When they showed the shot of a Farmer Whitman arguing with the farm co-operative it looked like it could transposed over the 1885 Potato Eaters painting by Van Gogh.

It’s one of Van Gogh’s most famous early works.  His intention was to stay within the Dutch style of documenting peasent life. But instead of a rustic, idyllic scene of apple cheeked farm hands, Van Gogh depicted his toiling workers in an un-sentimentalized, dreary and ugly light (because, you know, most peasents’ lives are none too glamorous as evidenced by the jug swilling Whitmans).

He wrote in a letter about the painting:

I have tried to make it clear how those people, eating their potatoes under the lamplight, have dug the earth with those very hands they put in their dish, and so it speaks of manual labor, and how they have honestly earned their food. I have wanted to give the impression of quite a different way of living than that of us civilized people. Therefore I am not at all anxious for everyone to like it or to admire it at once.

It’s real Salt of the Earth stuff.

Oh, and make sure to wash your hands when handling the Rothko.

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