I went to the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam because I was there and it was on the bucket list. Pictures in a book or on web pages do not do justice to how vibrant the pictures are in real life. Plus, in the days before additional security was required, you could go right up to them (within reason) and check them out up close. They look like they were painted yesterday. Not everyone likes his work but I'm a fan.
My wife and I both struggled to really get into his work until we went to the museum. There's something about the way the museum presented Van Gogh, as a struggling misfit of perhaps questionable talent trying to make friends and looking for a popular counter-culture style, that really clicked with me. I didn't identify with Van Gogh per se, but I suddenly felt for him and his humanity and it peeled away those layers of nonsensical pop-culture that surrounds him.
I think also that I had seen very few of his paintings in person and when you see his late works, after he figured out what he was, they explode off the canvas like nothing I've ever seen before. My wife and I went home and bought a reproduction we were so moved, and then promptly decided not to hang it when it arrived as it lacks that....whatever factor it is in his real works that make them shimmer like something from another plane of spacetime.
I really recommend people who don't like van Gogh to visit that museum.
I've just visited the Detroit Institute of Arts (which is excellent, by the way; a revelation to this cynical and displaced Italian). They have a fairly unknown (at least to me) 1873 painting titled Syria by the Sea, by Frederic Edwin Church. It's a capriccio, an imaginary landscape mixing ruins of various civilization, at sunset. On a screen or a page, it's just another bucolic landscape; but its size and colors are such that, in real life, it's simply a glorious experience.
Next time your in the Netherlands, check out the Kröller-Müller museum. Its collection was created by an art lover who was one of the first to appreciate van Gogh. Although its collection is a bit smaller than that of the van Gogh museum in Amsterdam, it is, I think, of a higher quality.
Kroller-Muller also has a great Mondriaan collection. Mondriaan's later coloured geometric paintings really make sense when you see his early landscapes with trees, and then a period experimenting with thinning out trees focusing on the branches and spaces between them.
I went a while ago to the same museum. Jean-François Millet's work is in the basement there, as he's one of Van Gogh's inspirations. Millet's work is all dreary peasants toiling in the bleak fields, really grim and depressing stuff, and I would probably never look twice at it online.
Then you get to see his work up close. It's outstanding. It's jaw-droppingly beautiful and intricate. Some of the pieces absolutely overwhelmed me. His paintings are mostly done with a line technique, where he'll paint lines over and over again until the canvas is complete with a comprehensible picture. I'm not sure what it is about screens, but they just don't convey the detail properly at all. On his wikipedia page, Millet's work appears to me as the bleak flat paintings I'd have ignored before I saw his work in person - copies of the exact same paintings I'd seen in person, which overwhelmed me.
I don't really understand why, but there's something fundamentally different about seeing some art in person.
Also, his paintings are so thick. Photos don't allow you to see how the paint was applied on top of other paint. Seeing them in person allowed me to understand that Van Gogh attacked his canvas.
What's wild is some of his painting appear to be thick without using a ton of paint. It's amazing to think that most of his work was done in a span of couple years.
Destitute outcast dressed in rags. But he could afford to slather his canvases deep with that pricey oil paint. And don't get me started on storage space. Those paintings take up room.
Maybe he had a trustfund. Maybe he spent 99% on art supplies and 1% on potatoes. I dunno.
That museum is great. Spending a day there gave me a deep appreciation for Van Gogh, maybe even art in general. Pictures online definitely don't do it justice. The museum also has a good guided audio tour that narrates Van Gogh's life story as you go through the collection.
The mesmerizing colors and poignant landscapes, the neurotic physicality of the brush strokes, all told through Van Gogh's letters to his brother -- it was a vivid experience. I understood that Van Gogh saw the world in a different way, and for a moment I saw it too.
I've had that same rewarding experience at the museum. I figured at least part of it was because you don't fully appreciate the depth of the paint itself on the canvas when looking at a photo of Van Gogh's work. I was really struck by how much dimension there was in the medium, as opposed to a typical oil on canvas painting, like say, The Night Watch. It's physically a very different thing than a photograph can convey. I think you grow up hearing VG is this awesome painter who did these awesome works, here they are, and they look cool, but personally I never appreciated his work as much as I did after seeing the physical objects. The story is more than the graphical composition and color, the brush strokes are more two dimensional. The gestalt is beyond what a book or poster can convey.
I didn't have an opinion until I visited the Met and went through their impressionist exhibit. One of the centerpieces was a self portrait but I was absolutely enthralled by his Sunflower.
