Skull by Van Gogh

Skull with Burning Cigarette is a popular painting by Dutch artist Vincent Van Gogh and has recently become a frequent choice as poster for students who are attracted by it's seemingly revolutionary appeal where a skull is accompanied by a burning cigarette. This article discusses the Skull painting and also comments upon it's style and where it fits into the overall career of famous Netherlands post-impressionist painter Van Gogh.

The Skull represents one of Van Gogh's early works when he was entirely an artist who produced dark paintings with sad and subdued feelings which was not something to interest many at a time when the French impressionists had been promoting their own brighter techniques for around 40 years. It was only after that Van Gogh turned into the bright artist that he was really to establish a style which was later to become popular and without that development we may never have heard of him.

Despite being part of his less successful darker period, Skull with Burning Cigarette is still both impressive and interesting and can be categorised with in the career of Van Gogh alongside his hugely famous Potato Eaters work which was particularly moody and dark. This darkness and use of cigarettes has led to many students enjoying it, with it's representation somewhere similar to the types of objects found within rock music which encourages revolutionary thinking and non-mainstream behaviour. The artist himself was also someone who certainly lived on the edge of society and no-one could ever accuse him of being anything like a conformist which eventually has proven to be a major advantage of his painting style, though this never proved beneficial during his own lifetime.

We can conclude that Skull with Burning Cigarette is one of a number of paintings from the career of Van Gogh which were not originally considered one of his best, but have since become highly popular within certain sections of the art public, each of whom have quite different tastes. It is exciting to see how many of Van Gogh's paintings have now become respected and researched with most artists only managing to attract attention to a small selection of their career. This as much as anything underlines the qualities of this artist's career as well as the diversity that he managed in his short period as a painter meaning more and more paintings are of interest to art fans in the modern day.

You can find Skull Van Gogh paintings at skullvangogh.com.

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