Emily Schranz

Interpreting a Pair of Shoes

Looking at a persons shoes can tell you a lot about their personality. Cleanliness and style can interpret how the person feels about outward appearances. The brand of the shoe can ultimately say how much money they earn. The shoes design can be labeled into a genre: business, causal, skateboarder, athletic, etc. The colors can express the general mood or feeling the wearer may associate themselves with. In fact, these things can all be interpreted without someone wearing the shoes. In 1886, Vincent van Gogh painted A Pair of Shoes, and since then many art historians and theorists have tried to make meaning of the work. Vincent van Gogh was a Dutch painter form the Netherlands. He was born on March 30th, 1853 and died July 29th, 1890. He grew up poor, and was interested in portraying impoverished peasants. In A Pair of shoes (1886), van Gogh presents a very ordinary object. Shoes are commonplace, worn in varying styles throughout history and cultures, from the very rich to the very poor. Van Gogh completed several painting and drawings of shoes. This particular piece was completed in oil paint on a 37.5 X 45 cm (15x18) canvas. The shoes are depicted in the center of the picture plane from a high vantage point. The background is empty, leaving no room to question that van Gogh wanted the viewer to study the shoes represented. The muted colors appear dank. The shoe is lifeless. Yet, the shoes carry a powerful connotation about life. This connotation has provoked many theorists to question how to look at art. One of the theorists that did this was Martin Heidegger (1889-1976). He was a contributor to hermeneutics, which focuses on the theory and practice of art interpretation. He believed that when you look at art the viewer has a pre-understanding of its meaning. In the book Methods & Theories of Art History by Anne DAlleva, the author writes about Heideggers beliefs, Understanding isnt an isolated act of cognition but part of human existence, emerging from the assumptions and opinions generated by our concrete experiences in the worldit is always embedded in observers experiences (D'Alleva 2012). He is stating prior knowledge will always inuence the viewer. If art is about experiences, how did Martin Heidegger interpret van Goghs A Pair of Shoes? He wrote about the painting in The Origin of the Work of Art, using a writing style that reads like a narrative. He described the painting with a concern of symbolism and how the objects depicted show thingness (the thing being shoes). Objects in a painting should be expressed and interpreted much like an experience is through sight, hearing, and taste. Instead we use color, tones, roughness, and hardness in the artists technique to make such observations (Heidegger 2008). As viewers we make assumptions about the shoes we see from previous experiences. Heidegger made a description of the shoes using his, On the leather lies the dampness and fullness of the soil. Under the soles slides the loneliness of the eld path as evening falls. In the shoe-tool [referencing the shoe as a tool] vibrates the silent call of the earth, its quiet bestowal of ripening corn and its unexplained self-denial in the desolate fallow of the winter eld (Heidegger 2008). While looking at the painting, there is no indication to how these shoes were used, or their owner. No soil or setting is depicted in the background. These shoes could possibly be work shoes. Prior knowledge, or empathy, inuences the assumptions made about hardships the owner of a pair of work shoes may bare. Another prominent theorist took a crack at van Goghs painting. Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) established the term deconstruction. In Methods & theories of Art History, DAlleva synopsizes Derridas work, even though we typically think of language [images] as conveying meaning, language can simultaneously convey both the presence and the absence of meaning. That is, what any given statement tries not to say may be as important as what it does say (p.137). For example, the shoes are in solitude, banished to a lonely dark setting. The bers of their being are damaged by mud and rain. These traits are physically seen to strain the shoes, as if they had feelings of their own, but what of the owner? Where did these shoes come from? The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam states, A fellow student in Paris reported that Vincent bought these workmans boots at a ea market, intending to use them in a still life. Finding them still a little too smart, however, he wore them on a long and rainy walk. Only then were they t to be painted (Van Gogh Museum 2014) . These shoes never saw the hardships that Heidegger wrote so enthusiastically about. However, it is an appropriate assumption. Van Gogh had made many paintings about peasant life. He was interested in depicting the poor and working class. Only one year before A Pair of Shoes,

