Welcoming Crows
When you land in Amsterdam, you feel a strange feeling hugs you immediately. The first place welcoming you will be Schipol Airport which is a modest and warm place. I remember the first time I saw Amsterdam at 6 o’clock in the morning was an enchanted moment just like in Van Gogh’s painting.
Yellow and mystical are the first two words that came to my mind when I think about there. Whether you smoke marijuana or not is not a matter of the fact that; Amsterdam makes you marijuana drunk in your first meeting. Wheatfield with Crows evokes the feeling of the first time I saw Amsterdam for me.
Capturing The Moment
Movement signifies living. Capturing the movement requires a solid ability to freeze moments. Nevertheless, moving the captured moment requires an entirely different solid skill to avoid being cartoonish. Tableaux vivant as a technique is one of the most significant applications of that purpose.
Beyond the “Wheatfield with Crows”
Wheatfield with Crows from van Gogh which tableaux vivant in the top is based on was painted in the last weeks of van Gogh’s life and it is claimed by many people as his last painting. van Gogh expressed in his letter to his brother that he had painted a large canvas pointing out “extreme loneliness and sadness” but also ahealthy and fortifying side of the countryside (Wikipedia, 2022).
Loving Vincent in Movement
Loving Vincent (2017) is the first movie entirely created with oil paintings. It is composed of 65.000 oil paintings by 125 artists. The movie is based on van Gogh’s 125 famous paintings while telling van Gogh’s story.
Making all of these 125 famous paintings moving makes Loving Vincent is a full-length contemporary tableaux vivant. First of all, the scenes are shot in regular studios with real actors and costumes, using the green screen technique for the backgrounds. Afterward, the painters paint these scenes with oil paints in the Van Gogh style. Later, all of them are photographed and reanimated. Seasons, colors, and types of characters are changed as needed in transitions between paintings. Camera movements solve the difference in the dimensions of the tables. They add scenes from different angles created by reference to Van Gogh’s paintings for transitions (Karahan, 2018; Wikipedia, 2022). These are the components of the mise-en-scène of the shots that aim to create a tableaux vivant. The movie promises the audience a journey through van Gogh’s paintings.
The movie promises the audience a kind of journey through van Gogh’s paintings. If you haven’t watched it, I highly recommend watching it as soon as possible.
Deniz Aydemir
