The Van Gogh by Michael Molitch-Hou
The thing about Van Gogh was that he felt compelled to paint the same painting over and over again. He only painted one painting and never painted anything else. When he painted it, he felt something very strong that is difficult to describe. And, anyways, it depended on the particular time he was painting that specific copy of the painting.
For instance, one time he could be painting big blobs of color and feel sad. “How tragic it is to paint a world that is not the world I live in,” he might say to himself. “This: a representation of a fantasy that will never come to life outside of the canvas.”
Then the subsequent time he might feel a profound joy at facing the uniqueness of life. “How unique life is that I might even have the ability to paint a picture. How did I come to be in order to be this painting thing? How miraculous it is to be living the life that I live. All of these experiences! All of this world that is me!”
Or he might feel the strangeness of his whole situation and struggle to grasp what it was that he was. “How does this happen? Why do I paint what I paint? For what do I paint what I paint?”
And the next time he might feel the sensations of applying the paint to the canvas in just such and such a fashion with no need for an intellectual interpretation of the experience. He expressed the whole gamut of emotions, shooting out in every which way. And it was always the same painting.
He didn’t need to look at anything because what he painted was in his head, so he just painted what was in his head. And he could paint it in about 3 minutes. No matter how much practice he had had painting the same thing repeatedly; he always took the same amount of time painting it.
Van Gogh made no profit. Though he was able to churn out the same thing over and over again and that thing was sold to many people across the world, he was not paid. And he needed nothing more than to paint what he loved to paint.
The Van Gogh Bot, model 31987A, manufactured in Oslo, Norway consists of 93 movable parts and a steel block of 136 kilos. It can produce over 32 copies in one hour using advanced image representation software and revolutionary modes of circuitry, applying paint using 3 automated spraying mechanisms. Originally industrial paint robots were large and expensive, but today the price of the robots have come down to the point that general industry can now afford to have the same level of automation that only the big manufacturers could once afford.
