Vincent van Gogh painted Roots in July 1890, in the final days of his life.
He died from a gunshot wound days later.
Roots is what the world felt like to him at the end.
The painting departs from van Gogh’s other works.
No horizon. No sky. No distance.
It doesn’t open out to an endless expanse. It closes in.
Only tangled roots. Compressed space. Fragmented. Close-up. Unresolved.
Roots is a clean break from his more familiar open fields, horizon lines, and balanced compositions.
He chose to paint this way in what may be one of his final works.
Some believe it reflects his deteriorating mental state in those last days.
Others see it as a technical study of color and form.
We don’t know what it means.
I do know that standing before it in the Van Gogh Museum was mesmerizing.
I could not look away for nearly fifteen minutes.
