The Movie "Loving Vincent" Explained As a Profound Labor of Love

A new perspective on art and film-making … Loving Vincent


Surrounded by thousands of reproductions on the walls of student bedrooms, cafes and hospital corridors, it’s easy to lose sight of what Vincent Van Gogh’s paintings actually look like: the brushwork, the paint, the expressiveness. Nor quite how many paintings he actually produced – more than 860 in just nine years – beyond the well-known sunflowers, wheatfields, cafes and woolly-necked self-portraits.

But giving Vincent a run for his money – in terms of output at least – is a new film by artist, writer and director Dorota Kobiela and co-director Hugh Welchman, that literally paints the imagined story of Van Gogh’s last days. It’s an extraordinary concept. “Everything was a painting on canvas,” says Welchman. “No tracing, no nothing. The opening shot, where we come down from Starry Night, took six hours per frame to paint. So you’re talking about two weeks to do a second. It might have taken 20 weeks to paint that 10-second shot – you’re looking at half a year of someone’s life.”

The Guardian:  65,000 portraits of the artist: how Van Gogh's life became the world's first fully painted film


I have not yet seen the movie but I shall be fascinated to find it.  Maybe it's arguable the Disney animators painted all the frames but it's more likely they used every aid possible to create the work.  "Loving Vincent" is a type of animation as well.  There's likely to be something of a flicker to the movie since there wasn't any use of lasers, etc to ensure precise alignment of the frames.  Unknown what the Anime crew may think of this work since they require rigid precision.

"Loving Vincent" brings us a radically different kind of movie ... but Vincent was a radically different kind of artist.