And what I got from Van Gogh Alive were simple but powerful things.
Firstly, I got a sense of how much he painted.
But van Gogh painted a lot.
I mean a real load of stuff.
Over 900 canvases, going by some of the people who have tried to keep count.
And these paintings seem to work a little like the endless stories of someone like Philip K. Dick.
That was the first thing.
The other thing was much simpler and purer.
At Van Gogh Alive I saw a bunch of van Goghs I had never seen before.
I knew the Starry Nights and the Sunflowers.
They’re both about getting out in nature, and paying attention.
They’re both about standing in the long grass for long periods and hoping to be astonished by something.
Actually, maybe more than two things.
Commerce is often a new window onto art and the circumstances of its creation.
If Van Gogh Alive leaves my daughter with her formative memories of Van Gogh, that’s great.
It’s great if Pokemon does the same for someone else, I think.
And in Pokemon’s case it works both ways, because which is art and which is commerce here?
Imagine loving van Gogh and coming away with a nascent understanding of pocket monsters!
What matters is that you get the chance to make the connection in the first place.
