Chair near the Stove 1890

Curator: Let's turn our attention to Vincent van Gogh's drawing, "Chair near the Stove," created in 1890 using charcoal. It's currently housed at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. Editor: Mmm, that gives me a very still feeling, almost lonely. Just the essential objects, caught in lines. A place someone *was*. Curator: Yes, there is a profound stillness. Note the emphasis on line work, a skeletal impression rendered through what looks to me like simple form. Van Gogh employs a network of lines and cross-hatching to define the volumes. Editor: It feels raw, though, doesn’t it? Less like a finished work and more like catching a thought before it disappears. Like remembering something vital and human but impossible to express directly. The stove’s cool but promises warmth, the chair awaits somebody who might return at any moment, it’s heavy with melancholic feeling and it's mostly line! Curator: Precisely, the reduction to essential lines gives the drawing an abstract quality. But also I agree, emotionally immediate, and think we need to appreciate what is said, through absences, rather than statement in this work. There is emptiness and space in a space intended for habitation, comfort and warmth and there’s neither habitant, comfort or warmth. Editor: I wonder what he felt then. I see in the starkness, how the bare quality creates something more meaningful. There’s that weird tension Van Gogh nails – vulnerability with ferocious energy behind it all. That fireplace...waiting. That simple, straw chair, so, well…vacant. The sparseness magnifies it all, you know? Curator: I do know. Consider also, the impact of negative space here; what isn't drawn as critical as what is, contributing as it does to that overall atmosphere of emptiness you astutely observe. What are left behind, like shadows...almost literally haunting! Editor: True! Now, seeing it that way…well, it amplifies it all tenfold. The chair, no longer *just* a chair. You made this really hit me, as I felt at first like it didn't move me. I think he would be really happy! Curator: Then I am doubly happy. It is a privilege indeed.