Van Gogh
Abstracted

Van Gogh Abstracted is a colour study of Vincent van Gogh’s complete painted oeuvre. The project processes 829 paintings into vertical colour compositions, one work at a time, using colour as the remaining structure after the recognisable image has been removed.

The project processes the complete painted oeuvre into vertical colour compositions. Each strip is generated from one painting, so the archive can be read as a painting-by-painting colour index of Van Gogh’s work. The original image remains the source, but the scene itself is no longer shown. A portrait, a landscape, a bedroom or a vase of flowers becomes readable through its distribution of colour.

This shift changes the way the work can be looked at. Instead of recognising a subject first, the viewer is asked to stay with the colours that usually support that recognition. Darker works, yellow interiors, blue night scenes, green fields and pale portraits can be placed next to each other without their usual narrative setting. What appears is a slower overview of the painted oeuvre, organised through colour rather than subject matter.

The reduction is a way of looking beside the paintings. By removing the image as a scene, the project makes it possible to compare works that are normally separated by title, motif, period or location. The question becomes how much of a painting remains available when its recognisable image has been translated into colour.

Seen as a group, the strips form a working atlas. They show how colour moves through the oeuvre, how certain temperatures return, how contrasts appear, and how individual paintings keep a specific character even after their subject has been removed.