When I went to Amsterdam, I made the mistake of not booking tickets in advance. It was totally sold out the entire time I was there. Would love to have gone.
The Rijksmuseum next door was impressive, though extremely crowded.
The FAQ on that site has an entry for "Where is ‘The Starry Night’?" and its answer is at Museum of Modern Art in NYC.
Where it happens that I saw it a few weeks ago, as part of a big Van Gogh exhibition with many of his paintings.
I have to say that if you have a chance to go to that, or to another Van Gogh exhibition, I really recommend it.
From what I understand, not everyone resonates with his work. In fact I believe I saw a critical post on HN some time ago from someone who mentioned having "art students". I'm cynical enough to think they may have been middle school students because I don't think there are many serious people in the art world today who don't love Van Gogh.
And yet, I have a friend who, when the subject of the importance of preserving Van Gogh's work came up, said "They've never done anything for me!" so he couldn't see a reason why it mattered. And, of course, few loved his work while he was alive. Gauguin is even said to have even mocked some of Van Gogh's work in his own, even though they painted together for a time. (This is mentioned at the exhibition at MOMA and a relevant Gauguin is shown.)
So, YMMV. But, I had tears in my eyes from the beauty. Give Van Gogh a chance; his work may really come to mean something to you. It may not, but if it happens that you have yet to do so, it might be worth your while to give it some time, letting yourself be in a state of openness to the forms and colors.
I was never a fan of Van Gogh until I saw Starry Night in person at MOMA in NYC.
The thing that jumps out at me is literally the paint on the painting. There is a lot of height to it. The paint is so thick in sections that it sticks out far above the canvas that it can cause a shadow next to it. We tend to think of paintings as 2 dimensional but Starry Night is 3D and seeing it online or in a book or poster is not the same experience.
Since then I've seen about 10 other Van Gogh paintings in museums and I noticed this similar style in his paintings.
Yes! Getting to see him up close really changed my mind on him. Obviously the transmitted colors of a screen aren't the reflected colors of light. But even quality print books aren't good because of the 3-D data that is missed.
He didn't just paint, he carved.
That was the thing that really 'made' Van Gogh for me. The en plain air mixing of globs very thick paints on the canvas took a lot of technical skill and mastery. I've tried doing it myself, and honestly, modern store-bought paints aren't up to the task. Getting the oil just right is really difficult. You have to have a consistency a bit south of the stiff-peaks phase of whipped eggs (sorry for mixing domains here, I don't know how else to describe it). Once you get a hold of your paints, you can start to learn how to do this on vertically held canvases, but it's still really difficult.
Then, you have to put the emotion and ease of use into your hand sweeps. His carving of the paint was obviously done in smooth motions with little going back for touch-ups. Just a glob, swooshed on, then mixing in the oil with another swooshing and beating, all globbed up on the canvas. Getting that energy and skill together is, again, really hard.
Seeing Van Gogh, in natural light, up close, really changed my mind on him. So much so that I've tried to replicate his paintings and have gotten no where close. A true master and innovator, in my mind.
https://www.moma.org/magazine/articles/462 has a nice page where they did a high res 3d scan + model of the painting that you can explore on there; the only thing missing I think is that you can't change the light source.
What I like about Van Gogh's work, is the 'vibrant energy' in his paintings. But I had to experience his work in person to come to appreciate and perceive that. Prior to my first in-person experience with his paintings, I was in the 'meh' camp. It was a similar story for me with the work of Georgia O'Keefe.
I had the same reaction to "Irises" at the Getty Museum in LA.
If a city near you has the Van Gogh Immersive Experience, go see it. It's quite impressive. Also, if they're your thing, it would be a great thing to see while on psychedelics.
If anyone's ever in the Netherlands for more than a couple of days, I'd highly recommend checking out the Kröller-Müller Museum. It has the second-largest collection of Van Gogh paintings [1], but also a sizeable number of paintings from the period leading up to his work, and following his work. It's really interesting to see how it fits in the larger developments in the painting world, and feels like his work is a crucial link in the transition from Rembrandt to abstract work like Mondriaan's.
[1] And while you're at it, visit the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam for the largest collection.
The best way I have come to understand art is that for a moment it lets me experience how it felt to be another person. When I see some of Van Gogh's works, take the Church at Auvers, or Starry Night, I feel like I can understand the overwhelming beauty - how he felt - when he looked at a church or the night sky.
I have times when I am deeply touched by a ordinary moment. I see a person walking on a dirt country road. Or a mother look at her daughter with utter love. And those things I would like to share with others, so I have tried to paint. I am not a good painter.
