The exhibition begins with visual material that was created by Lynn Johnson for National Geographic Magazine almost 25 years ago. Those images, many of which have never been seen, give this exhibit its foundational form. Simultaneously contemplating and reaffirming Van Gogh’s resounding posthumous influence over art and culture of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries — award-winning photographers Lynn Johnson and Patricia Lanza offer evocative insight into Vincent’s uniquely sensitive lived experience of place and light.
A recreation of the Arles Bedroom from the Van Gogh painting in the Hotel Riche. At the close of WWII, the original bed from Arles was donated to Boxmeer, by the Van Gogh family, to be used by local residents displaced by the war. Boxmeer, The Netherlands. (Photography Patricia Lanza)
Traveling in Van Gogh’s footsteps, Lynn Johnson and Patricia Lanza have conjured hauntingly intimate images in black and white (Johnson) and impressionist-imbued color (Lanza) in their exploration of Van Gogh’s quest to master the use of color as he studied, tracked and paid tribute to his most enduring muse— the sun. Working in collaboration with the Saint-Paul Asylum in Saint-Rémy, Johnson and Lanza were granted special access in their retracing of Van Gogh’s time spent in the still-functioning sanitarium and the village of Auvers-sur-Oise where he died under mysterious circumstances in July of 1890.
As authors and photographers, Lynn Johnson and Patricia Lanza added new images – their respective visual meditations, that address Van Gogh’s quest to understand color, as he traveled the route of the sun and the fundamental human urge to create. Their recent work, created in France and the Netherlands in 2018 and 2019, sheds light on some of the controversy that has been written about but never addressed creatively in visual form; places he lived, worked, traveled and died – the artist’s lived journey.
The Van Gogh Affect traveling exhibition will be on view at Snap! Downtown, 420 E. Church St., through May 2021. Visit snaporlando.com for more details.
Above image: Every year, over 3 million people make the pilgrimage to see the Van Gogh collection at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. “I cannot help it that my paintings do not sell. The time will come when people will see that they are worth more than the price of the paint.”––Vincent . (Photography Lynn Johnson)