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Vincent Van Gogh: A Sad, Sad Man. He wore a paper-mache ear lobe, loved sunflowers, painted some pretty good paintings, and oh yeah, he was a little crazy. Vincent van Gogh’s had a simple life in a quiet town, but over a span of ten years, became worthy of the title of “master painter.” He never got the chance to see his artwork be acclaimed as masterpieces, and to be admired as some of the best known and most expensive pieces of art in the world. While Vincent was alive, he would show his art in galleries but nothing would come of it until after his death. He didn’t take himself too seriously, for he tended to sign his art simply “Vincent”, if he signed it at all. Despite being a brilliant painter, Van Gogh’s life was marred by severe mental illness, so severe, that would become his demise. Vincent Willem van Gogh was born March 30, 1853 in Zundert Netherlands. He was a freckled, red-haired boy with pale blue eyes. As a child Vincent was just as difficult to live with as when he was an adult, he was moody, self-willed and often annoying.1 At 16 he started working as an apprentice for an art dealer. Six years later a teenage heartbreak brought him down into a deep depression and a career change. His heritage caught up with him and he started to feel some religious zeal. His father and his father before him were pastors and Vincent decided to train in the ministry. While out ministering to the sick and the poor, his zeal proved too much for him and he gave away everything he had. At 27 he felt a calling and made it his mission in life, to create art. For six years he stayed in the Netherlands and Belgium studying and painting. He trained by reproducing other works. When he painted his own he was influenced by the country life that surrounded him. His most famous painting during this time is “The Potato Eaters”, a portrait of a peasant family having dinner. He started distancing himself from his rural community and alienated his parents when he moved in with a prostitute. At 33 he moved to Paris to live near his brother Theo. He was very close to him, and they would correspond to each other regularly all of Vincent’s life. Theo was an art dealer and regularly gave his brother money to take care of expenses. While living together there was great tension. Vincent tended to be “untidy and quarrelsome; his irascible temper caused many unpleasant scenes and rendered him an undesirable in a number of places.”2 Despite all that, in Paris Vincent became very inspired upon his discovery of the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painters including Pissarro, Gauguin, Seurat and Signac. He got so inspired that he moved to Arles in the south of France to try to collaborate with other artists. Vincent lived, in the beginning, alone in the French town of Arles from February 1888 to May 1889. Theo funded him the whole time, always believing in his genius. While Vincent was in Paris he painted 24 self-portraits that reflect his ongoing exploration of complementary color contrasts and a bolder style3 probably influenced by the surrounding artists and art movements. He wanted to create a community of artists together to learn from, and inspire each other. His first attempt was moving in with artist Paul Gauguin. Their 9 weeks spent together could be described as tense. Due to his undiagnosed mental illness and diet of “coffee, tobacco and Absinthe”, he could be

1 “The Illness of Vincent van Gogh.” Dietrich Blumer M.D., Pg. 519 2 “The Illness of Vincent van Gogh.” Dietrich Blumer M.D., Pg. 520 3 Http://metmuseum.org/toah/hd/gogh/hd/hd_gogh.htm. Department of European Paintings

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regarded as an “exceedingly difficult, obstinate and even frightening man.”4 Over time Gauguin began to feel the urge to choke Vincent because of his “incompatibility of temper” 5 He wasn’t just hard to live with; he had reoccurring attacks, and emotional breakdowns. On Christmas Eve 1888, Gauguin showed Vincent his painting “Vincent Painting Sunflowers”, Vincent exploded. “Guagain had shattered his concepts of painting, stolen his sunflowers, and driven him mad.”6 Later that night when Guagain announced he was going to leave Arles, Vincent reacted violently again. He threw a glass of Absinthe at Gauguin’s face. Gauguin took Vincent home, but he followed Gauguin out and tried to attack him with a razor. He then instantly changed his mind, went back home and sliced off his left ear lobe and then presented it to his favorite prostitute.7 He told her to “Keep this object like a treasure.”8 That night Gauguin found Vincent at home and bleeding profusely. Vincent was hospitalized for three days and Gauguin left Arles. Three weeks out of the hospital he seemed to have regained his sanity as he painted himself serene in “Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear & Pipe.” For some time he’d go in and out of the hospital. He’d have “attacks” or “breakdowns” where he was terrified of unearthly sounds and voices. He was paranoid of everything, always convinced someone was trying to poison him.9 After his attacks the community around him treated him very heartlessly and disrespectfully. Children and adults yelled at him in the streets and threw stones at his house. When he heard he might be involuntarily admitted to an asylum, he admitted himself. He was admitted to the Saint Remey Asylum on May 8, 1889. He was given two rooms, one for living and one for painting. The bedroom had a view of a walled wheat field and the studio had a view over the garden. The only treatment he ever received there was hydrotherapy: soaking in a tub of water. The first month of his stay he wasn’t allowed to go beyond the walls of the asylum, so he was limited to the building and the monastery garden. His art was then limited to these areas also which can be seen in his work. There are drawings and paintings of corridors, interiors, and the walled garden visible through his window. He worked when he could, but he could never work during the attacks. He suffered a severe enough attack two months into living there that he was unable to work for five weeks.

