I Think

Having social responsibility? That word has becoming issues in this era. There are a lot of communities talking about that. Once those words come up, I used to think about my favorite painter name Vincent Van Gogh. Van Gogh shows people how social responsibility is very important from his painting called The Potato Eaters which was painted on April 1885. He gave new ways of thinking about how the reality is supposed to be treated. As the viewer of painting I was thinking about the Van Gogh technique of making this painting. This painting is very censure in lighting technique. Some scholar said that Impressionism is about catching the light. Thus the impressionism painter like Van Gogh was painting his work quickly to capture the light and not really pay attention with the softness of the painting. This perfect lighting capture might influence the whole meaning of this painting. It is because this darkness and lightness of color usually make the viewer get into the situation and feeling the same thing. For example the darkness of the color above shows how life is so dark, full of difficulties, suffer and the reality of labor life. From that the viewer could felt the pain of small people life that does not have any choice except going with everything they have. Moreover Van Gogh influence people to think about taking step to social responsibility. I think this statement presented by the object that he painted. Van Gogh painted almost the daily life situation where the reality as his idea. Van Gogh is very different with other painter before his era. The previous era the painter used to paint the beautiful of nature where all people looks happy and live without pain. I Thought Van Gogh was tired of that kind of painting style than he pioneer the post impressionism in 20 century.

Furthermore, lets see the painting itself. The painting which is the odd life of the labor painted on the situation of poverty, and vile. The poverty can be seen from the cloth that they ware and the food that they ate. The cloths color is very dull with no ornament or even bright color. They ate the potato and share to each other. The potato commonly symbolizes the labor life, because potato is kind of cheap food to be consumed by low class people. Therefore, the vile can be seen from the color that Van Gogh chooses to present the idea of The Potato Eaters. The color is dominantly black color and some other soft of brown and white which already combine with black color so it becomes dark. Finally, the first time I show it, I keep questioning about Van Gogh real propose of making this painting. In some reason I thought Van Gogh only giving the idea of his about low class real life while actually Van Gogh wanted the viewer to realize that life is not always beautiful and happy. There are a lot of unfortunates people that excited without being recognized by the society. I think he wanted the middle to high class people to have the social responsibility.