And both of them began producing in a short period of time enormous amounts of work that ultimately went in directions no one could have predicted.
You also see him drawing figures, starting with nice drawings, and ending with iconic shapes that speak to the amazing portraits of Mme. and M. Gachet. You also see some paintings that seem less than amazing and ultimately, the paintings with swirling brush strokes that make him famous.
The work he created was impossible to predict. It poured out of him in just 10 years; the height of his powers lasted only two years. In that brief time, he pushed the edges of the crafts of painting and drawing. Dylan’s most productive period of ground-breaking music follows a similar trajectory.
My one regret is that I didn’t see the Jacob van Ruisdael landscapes at the PMA first. Van Ruisdael’s metaphoric approach to landscape and its spiritual nature is father to Van Gogh’s, and some of the use of space is similar. But Van Gogh’s nature is about vitality, van Ruisdael’s more about mortality (left, “Cypresses,” 1889).
Time and genius are not all that kind to either Van Gogh or Dylan. In the end, Van Gogh breaks down and ultimately commits suicide. And Dylan turns into one strange dude. The problem they both faced–Where’s a genius to go next?