But I do think every person should try to express those moments that touch them - in some media or another. And who knows, if you try to paint something perhaps someone will see it and it will take their breath away.
I don't paint, but I do take pictures. And looking at how painters throughout history depicted the world had an impact on my photography. Especially Van Gogh, as it was the first painter, and museum, I visited by actively trying to learn something instead of just admiring, or not, works of art.
After all, the use of light and composition are almost universial concepts.
For an art noob, can someone help me understand why the perspective is off in so many of them? I know that he's a master and I don't want to contest that, but the perspective being off feels a little...amateurish? Or is that an intentional choice? If it is, would love to know the 'why' of it
When it comes to drawing Van Gogh isn't really "a master". He began painting very late in life, didn't have a long apprenticeship and his career lasted just 10 years. Also, he lived in a cultural context (post-impressionism) that was moving away from classical notions of drawing and composition.
Besides, he wasn't the kind of guy that would spend days or weeks or months in a painting. Most of his paintings were the work of one day or afternoon on the field or beach, he wanted that quick burst of expression. That's why he was so prolific. Think jazz improvisation, not classical music composition.
The greatness of his work comes from the vibrant use of colour and brushwork, not drawing and composition.
I used to think “painting is obsolete since we have photographs”.
I later came to realize that paintings can show things photographs can’t, often much more.
Every time you “say” (express) something you are making choices: emphasizing some things and glossing over others. Something strange happens to you but when you tell me about it you skip the extraneous details and focus on what reinforces your point. Taking a photograph, even if not edited (cropped, lighting changed, etc), and even if spontaneous or lucky, is as much about what is not in the frame as what is. In a good movie, we don’t have to wait while the character goes to the bathroom, or while they drive to the store. We just get the part of the story that matters (this is Chekhov’s gun).
All that is true of a painting, but like a story you can make lots of edits, pulling things literally into the frame that are metasyntactic, that a camera would never see.
In a way the sharp literalism of a photo is much too limiting, as it tunes your visual system to focus on the image itself more than what might be expressed.
And even with just images. Last winter a saw two horses in snowy hills. It was a beautiful image. I tried to capture it with my camera but couldn't. The hills were too flat, the snow didn't have the blue hue from my memory and the horses didn't have such a wild manes. Maybe the picture I took was a more realistic representation of reality but it did not capture what I expirienced. Stiqll think of painting it.
I don't really think I got it until I saw one in person.
It was only a faily small piece but the guy really gobbed so much paint on there that it looked like the flowers on it were real and sticking out of the painting. It was really quite impressive and I don't think I've seen anything quite like it since.
I think you could probably label the whole field of post-impressionism as just being smudgy or whatever, and it is a really easy style to copy (People have been doing it for like 100+ years now) so I can see where the idea that it's amateurish comes from. But you have to understand it came from a time where people would really deride your work if it didn't fit along established lines and that people like him really pushed the boundaries of what was considered acceptable to call "art" in their contemporary time.
I did not understand modern art until I saw it in the way people from that era would have seen it. I was on Day 7 of a vacation in St. Petersburg and we'd gone from gallery to gallery for nearly a week, covering art from the 14th century onwards.
After about the 10,000th realistic painting with vaguely mythological/religious themes, it was simply exhausting. And then we entered a room that housed Matisse's 'The Conversation' and it took my breath away.
A gigantic, bright blue painting in an old Russian palace after a week of gallery hopping...it was absolutely majestic. I can only imagine the impact something like that must have had on people who had known nothing but the same old realistic style.
What throws me about Van Gogh, though, is that unlike Matisse, he's not entirely modern or abstract - he's still trying to capture some semblance of reality, and he's even making an attempt at realistic perspective, but something is just off. I admire the style, but I could never come to grips with what he's trying to do (or not trying to do) with his perspectives.
AFAIK his paintings were never intended to be 'realistic' in the sense we may value, but instead: symbolic. He played with color, intensity, and perspective, expressing vast emotion, and in some cases, turmoil. His mental health and state changed throughout his life which you can almost "see" evolving through his art as he aged. He's incredible to read about - https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/art-and-stories/stories/vinc...
Van Gogh was heavily inspired by Japanese woodprints, which often utilized 1-point perspective, leading to a sort of "flat" look.
When it comes to his understanding of perspective, Van Gogh was so obsessed with realism that he never drew from imagination and even used/invented his own physical perspective grid to check his work.
