BERNARD MARTIN : THE AUTHENTIC DEATH OF VINCENT VAN GOGHNative Virginian and long-time Richmond resident, Bernard Martin is professor emeritus of art at Virginia Commonwealth University where he was the first chair of the Department of Painting and Printmaking. He has had numerous solo exhibitions throughout his multi-decade career, including three separate traveling shows of his work organized by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, as well as two previous exhibitions at ADA Gallery. His work has appeared in over 200 group shows nationally and internationally since 1965. He has been the recipient of awards and grants including two Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and a National Endowment for the Arts Visual Arts Fellowship. His work is to be found in a number of public collections - the National Collection of Art, Washington, DC, the Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, Va, and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA - as well as many corporate and private collections. One such is that of his good friend Tom Robbins for whose novel, Skinny Legs and All, he did both the cover and interior illustrations.
PREVIEW OPENING - THURSDAY MARCH 31, 2016 (5-7PM)
ADA GALLERY , 228 WEST BROAD STREET, RICHMOND, VIRGINIA 23220 (@the_ada_gallery)
FIRST FRIDAYS : FRIDAY APRIL 1, 2016
(6-9PM)
Vincent Van Gogh died early on the morning of July 29th, 1890 of a gunshot wound to his abdomen. The few people of Auvers who had any concern over the death of this extremely peculiar, difficult, and unsuccessful artist were uncertain if the wound was self-inflicted, accidental, or perhaps, even a homicide. Little or no attempt was made at the time to clarify the events leading to his death. Some forty years later, after both public and critical acceptance of Van Gogh's work, Irvin Stone published a fictionalized biography of the artist, Lust for Life, in which a detailed description of his death as a result of suicide was given, This account was, and has continued to be, widely accepted for it seemed an appropriate ending for the emerging myth of an artist, neglected in their lifetime, who becomes recognized as a master after their death. This account was further canonized in 1956 with the release of a movie based on Stone's book in which Kirk Douglas portrayed van Gogh.
As a result of research for their 2011 biography of the artist Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith were the first to raise serious questions about this reading of the artist's death.
While it will be forever impossible to know conclusively what happened in that field some twenty miles outside of Paris, I have given my best assessment of this event in a series of sequential paintings, The Authentic Death of Vincent van Gogh. - Bernard Martin Native Virginian and long-time Richmond resident, Bernard Martin is professor emeritus of art at Virginia Commonwealth University where he was the first chair of the Department of Painting and Printmaking. He has had numerous solo exhibitions throughout his multi-decade career, including three separate traveling shows of his work organized by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, as well as two previous exhibitions at ADA Gallery. His work has appeared in over 200 group shows nationally and internationally since 1965. He has been the recipient of awards and grants including two Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and a National Endowment for the Arts Visual Arts Fellowship. His work is to be found in a number of public collections - the National Collection of Art, Washington, DC, the Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, Va, and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA - as well as many corporate and private collections. One such is that of his good friend Tom Robbins for whose novel, Skinny Legs and All, he did both the cover and interior illustrations.
- Bernard Martin
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