Who said the d’Orsay or MoMA get to have all the Post-Impressionist fun? In September, crop artist and painter Stan Herd completed his months-long project of replicating Vincent van Gogh’s famed Olive Trees on nearly 1.5 acres of land in Eagan, Minnesota — giving travelers flying through the Minneapolis—St. Paul International Airport an unexpectedly delightful view (no offense, normal farmland). Commissioned by the Minneapolis Institute of Art, where the original painting is held, Herd planted an array of watermelons, cantaloupes, squash, and pumpkins to replicate the 1889 mastwork’s color palette, and rearranged rocks, mulch, and soil for the needed texture and depth. Arduous? Yes. But worth it? Absolutely.
“I’ve always had a fascination with van Gogh. He was one of the artists whose stories I connected with really early,†explains Herd in the museum’s accompanying video. “The amazing thing about van Gogh’s painting is that there’s not a single straight line in the whole canvas. Everything is organic and curved and flowing, and it’s like a pulse. I’m just amazed that after months of looking at one painting, that I continued to discover things in it.â€
The result will have art-history professors and casual art enthusiasts alike in awe.
The original, Olive Trees (1889), was part of a series of paintings that van Gogh mostly created in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France.
Your move, LaGuardia and Guggenheim.