{"id":77600,"date":"2014-10-02T17:48:21","date_gmt":"2014-10-02T21:48:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=77600"},"modified":"2014-10-03T10:35:29","modified_gmt":"2014-10-03T14:35:29","slug":"just-slap-something-on-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/10\/02\/just-slap-something-on-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Just Slap Something on It"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"vangoghletter\"<\/a>

A sketch of a cicada in a van Gogh letter from July 1888.<\/p><\/div>\n

Next month will come Ever Yours: The Essential Letters of Vincent van Gogh<\/a><\/em>, which runs to nearly eight hundred pages and is frequently more absorbing, expansive, and instructive than a collection of letters ought to be. (He seldom seems to miss the forest for the trees, you could say.) As I thumbed through it, a passage leaped out at me from exactly 130 years ago\u2014a letter van Gogh wrote to his younger brother, Theo, on October 2, 1884. It\u2019s both Grade A existential grousing\u2014were it not for the (faintly) uplifting conclusion, I could\u2019ve believed that Thomas Bernhard wrote it\u2014and, it seems to me, pretty sound advice.<\/p>\n

\n

Just slap something on it <\/em>when you see a blank canvas staring at you with a sort of imbecility.<\/p>\n

You don\u2019t know how paralyzing<\/em> it is, that stare<\/em> from a blank canvas that says to the painter you can\u2019t do anything<\/em>. The canvas has an idiotic<\/em> stare, and mesmerizes some painters so that they turn into idiots themselves.<\/p>\n

Many painters are afraid<\/em> of the blank canvas<\/em>, but the blank canvas IS AFRAID<\/small> of the truly passionate painter who dares\u2014and who has once broken the spell of \u2018you can\u2019t.\u2019<\/p>\n

Life itself likewise always turns towards one an infinitely meaningless<\/em>, discouraging, dispiriting blank side on which there is nothing<\/em>, any more than on a blank canvas.<\/p>\n

But however<\/em> meaningless and vain, however dead <\/em>life appears, the man of faith, of energy, of warmth, and who knows something, doesn\u2019t let himself be fobbed off like that. He steps in and does something<\/em>, and hangs on to that, in short, breaks<\/em>, \u2018violates\u2019<\/em>\u2014they say.<\/p>\n

Let them talk, those cold theologians.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"Letter_of_Van_Gogh\"<\/a>

A letter of van Gogh\u2019s from May 2, 1890.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Next month will come Ever Yours: The Essential Letters of Vincent van Gogh, which runs to nearly eight hundred pages and is frequently more absorbing, expansive, and instructive than a collection of letters ought to be. (He seldom seems to miss the forest for the trees, you could say.) As I thumbed through it, a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[419],"tags":[7009,35,182,13134,15513,15514,15512,4979],"class_list":["post-77600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-culture","tag-anxiety","tag-art","tag-letters","tag-sketches","tag-the-blank-screen","tag-the-empty-canvas","tag-theologians","tag-vincent-van-gogh"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nAdvice from Van Gogh: Just Slap Something on It<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"October 2, 2014 \u2013 Next month will come Ever Yours: The Essential Letters of Vincent van Gogh, which runs to nearly eight hundred pages and is frequently more absorbing,\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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