Art is passion. Art is passion for those who make it and for those who look at it.

When you create you are absorbed, you don’t realize the time passing, you don’t need a human near, you are preoccupide by just creating, you even forget about yourself.

When you view art, you are absorbed into someone else’s creation, you search for a meaning, for your own vision, for an answer, as small as it may be. Art is freedom, the freedom to create, to dream for the impossible and to put it on a paper, to look at it and to search for your own imagination.

Such freedom maybe what Vincent Van Gogh searched for. Is it so that madness is a prison or maybe the freedom of the mind? What is interesting is that the mad painter, Van Gogh, never forgot to follow his passion, painting, even when he had his first breakdown, on the 23rd of December 1888. On that night Van Gogh cut his ear and sent it to a lady companion, named Rachel. Signs of his personality disorder are found in his boderline behavior. On the one hand he had a strong religious fanaticism and on the other hand he had failed love experiences. He was also deeply disappointed in life and felt non-integrated in his own environment.

About all these sufferings he wrote to his brother before the “ear” incident. He said that his deep disappointment is caused by the “despair in which I live due to failure of each action I undertook so far and for which I deserve a thousand reprimands”.

Despite his bouts of madness, Van Gogh never stopped painting. His famous Starry night was completed a year after, in June 1889. That for me is proof that no matter how lost a painter is he will never lose his passion for art, he might loose his mind, but he will never lose his talent.

In the period he painted this masterpiece he was confined to the Saint Remy Asylum. The painting represents an impressive demonstration of the uniqueness of how he perceives and interprets nature. In that period at Saint Remy he lost his faith so in order to find his inner peace he used to paint at night.

Van Gogh might be the artist who best represents the myth of misunderstood genius, a genius that could never paint in such a way if he had been a normal person and not a mad man.

According to research issued today by the popular online art gallery, overstockArt.com, Pablo Picasso’s Facebook® fan page was the most “liked” artist page in 2010. The list is a compilation of the top 10 most popular classic artist fan pages from 2010.

The top 10 artist fan pages on Facebook are:

1. Pablo Picasso – 4,754 fans
2. Vincent Van Gogh – 1,604 fans
3. Salvador Dali – 1,024 fans
4. Claude Monet – 940 fans
5. Pierre Auguste Renoir – 818 fans
6. Amedeo Modigliani – 714 fans
7. Edgar Degas – 704 fans
8. Paul Cezanne – 670 fans
9. Frida Kahlo – 655 fans
10. Wassily Kandinsky – 602 fans

“Facebook is a wonderful tool to use to engage with consumers, and is also an effective tool for keeping an eye on consumer trends and practices,” said David Sasson, founder and CEO of overstockArt.com. “By monitoring artist fan pages on Facebook and determining which ones are most popular we are provided a great indicator to what is hip and the most desirable art on the market, which helps us identify some of the best selling oil paintings we want to be sure to offer to our customers.”

A favorite of the post-impressionism era, Van Gogh’s Bedroom recently underwent a six month renovation. The famous painting had been damaged by moisture in 1889 to Van Gogh’s dismay. The artist pressed newspaper to the work to protect it from further damage and sent it to his brother Theo in Paris. Art historian Ella Hendriks attempted not to restore the painting into a pristine condition, but rather to create a balance between preserving the work and allowing the original strokes of paint to show through as Van Gogh had intended.

The Bedroom and the Process of Restoration

The initial cleaning of the Bedroom revealed broad cracks where the canvas shrunk and pulled apart brittle paint. This damage was especially notable in the bedroom doors, painted in cobalt blue and zinc white. This is what Hendriks and the Van Gogh Museum believe that the artist must have seen when he returned to his Arles studio in 1889.

Hendriks discovered two points of white which had been painted over in a previous restoration. It seemed to be Van Gogh’s intention to show sunlight peering into the bedroom. Van Gogh suggested a glue-paste to line the back of the work, and this was added to protect the piece. In 1931 this was repeated in a restoration by Traas. The paste seems to have contributed to the overall damage. Since the completion of the process of restoring the Bedroom, Hendriks is having similar difficulty with the dilemma of Van Gogh’s The Floor, also restored by Traas.

On September 6, Henrdiks commented in the Van Gogh Museum blog that “…we prefer to show as much as possible of Van Gogh’s own paint. Furthermore, any such attempt would have a too speculative character. Instead we will try to exploit modern technologies to digitally rejuvenate the colour scheme of the painting in a computer image. This might give us an idea of how it could have looked when made.”

