Yale University Press – Yale Books: “David Ebony interviews Michael Lobel, author of Van Gogh and the End of Nature In his latest book, Van Gogh and the End of Nature, author Michael Lobel situates Vincent van Gogh in the midst of the industrial era in 19th-century Europe, and explores the artist’s often fraught relationship to that period. For most art lovers, Van Gogh, the myth, is the guru of nature worship, reflecting in his famous paintings and drawings an emotional and passionate homage to nature in its purest form. Without sacrificing any reverence for the unparalleled achievement of this beloved artist, Lobel examines the life and work of Van Gogh from the viewpoint of our own times, and especially, in terms of our present preoccupation with climate change and the precarious state of the environment. Recently, I met Lobel via Zoom to explore his revelatory pragmatic study of this most spiritual of artists…The book is an attempt to point out to people that Van Gogh often plays nature off against industry in his work. That’s a basic premise of this project…I think that to portray Vincent van Gogh as someone who was living amidst nature while somehow completely sidestepping industrialization is to misrepresent his actual historical circumstances. One of the goals of the book is to place him within the context of the industrial era in which he was living. My proposal for the “Van Gogh: Smokestacks” exhibition seems kind of tongue-in-cheek, but I was absolutely sincere about it. You could easily put together an exhibition of something like 35 to 45 Van Gogh works featuring smokestacks. One of my biggest hopes for the book is to make Van Gogh more relevant for a contemporary audience…”