Courtesan- After Eisen 

Curator: Oh, this one zings with the sheer delight Van Gogh found in exploring worlds beyond his own, doesn't it? This piece is entitled "Courtesan- After Eisen". Editor: It feels more like Van Gogh went to war with a picture! The texture is intensely built up; you can almost feel the layers of paint writhing on the canvas. It’s agitated. Curator: It certainly vibrates! What we are seeing is part of Van Gogh's Japonaiserie series—artworks that show his profound engagement with Japanese woodblock prints. Van Gogh directly copied a woodblock print by Keisai Eisen, blown up here onto a massive canvas with the wild intensity we recognize in his unique painting style. Editor: The scale here makes a huge difference, right? He’s taking a widely-available commercial print – something cheap, reproducible, made with wood blocks and ink – and translating it into the unique and expensive medium of an oil painting. I mean, look at how present those brushstrokes are! There is no hiding the labor here. He revels in that labor and its presence in the world. Curator: Exactly. He uses that labor to truly bring the subject alive for him! Think of the colors... the way he interprets the original print's subtle color palette into these bold blues, greens, and reds, as if to fully express what that woodblock might only hint at. It is such a strong reading. He’s reimagining and *feeling* its energy and that is pure magic. Editor: It’s an act of appropriation but also of love, perhaps? He is borrowing, re-making and celebrating a commercial object using different means of production with oil paint – he's embedding it in his own context, his own struggle to create original works. It begs the question, then, what exactly we mean by the words "original," "copy," or even "art." Curator: And in doing so, gives new life to a fleeting impression, eternalized and brimming with energy...it transcends both the original woodblock and Van Gogh’s own inner turmoil, landing us in this charged space somewhere gloriously in between. Editor: I came here thinking about value and labor and left feeling the joy of re-making the world, literally and metaphorically. Thanks, Vincent!