VINCENT VAN GOGH

Notes:

signed, dated & editioned; inscribed with Julienne Atelier foundry mark.

Note: In the early 1980s Joe Fafard began to create portraits of artists, in particular, the great masters and innovators of the Western art world. At this time, he came across an edited collection of letters that Vincent van Gogh had written to his brother and confidant. “Dear Theo” had a profound impact on Fafard, motivating him to search out the complete edition of the letters, as well as biographies and other written material on the artist. He then travelled to Amsterdam to view a retrospective at the Van Gogh Museum.

Fafard closely studied the many self-portraits that van Gogh produced in his lifetime, even painstakingly modelling them. Over a period of five years, Fafard was inspired to create over fifty sculptural works of van Gogh, both in clay and bronze. By virtue of a deep connection to his subject, and a dedication to studying both the man and his oeuvre, Fafard was able to create works that capture at once the essence of van Gogh’s outer self, inner self and artistic self . On page 128 of “Joe Fafard” (Heath; Douglas & McIntyre, 2007) author and curator Terrence Heath provides the following analysis of Fafard’s portraits of the great artists:

Joe explores not only their likenesses and the life experiences that have moulded their features, posture and stance, but also the way they painted. His van Gogh portraits are the best example of this desire to represent the artist in the artist’s own manner of expressing himself…They not only show the depicted self but also the many varied styles and experiments that van Gogh had investigated during his short life.