Van Gogh’s Art Now Adorns Vans Shoes

While muse­ums remain free for the most part in Europe and still so pop­u­lar that they are loved bet­ter than lux­u­ry brands (accord­ing to this one arti­cle), fund­ing is not what it used to be. As you might have seen with our posts on Hierony­mus Bosch on (Dr. Marten’s) Boots, wear­able clas­sic art is kind of a thing now.

The Van Gogh Muse­um in Ams­ter­dam announced a series of lim­it­ed-edi­tion Vans (Van Gogh, Vans shoes, get it?!) fea­tur­ing pat­terns based on his paint­ings: “Skull” (1887), “Almond Blos­som” (1890), “Sun­flow­ers” (1889) and van Gogh’s “Self-Por­trait as a Painter” (1887–1888). There’s even a shoe that uses writ­ing from one of his let­ters, includ­ing stamp and address, as a pat­tern.

Would ol’ Vin­cent been hap­py with this, see­ing the pub­lic want to wear his work? He was cer­tain­ly hap­py in that Doc­tor Who episode where he trav­eled for­ward in time to know he hadn’t suf­fered in vain. But would he have liked to see his art wrapped around fans’ bod­ies?

Because the Vans line doesn’t stop at shoes, it fea­tures base­ball hats, t‑shirts, hood­ies, and back­packs. There is undoubt­ed­ly a lot of detail put into them. These aren’t quick knock offs made for a tourist stall. The shoe inte­ri­ors con­tain addi­tion designs, and each prod­uct comes with infor­ma­tion about the work.

And it’s all for a good cause: a por­tion of each sale goes back to the Van Gogh Muse­um to help with fund­ing and preser­va­tion.

That’s a sight bet­ter than 2017’s Van Gogh bags designed by artist/cultural appro­pri­a­tor Jeff Koons for Louis Vuit­ton, for which he slapped some mas­ter­pieces on a $5,000 hand­bag and hung “VAN GOGH” in blocky fake-gold let­ters on the front. (If it makes you feel bet­ter, Louis Vuit­ton burns all its left­over prod­uct lest it fall into the hands of the poors.)

The Vans Van Gogh col­lec­tion store opens August 3, so we can’t even tell you how much these shoes might be. But if the Doc Marten’s are any­thing to go by, they will sell out quick.

Cool way to help fund a muse­um, or just pure com­mod­i­fi­ca­tion? Let us know below.

via This is Colos­sal

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch the Trail­er for a “Ful­ly Paint­ed” Van Gogh Film: Fea­tures 12 Oil Paint­ings Per Sec­ond by 100+ Painters

Mar­tin Scors­ese Plays Vin­cent Van Gogh in a Short, Sur­re­al Film by Aki­ra Kuro­sawa

Down­load Hun­dreds of Van Gogh Paint­ings, Sketch­es & Let­ters in High Res­o­lu­tion

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.