Van Gogh’s Life During Production of the Bedroom

1889 marks a fascinating time in Van Gogh’s ten year career. It was then that he checked himself into an asylum in Saint-Remy for a year, producing 150 paintings, which are among his most remarked and appreciated works. It was also later in the year that Van Gogh would cut off part of his ear. Van Gogh’s Bedroom was produced from his own bedroom in what he called the Yellow House, in Arles, while he awaited the company of Gauguin. It was in 1888 that the artist had produced the work, in the south of France, where he was truly free to explore his work, away from the criticism and ideals of Paris. 

Van Gogh died at age 37 from a self-inflicted gun shot wound after his release from the asylum. In the hospital, Van Gogh stated “When I saw my canvases again after my illness, what seemed to me the best was the bedroom.” Van Gogh may be seen as a haunting and talented artist, whose work pervades the heart of modernism. To add this work to your collection, please visit overstockArt.com.

A New Vincent Van Gogh masterpiece has been found! The painting is called “Le Blute-Fin Mill”, and dipicts a 19th century Paris mill. The painting was declared an original Van Gogh 25 years after the death of the man who originally bought it – Dirk Hannema. The painting was put on display in the Museum de Fundatie in Amsterdam.

The painting’s owner Dirk Hannema, who was born in Batavia, Dutch East Indies in 1895, bought the piece in 1975 in Paris from an antique and art dealer for 5,000 Dutch guilders ($2,700), and then immediately insured it for 16 times more than what he paid. Hannema claimed that he was “absolutely certain” that the work of art was an original, but, because of an earlier claim of having bought a Vermeer in 1937 that was later proven to be a forgery, the buyer’s declarations were discredited and went disregarded. Nevertheless Hannema, who was born to a wealthy art-collecting family, and was named art director of the respected Boijmans Museum in Rotterdam in 1921 when he was only 26, never gave up hope that one day his claims would be verified.

Since his youth, the brilliant art curator collected high quality pieces by lesser known artists and had a preference for looking for works of masters that were yet to be attributed to them, though not usually with great success as he was mistaken nearly all of the time. His claims included that he owned seven Vermeers and more than one Van Gogh, as well as a few Rembrant’s. Now 25 years after is death he seems to embody the famous quote of Marcel Proust…

“If a little dreaming is dangerous, the cure for it is not to dream less but to dream more, to dream all the time.”

The painting, whose genre is considered unusual for the impressionist, depicts large human figures in a landscape climbing both up and down wooden steps in front of an enormous wooden windmill in Monmartre, Paris.

Contrasting Van Gogh’s iconic starry sky pieces in rich blues and yellows that he is so well-known for, this painting’s sky is not only starless but also cloudless and it is so pale a blue that it seems almost an ivory white, suggesting perhaps that the weather is cold, which could be further established by looking at the barren trees with sparse leaves in tones of ochre, olive green, sienna, and suede grey.

The clothing of the ladies, are a rainbow of brusque, yet defined, brush strokes ranging from a rich cranberry, red, and dusty rose, to pale yellows, sea-foam greens and a striking brownish-grey ensemble adorned with a bright red sash and big bow, and the windmill’s wooden propeller, depicted from a view of its side, almost evokes thoughts of Don Quijote de la Mancha because of the shape of its wooden propellers.

The piece, that shares Van Gogh’s style through it’s bright colors that are lavishly slathered onto the canvas, was painted in 1886 when the artist was living in Paris and bears the stamp of an art store that he was known to buy materials and pigments from, said Louis van Tilborgh, curator of research at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam to the Associated Press during an interview.

Vincent Van Gogh painted almost 900 works during his short lifetime before he committed suicide at the age of 37.

overstockArt.com, released today a list of the top 10 oil paintings featured in the media in the last decade. Topping the list is Leonardo Da Vinci’s internationally revered Mona Lisa. Oil paintings by master artists Frida Kahlo, Gustav Klimt, Vincent van Gogh, Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso, Mark Rothko, and Johannes Vermeer also made the list.

The list was composed according to appearances of the art in newsstands, television shows and motion pictures. The data was gathered using media aggregators and public Google trends statistics.


“Oil paintings were featured across all media platforms throughout the last decade – the most memorable being Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa,” said David Sasson, CEO of overstockArt.com. “Da Vinci’s iconic masterpiece was at the heart of ‘The Da Vinci Code’ craze and we might see a revival of that as the next Dan Brown thriller comes out in the coming decade.”

