A Glance at Vincent Van Gough: Literature, Cinema, Music

(2 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

This course examines the fascination exerted by Van Gogh and the different looks of this artist and his work. He is treated on in literary works of different genres (essay, story, poetry), but also the cinema (Pialat) and music (Dutilleux). This multiplicity of objects, distinct in their support, language and the aesthetic or political stakes that each confers on Van Gogh, shows the extreme fecundity of this figure but also its complexity. This course questions the way a myth is made. The effects of the work on its viewer and the way painting stimulates, challenges and shakes up literature, the arts and society. What do these psychiatrists who have judged to be him to be crazy reveal that posterity finally recognized as a "suprahuman" genius (Artaud)? How can we explore how to transpose a pictorial work through painting, filming the act of creation, or music? Through these works that renew or instead take their distance from the traditional forms of ekphrasis and subvert pictorial erudition, it is ultimately the opacity of the act of creation that is questioned. This course is an introduction to the interartistic approach. It proposes tools to analyze the different arts, questions the notion of intermediality and builds a reflection of comparative aesthetics.