Vincent van Gogh: Shoes

Battered, shapeless, down-at-the-heel – that’s the appearance of the most hotly discussed shoes in art history: a pair of black boots that Vincent van Gogh painted in 1886 in Paris – without ever suspecting the heat of the philosophical debate he was about to trigger. To this day, philosophers and art historians look at this painting and argue over the function of art, the value of interpretation and the nature of existence.
It all began in 1936 when Martin Heidegger saw the painting in Amsterdam and wrote an essay entitled “The Origin of the Artwork”. Over the following years, scholars and thinkers such as Meyer Schapiro, Jacques Derrida, Ian Shaw and Stephen Melville have expressed their views on van Gogh’s shoes. The Wallraf will bring the painting from the Van Gogh Museum to Cologne to open up this fascinating scholarly inquiry to all and everyone.

What of Shoes?
Van Gogh and Art History

by Prof. Geoffrey Batchen

47 pp – Paperback – Euro 9,90
2009, Seemann Verlag
ISBN: 978-3-86502-218-9

The Book is available in english and in german Language.

Cedon Museumsshop im Wallraf
Tel.: +49 (0) 221 277-98957
  wallraf(at)cedon.de
  www.cedon.de