After a year of being in the company of other Impressionists like Paul Signac -- and being in a city that itself so filled with history, Catholicity, and romance -- Van Gogh's soul brightened from its gloomier days in search of a Protestant mission: his 1886 painted bulbs are the reflection of a spirit that has found something fresh and intense. The orange-red bulbs are off-set by the pointillist backdrop of blue. The copper vase brilliantly brings the whole work to life, reflecting a seemingly new light in Van Gogh's life and style. Here in Paris he was at home. One need not wonder at the new light that is reflected here: according to "the painter Emile Bernard…Vincent was courting "La Segatori," the Italian owner of the Tambourin cafe on the boulevard de Clichy, and used to give her paintings of flowers, "which would last forever" (Fritillaries, Musee d'Orsay, 2006). Whether Van Gogh was painting Fritillaries for a love interest or for his own does not take away from the fact that Van Gogh's spirit was now alive with an intensity...

However, his heart was not content to stay in the city: thus he traveled to Arles to study and paint the scenes and images that had inspired early works like the Potato Eaters -- only now the same scenes and settings would be bright, alive, soulful -- and overwhelming.
In conclusion, both Picasso and Van Gogh found inspiration in Paris; but Picasso used that inspiration to depict a 20th culture that was becoming fragmented and divorced from its old world spirit. Van Gogh, on the other hand, embraced the old world spirit, and left Paris to paint the bright world that was full of grace and life. Van Gogh's lines represented a wholeness that Picasso rarely represented: for Picasso, the world was broken up and shattered.

Works Cited

Fritillaries. Musee d'Orsay. 2006. Web. 26 July 2012.

Greenberg, C. "Avant-Garde and Kitsch." Partisan Review. 6.5, 1939: 34-49. Print.

Johnson, Paul. Art: A New History.…