The sight of an exhibition of Van Gogh, with enthusiastic crowds admiring the bright colours of the late Vincent, somewhat surprises me. These blues an yellows would have been considered intolerable by everybody just half a century ago. If you look at the paintings from an artist of the Reinessance, or the Baroque, or even from most contemporary painters, you will se an harmony that - intentionally - is completely lacking in Van Gogh. In painting there are harmonic laws not different from those of music: C and E chord is harmonic and C and F is disharmonic, in the same way green and red is very harmonic and yellow and blue disharmonic. The palette of Van Gogh is intentionally a completely disharmonic palette, since he tries to express sorrow, depression and abandonment. Why then modern public finds this palette appealing? The reason is, in my opinion, that such combinations of disharmonic colours, violent and loud, are very suited for advertising and are therefore the palette the surrounds us every day - on advertising boards, on shop signs, on clips. People are so accostumed to such cacophony that they are pleased by the vanguardistic cacophonic palette of Vincent, much in the same way as people living in town like the roars of cars and the noise of streets and feel unpleasant the chirrup of birds and the silence of sea.
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