And for why his work might appear "amateurish": this was a deliberate style choice by Van Gogh. He was a person who wanted to disguise his expertise. In one of his letters, he notes to a fellow artist that he wants his work to draw people in who "swear he has no technique" and be so "savant" that his work almost appears naive and does not "reek of its cleverness". He's trying to fool us.
I can’t speak on his behalf, but I can speak on my own experiences in creating art. It could be something as simple as that whatever you create is not always intended to be a great work, but rather it starts out as an experiment to teach yourself something, or learn a technique, and you work on it so much that you enjoy it, and it eventually becomes something. Artists aren’t really concerned with perfection all the time, sometimes we’re just discovering something in the craft.
noob here too, but I wanted to share what I found in one of the descriptions (“The bedroom”, which I chose while skimming through the thumbnails after reading your comment):
“The rules of perspective seem not to have been accurately applied throughout the painting, but this was a deliberate choice. Vincent told Theo in a letter that he had deliberately ‘flattened’ the interior and left out the shadows so that his picture would resemble a Japanese print”
The goal of art is not to follow rules. That’s why you have all these books that are the “art and science” of this and this. When you follow strict rules you have science, but to make art you have to stop following rules.
We’re several hundred years past that anyway, with Picasso and those random paint splatter paintings.
But to give the science explanation, Van Gogh made impressionist paintings, the goal of which is to create and ambiance, an atmosphere of an impression the artist felt when creating the painting.
Finally, if you study great art you’ll see none of them have correct perspective. Van gogh just shoved it in your face. But having 100% correct perspective is a very amateur quality in itself
Waldemar is awesome, Van Gogh's life is much more interesting than I ever thought.
Also highly recommend all of Waldemar's other "Perspective" videos. You will no longer be a noob. These are definitely from his perspective- it's all about Mary Magdalene with Waldemar.
Slightly related: I've noticed first in Ghent, then in Amsterdam, that at certain moments of the day, the eddies and the waves of the water reflections in the channels are quite similar to the Van Gogh trademark lines.
It must be great to see these original works in person. As other accounts have made clear. A rare spectacle.
But it's also not viable, resources-wise, for every human being to travel to (say) Amsterdam in person for a viewing, for the experience.
It will be nice when, one day, that full experience can be had, one way or another, without the cost of burning X (dozen/hundred/thousand) gallons of gas and ~ a months salary in costs per-time-per-person.
I daresay that even now, with what limited technology we have, some of the dimensional properties would be able to be somewhat (not wholly!) represented for remote viewers, well beyond what a simple photograph represents. e.g. a detailed 3d scan and dedicated viewing software, with or without HMD/VR.
The notion that highly endowed and profitable physical Art Galleries probably aren't entirely keen for that vision to proceed at pace, and certainly not as a free-for-all, does occur to me.
Note that, already, "experiencing" the 3 dimensional aspect of the paint thickness - which is something that many in-person viewers comment upon, as one of the most striking parts of the experience - can be done at home by anybody with a web browser.
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I think also that I had seen very few of his paintings in person and when you see his late works, after he figured out what he was, they explode off the canvas like nothing I've ever seen before. My wife and I went home and bought a reproduction we were so moved, and then promptly decided not to hang it when it arrived as it lacks that....whatever factor it is in his real works that make them shimmer like something from another plane of spacetime.
I really recommend people who don't like van Gogh to visit that museum.
This is true and big.
The paintings are nice on books and screens but are stunning in real life. There is a lot of nuance in the colours that pictures don't replicate.
Same happens to Vermeer landscapes. His "View of Delft" is just nice on screen but almost magical when seen in real.
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The museum also has a fun sculpture garden.
[1] https://krollermuller.nl/en/search-the-collection/keywords=%...
I went there once right after new year's, the museum and restaurant were closed but it was so quiet elsewhere, it was great.
Then you get to see his work up close. It's outstanding. It's jaw-droppingly beautiful and intricate. Some of the pieces absolutely overwhelmed me. His paintings are mostly done with a line technique, where he'll paint lines over and over again until the canvas is complete with a comprehensible picture. I'm not sure what it is about screens, but they just don't convey the detail properly at all. On his wikipedia page, Millet's work appears to me as the bleak flat paintings I'd have ignored before I saw his work in person - copies of the exact same paintings I'd seen in person, which overwhelmed me.
I don't really understand why, but there's something fundamentally different about seeing some art in person.
Maybe he had a trustfund. Maybe he spent 99% on art supplies and 1% on potatoes. I dunno.