The oil paintings that received the most media attention in the last decade are:

1. The Mona Lisa, Leonardo Da Vinci – featured in the #1 best selling book of the decade and the 2006 blockbuster movie “The Da Vinci Code,” starring Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou.
2. Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, Gustav Klimt – according to Forbes magazine, Adele is the most expensive oil painting in history. The painting was purchased by Ronald S. Lauder, the cosmetics tycoon, in 2006 for a record breaking $135 million. Today it is proclaimed as Manhattan’s Mona Lisa as it hangs in the Neue Galerie in New York City.
3. Girl with Pearl Earring, Johannes Vermeer – subject of the 2003 film “Girl with a Pearl Earring,” starring Colin Firth and Scarlett Johansson.
4. Starry Night, Vincent van Gogh - according to overstockArt.com’s statistics, Starry Night was the most popular and best-selling oil painting of the last decade.
5. Le Rêve (The Dream in French), Pablo Picasso – In an accident witnessed by a group that included Barbara Walters and screenwriters Nora Ephron and Nicholas Pileggi in 2006, casino magnate Steve Wynn accidentally created a 6-inch tear in Picasso’s 74-year-old painting. Before the incident, he had agreed to sell Le Rêve for $139 million to Steven A. Cohen, thus making it the most expensive sale of all time. Needless to say Wynn kept the painting and has had it restored.
6. Self Portrait in a Velvet Dress, Frida Kahlo – featured in the 2002 biopic “Frida,” starring Salma Hayek and Mía Maestro.
7. The Café Terrace, Vincent van Gogh – according to overstockArt.com’s statistics, The Café Terrace was the second-highest sold oil painting of the last decade. The small coffee shop in Arles has become one of Southern France’s most sought after attractions.
8. Untitled, Mark Rothko – has become the talk of the town ever since it has been featured on the AMC’s Emmy® and Golden Globe®-winning series “Mad Men.”
9. The Scream, Edvard Munch – In 2004, the most treasured Modern Art Nordic piece, The Scream, by Edvard Munch, was stolen from the Munch Museum in Oslo, Norway. The painting was later recovered in 2006. The Scream sustained considerable damage and had to be restored before going back on display in 2008.
10. Poppies near Vetheuil, Claude Monet – one of the four paintings stolen from the Buehrle Foundation museum in Zurich in 2008. The painting was later recovered by Swiss police.

According to Sasson, there is a connection between sales and media placement, “A lot of people like to keep up with the latest trends in design, and the media is a key influencer in what is deemed hip and desirable.” In 2007 The Mona Lisa was named overstockArt.com’s seventh top-selling oil painting of the year. “This is a prime example of the correlation between sales and media placement of oil paintings. The Mona Lisa did not make the annual Top Ten list until after ‘The Da Vinci Code’ film was released and the renowned work of art was featured in it.”

In the past decade overstockArt.com sold more than a million oil paintings. They are one of the Web’s most successful distributors of wall décor items with over 10,000 daily visitors and 100,000 loyal customers.

overstockArt.com, the leader in handmade oil painting art reproductions, has officially released its Top 10 list of the most popular oil paintings from the past decade. Topping the list is Vincent van Gogh’s irrefutable magnum opus, Starry Night.

“We release an annual Top 10 list and thought it would be interesting to look back over the past decade to determine the trendiest and most sought after hand painted oil painting reproductions,” said David Sasson, CEO of overstockArt.com. “Not surprisingly, the notoriously eccentric artist, Van Gogh, leads the list with his masterpieces Starry Night and Café Terrace at Night.” According to overstockArt.com’s statistics, Van Gogh’s total sales numbers have far exceeded those of any of the other great masters.

TOP 10 OIL PAINTINGS OF THE DECADE Most popular art on the planet: courtesy of overstockArt.com

RANK ARTIST MASTERPIECE #1 Vincent Van Gogh Starry Nightt #2 Vincent Van Gogh Cafe Terrace at Night #3 Gustav Klimt The Kiss #4 Claude Monet Poppy Field at Argenteuil #5 Leonardo Da Vinci The Mona Lisa #6 Pablo Picasso Le Rêve (The Dream) #7 Pierre Auguste Renoir Luncheon of the Boating Party #8 Edvard Munch The Scream #9 Georgia O'Keeffe Red Cannas #10 Salvador Dali Persistence of Memory

In the past decade overstockArt.com sold more than a million oil paintings. They are one of the Web’s most successful distributors of wall décor items with over 10,000 daily visitors and 100,000 loyal customers. “As the Modern Art movement was conquering the auction floors getting record breaking numbers in Sotheby’s and Christie’s, we slowly became the destination for art lovers who could not afford the high price tags of galleries, but wanted to enjoy the hand painted art of the great masters in their homes,” explained Sasson.

One of the interesting points that the top 10 oil paintings of the decade presents is that the modern artists from the turn of the last century such as Van Gogh, Monet and Klimt are still the most desirable artists in the world. “Our numbers indicate that as the years turn and our world evolves some things remain consistent,” said Sasson. “People are still captivated by the elegance and beauty that the classic artists bring to their home. It will be interesting to see when, if ever, this trend begins to fade.”