Things Intimate and Indifferent

Garden Behind a House

by Vincent van Gogh

For our ancestors, a house, a fountain, even clothing, a coat, was much more intimate. Each thing, almost, was a vessel in which what was human found and defined itself.

Now, from America, empty, indifferent things sweep in—pretend things, life-traps... A house, in the American sense, an American apple, a grapevine, bears no relation to the hope and contemplation with which our ancestors informed and beheld them.

Letter to Witold Hulewicz

November 13, 1925