The mesmerizing colors and poignant landscapes, the neurotic physicality of the brush strokes, all told through Van Gogh's letters to his brother -- it was a vivid experience. I understood that Van Gogh saw the world in a different way, and for a moment I saw it too.
Actually, some of the pigments van Gogh used have significantly faded or shifted in color over time. https://cen.acs.org/articles/94/i5/Van-Goghs-Fading-Colors-I...
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/436524?sortB...
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The Rijksmuseum next door was impressive, though extremely crowded.
Where it happens that I saw it a few weeks ago, as part of a big Van Gogh exhibition with many of his paintings.
I have to say that if you have a chance to go to that, or to another Van Gogh exhibition, I really recommend it.
From what I understand, not everyone resonates with his work. In fact I believe I saw a critical post on HN some time ago from someone who mentioned having "art students". I'm cynical enough to think they may have been middle school students because I don't think there are many serious people in the art world today who don't love Van Gogh.
And yet, I have a friend who, when the subject of the importance of preserving Van Gogh's work came up, said "They've never done anything for me!" so he couldn't see a reason why it mattered. And, of course, few loved his work while he was alive. Gauguin is even said to have even mocked some of Van Gogh's work in his own, even though they painted together for a time. (This is mentioned at the exhibition at MOMA and a relevant Gauguin is shown.)
So, YMMV. But, I had tears in my eyes from the beauty. Give Van Gogh a chance; his work may really come to mean something to you. It may not, but if it happens that you have yet to do so, it might be worth your while to give it some time, letting yourself be in a state of openness to the forms and colors.
The thing that jumps out at me is literally the paint on the painting. There is a lot of height to it. The paint is so thick in sections that it sticks out far above the canvas that it can cause a shadow next to it. We tend to think of paintings as 2 dimensional but Starry Night is 3D and seeing it online or in a book or poster is not the same experience.
Since then I've seen about 10 other Van Gogh paintings in museums and I noticed this similar style in his paintings.
He didn't just paint, he carved.
That was the thing that really 'made' Van Gogh for me. The en plain air mixing of globs very thick paints on the canvas took a lot of technical skill and mastery. I've tried doing it myself, and honestly, modern store-bought paints aren't up to the task. Getting the oil just right is really difficult. You have to have a consistency a bit south of the stiff-peaks phase of whipped eggs (sorry for mixing domains here, I don't know how else to describe it). Once you get a hold of your paints, you can start to learn how to do this on vertically held canvases, but it's still really difficult.
Then, you have to put the emotion and ease of use into your hand sweeps. His carving of the paint was obviously done in smooth motions with little going back for touch-ups. Just a glob, swooshed on, then mixing in the oil with another swooshing and beating, all globbed up on the canvas. Getting that energy and skill together is, again, really hard.
Seeing Van Gogh, in natural light, up close, really changed my mind on him. So much so that I've tried to replicate his paintings and have gotten no where close. A true master and innovator, in my mind.
If a city near you has the Van Gogh Immersive Experience, go see it. It's quite impressive. Also, if they're your thing, it would be a great thing to see while on psychedelics.
You can really see the texture and brushstrokes better, which as you said, brings a lot of life to the visual.
I just went the other day, and it was definitely worth seeing.
https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/van-gogh-cypresses
But one thing (of many) that I love about being alive is that not everybody has the same tastes, and I enjoyed reading your comment.
It's made by feeding cows nothing but mango leaves and dehydrating their urine to a paste.
Now you know...
[1] And while you're at it, visit the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam for the largest collection.
I have times when I am deeply touched by a ordinary moment. I see a person walking on a dirt country road. Or a mother look at her daughter with utter love. And those things I would like to share with others, so I have tried to paint. I am not a good painter.
But I do think every person should try to express those moments that touch them - in some media or another. And who knows, if you try to paint something perhaps someone will see it and it will take their breath away.
After all, the use of light and composition are almost universial concepts.
The book is based largely on a collection of letters between Vincent and his brother Theo and is quite moving sometimes.
I recommend it!
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lust_for_Life_(novel)
When it comes to drawing Van Gogh isn't really "a master". He began painting very late in life, didn't have a long apprenticeship and his career lasted just 10 years. Also, he lived in a cultural context (post-impressionism) that was moving away from classical notions of drawing and composition.
Besides, he wasn't the kind of guy that would spend days or weeks or months in a painting. Most of his paintings were the work of one day or afternoon on the field or beach, he wanted that quick burst of expression. That's why he was so prolific. Think jazz improvisation, not classical music composition.