he painted Potato Eaters (1885). He emphasized hands that ate the food they grew. It is unknown if this was the symbolism van Gogh intended to latch onto his shoes. Societal classes were a hot topic for artists of this time. Georges-Pierre Seurat painted Sunday Afternoon on La Grand Jatte from 1884-86. The emphasized female gure on the right stands with a leash to a monkey. They stand in a crowded public park. Monkeys are an uncommon domestic pet, and are a traditional symbol of lust. So, theorists have made assumptions that the woman is a prostitute. Seurat also had a very particular painting style. Seurat was a creator of Pointillism. He applied color in a very unique way. In the essay Eugene Delacroix to Neo-Impressionism, Paul Signac states, They [Neo-Impressionists] not only banish from their palettes any mixed colours, they also avoided spoiling the purity of their colours by putting contrary ones together on a canvas. Every touch made purely on the palette remains pure on the canvas (Signac 2003). In comparison, van Goghs shoes are painted with thick brush strokes of paint. The colors are not extravagantly blended in the background. The colors are similar enough to be one hazy blend. Currently A Pair of Shoes is part of the permanent collection at the Van Gogh Museum of Amsterdam. It had a large re-exhibition from Sept 2009 Jan 2010 at the Wallraf das Museum, Kln, Germany. The Museum advertised the exhibit with, To this day, philosophers and art historians look at this painting and argue over the function of art, the value of interpretation and the nature of existence The exhibition publicized the release of the most current writings about the painting, What of Shoes? Van Gogh and Art History by Geoffrey Batchen. The Book is a compilation of theories about Van Goghs shoes. Batchen is an art history Professor at Victoria University College of Wellington. So if looking at strangers shoes can interpret so much, what does looking at A Pair of Shoes say about Vincent van Goghs personality? We know he bought the shoes at a ea market. Flea markets by denition typically sell old or used merchandise. This tells us that at the time, he was on a tight budget. He did not care what was on his feet as long as something was. He was a problem-solver. The shoes he bought were too small, but he knew enough about the shoes material to soak them in water while wearing them. Through his painting technique we see he is not preoccupied by accuracy of realism. He wants the viewer to see the brushstrokes in the shoes. Maybe he is asking the viewer to spot the hidden details. The shoes also carry a symbolism that refers to the poverty of his childhood. The colors are dreary, so might have been his mood during the paintings creation. He used cold dark blacks and grays on the shoes. Those colors become very isolated in warm creamy surroundings. This could mean he was alone or mentally in his own world at the time. There could be endless interpretations. But one fact remains, A Pair of Shoes impacted the way art historians now interpret and look at the function of art, the value of interpretation and the nature of its existence.

Appendix: In 1886, Vincent van Gogh painted A Pair of Shoes. This artist is known for colorful portraits and landscapes. Why choose a pair of shoes? The shoes are placed in the center of a small canvas. The muted colors appear dank. The shoe is lifeless. Yet, the shoes carry a powerful connotation about life. These shoes appear to be well worn. Van Gogh has painted them with weathered scuffs, and unhinged laces. They sit before the viewer abandoned. Did the shoes belong to a peasant worker or the artist? Are the shoes a reection of their hard work? Were they abandoned by society the same why the owner abandoned their shoes? The view is from above. The viewer must look down upon these objects.
A Pair of Shoes, 1886 Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) Oil on Canvas, 37.5 X 45 cm Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation) F 255

Seurat, Georges A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte 1884-86 Oil on canvas, 207.5 x 308 cm Art Institute of Chicago

Bibliography D'Alleva, Anne. Methods & Theories of Art History. London, UK: Laurence King Publishing Ltd, 2012. Heidegger, Martin; trans Roger Berkowitz and Philippe Nonet. Martin Heidegger: The Basic Writing. NY: Harper Collins, 2008. http://www.academia.edu/2083177/ The_Origin_of_the_Work_of_Art_by_Martin_Heidegger (accessed February 15, 2014). Signac, Paul. Eugene Delacroix to Neo-Impressionism. Art in Theory 1900-2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas. Edited by Charles Harrison and Paul Wood. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing, 2003. Van Gogh Museum, . Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, "Vincent Van Gogh "A Pair of Shoes 1886"." Last modified 2014. Accessed February 16, 2014. http://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/vgm/index.jsp? page=1576&lang=en. Wallraf das Museum, . Wallraf das Museum & Foundation Corboud, " Vincent van Gogh: Shoes A painting as our guest." Accessed February 17, 2014. http://www.wallraf.museum/index.php?id=43&L=1.