Deixa-me rir...

"Caros audiophiles, a fascinating exhibition 'The Real Van Gogh: The Artist & His Letters' is currently showing in London's Royal Academy.

Alongside 65 famous paintings and 30 drawings, are displayed 35 of his letters, to his devoted brother Theo and to other friends and fellow painters.

The popular conception of Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) is that he was a mad crazy artist, these days considered manic depressive, who cut off his ear and later killed himself.

But the letters show that he was also a highly educated intelligent thoughtful man, who could speak several languages and who read much literature. Artistically, he taught himself to paint and composed his paintings with much reflection and planning.

'The duty of the painter is to study nature in depth and to use all his intelligence, to put his feelings into his work so that it becomes comprehensible to others,' van Gogh wrote in 1882.

'All my work is based to some extent on Japanese art,' van Gogh wrote to Theo. In a letter to his sister Willemien, he says that his passion for portrait painting surpassed his love of all other genres. Commenting on his famous 1888 self-portrait, van Gogh writes: 'A pink-grey face with green eyes, ash-coloured hair, wrinkles in forehead and around the mouth...And you see - this is what Impressionism has above the rest, it is not banal and one seeks a deeper likeness than that of the photographer.'

'Books and reality and art all have the same meaning for me. There is the art of lines and colours but there is also the art of words that will endure just the same,' he wrote.

When he died, a blood-stained letter to Theo found on him read: 'I risk my life for my own work and my reason has half foundered in it.'

['founder' is to be destroyed like a ship on rocks].

One further fact that I did not know: he began to paint, self-taught, only at the age of 27, after failing to become a church pastor.

In just ten short years he painted around 900 works and created, eventually because he was not recognised in his lifetime, a legend.

And so now to a famous song inspired by Vincent van Gogh: Vincent (Starry Starry Night) by Don McLean. I have chosen a video subtitled with Portuguese lyrics but there are many others which also exhibit Vincent's many wonderful paintings.

Don McLean himself believed that his lyrics 'painted' too much detail and did not leave enough space for the listener's imagination. I, and many many other people evidently, disagree.
In fact Don McLean was himself the inspiration for another classic song, after the writer heard him perform in concert.
Here is the incomparable Roberta Flack and Killing Me Softly With His Song:

Strumming my pain with his fingers
Singing my life with his words
Killing me softly with his song
Killing me softly with his song
Telling my whole life with his words
Killing me softly with his song

I heard he sang a good song
I heard he had a style
And so I came to see him
To listen for a while
And there he was this young boy
A stranger to my eyes

I felt all flushed with fever
Embarrassed by the crowd
I felt he found my letters
And read each one out loud
I prayed that he would finish
But he just kept right on

He sang as if he knew me
In all my dark despair
And then he looked right through me
As if I wasn't there
And he just kept on singing
Singing clear and strong

He was strumming my pain
Yeah, he was singing my life
Killing me softly with his song
Killing me softly with his song
Telling my whole life with his words
Killing me softly
With his song

A proxima,
PO