The greatness of his work comes from the vibrant use of colour and brushwork, not drawing and composition.
I later came to realize that paintings can show things photographs can’t, often much more.
Every time you “say” (express) something you are making choices: emphasizing some things and glossing over others. Something strange happens to you but when you tell me about it you skip the extraneous details and focus on what reinforces your point. Taking a photograph, even if not edited (cropped, lighting changed, etc), and even if spontaneous or lucky, is as much about what is not in the frame as what is. In a good movie, we don’t have to wait while the character goes to the bathroom, or while they drive to the store. We just get the part of the story that matters (this is Chekhov’s gun).
All that is true of a painting, but like a story you can make lots of edits, pulling things literally into the frame that are metasyntactic, that a camera would never see.
In a way the sharp literalism of a photo is much too limiting, as it tunes your visual system to focus on the image itself more than what might be expressed.
It was only a faily small piece but the guy really gobbed so much paint on there that it looked like the flowers on it were real and sticking out of the painting. It was really quite impressive and I don't think I've seen anything quite like it since.
I think you could probably label the whole field of post-impressionism as just being smudgy or whatever, and it is a really easy style to copy (People have been doing it for like 100+ years now) so I can see where the idea that it's amateurish comes from. But you have to understand it came from a time where people would really deride your work if it didn't fit along established lines and that people like him really pushed the boundaries of what was considered acceptable to call "art" in their contemporary time.
After about the 10,000th realistic painting with vaguely mythological/religious themes, it was simply exhausting. And then we entered a room that housed Matisse's 'The Conversation' and it took my breath away.
A gigantic, bright blue painting in an old Russian palace after a week of gallery hopping...it was absolutely majestic. I can only imagine the impact something like that must have had on people who had known nothing but the same old realistic style.
What throws me about Van Gogh, though, is that unlike Matisse, he's not entirely modern or abstract - he's still trying to capture some semblance of reality, and he's even making an attempt at realistic perspective, but something is just off. I admire the style, but I could never come to grips with what he's trying to do (or not trying to do) with his perspectives.
EDIT: I find this really interesting: a visual timeline of how his relationship with alcohol changed his artistic style in various phases of his life: https://www.frontiersin.org/files/Articles/536428/fpsyt-11-0...
When it comes to his understanding of perspective, Van Gogh was so obsessed with realism that he never drew from imagination and even used/invented his own physical perspective grid to check his work.
And for why his work might appear "amateurish": this was a deliberate style choice by Van Gogh. He was a person who wanted to disguise his expertise. In one of his letters, he notes to a fellow artist that he wants his work to draw people in who "swear he has no technique" and be so "savant" that his work almost appears naive and does not "reek of its cleverness". He's trying to fool us.
He didn't have expertise. Maybe you are thinking of Picasso?
“The rules of perspective seem not to have been accurately applied throughout the painting, but this was a deliberate choice. Vincent told Theo in a letter that he had deliberately ‘flattened’ the interior and left out the shadows so that his picture would resemble a Japanese print”
We’re several hundred years past that anyway, with Picasso and those random paint splatter paintings.
But to give the science explanation, Van Gogh made impressionist paintings, the goal of which is to create and ambiance, an atmosphere of an impression the artist felt when creating the painting.
Finally, if you study great art you’ll see none of them have correct perspective. Van gogh just shoved it in your face. But having 100% correct perspective is a very amateur quality in itself
"Waldemar On The Life Of Vincent Van Gogh"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=365r2m7_B10
Waldemar is awesome, Van Gogh's life is much more interesting than I ever thought.
Also highly recommend all of Waldemar's other "Perspective" videos. You will no longer be a noob. These are definitely from his perspective- it's all about Mary Magdalene with Waldemar.
But it's also not viable, resources-wise, for every human being to travel to (say) Amsterdam in person for a viewing, for the experience.
It will be nice when, one day, that full experience can be had, one way or another, without the cost of burning X (dozen/hundred/thousand) gallons of gas and ~ a months salary in costs per-time-per-person.
I daresay that even now, with what limited technology we have, some of the dimensional properties would be able to be somewhat (not wholly!) represented for remote viewers, well beyond what a simple photograph represents. e.g. a detailed 3d scan and dedicated viewing software, with or without HMD/VR.
The notion that highly endowed and profitable physical Art Galleries probably aren't entirely keen for that vision to proceed at pace, and certainly not as a free-for-all, does occur to me.
https://www.moma.org/magazine/articles/462