His attacks were totally overpowering and seemed to be triggered by severe emotional stress. He was tormented by his attacks, but in the clarity of his sane days he created many works of beautiful art. He mostly concentrated on painting, and drew only when he couldn’t paint. The doctors would take away his paints after his attacks so he couldn’t try to poison himself by eating them. He spent some time devoted to “interpretations” or “improvisations” as he called it, duplicating work by Delacroix,

4 Vincent Van Gogh; The Drawings, Ives, Stein, Heugten & Vellekoop. Pg. 142 5 The World of Van Gogh. Robert Wallace. Pg. 98-99 6 Vincent Van Gogh: Art, Life, Letters. Bernard Zurcher. Pg. 203 7 “The Illness of Vincent van Gogh.” Dietrich Blumer M.D., Pg. 520-521 8 Vincent Van Gogh; The Drawings, Ives, Stein, Heugten & Vellekoop. Pg. 146 9 The World of Van Gogh. Robert Wallace. Pg.138

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Rembrandt, and Millet.10 He became fascinated with cypresses, and their association with death and immortality. He sketched the cypress trees that abounded there in “dynamic spirals, curlicues and undulating lines that characterize his later style. He drew, and painted cypresses often during his stay at Saint-Remy, finding a turbulent vitality in their graceful shape and mass.”11 In “Wheat Field with Cypresses”, the wheat fields, sown and harvested, became a metaphor for life and the creative process.12 While there he completed one of his most famous paintings, “The Starry Night”. After a year had passed he felt his health was worsening by staying at the asylum and he wanted to go home. He had suffered three major psychotic relapses while he was there. He spent the last ten weeks of his life in a city north of Paris called Auvers-Sur-Oise. He stayed with his friend, Dr. Paul Gachet. Vincent was lucid but severely depressed. Things were getting hard for his brother Theo; his nephew almost died and Theo quit his job. Vincent saw himself as a burden for Theo. His brother reassured him that he was alright, but Vincent still worried. Vincent tried to kill himself several times by swallowing turpentine, paint or lamp oil. When he wasn’t trying to kill himself, he was painting, a lot. Over a period of three months he put out over 80 canvases. One of his last paintings, “Wheat Field with Crows”, Vincent said that “he found no difficulty in expressing his sadness and extreme loneliness in his art”13. On Sunday July 27, 1890, Vincent Van Gogh walked out of the inn towards the wheat fields with his easel and a revolver. He shot himself in the chest and went back up to his room in the inn. The landlord found him and sent for a doctor but nothing could be done, so they just called for Theo. Theo and Vincent spent a day talking in his room until Tuesday, he said in Dutch, “I wish to go home now.”14 and died. He was 37. Some of the people at the funeral wept, Theo sobbed without cease. Later, Theo started to write a biography on Vincent, but life proved to be too hard and he suddenly lost his mind. Six months after Vincent’s death, Theo killed himself. Several years later Vincent’s sister Wilhelmina entered an asylum suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, she was there until she’d died at age 70. There is much debate over Vincent Van Gogh’s mental health diagnosis. The director who admitted him into the asylum in 1889 entered in the register that he was “suffering from acute mania with hallucinations of sight and hearing which have caused him to mutilate himself by cutting off his ear. At present he seems to have recovered his reason but he does not feel that he possesses the strength and the courage to live independently.”15 Vincent’s illness has perplexed physicians with diagnoses ranging from paranoid schizophrenia to bipolar disorder, extreme alcoholism, epilepsy, lead poisoning, and even to brain damage from syphilis. It’s best stated by an enlightened doctor, Dr. Kraus, who after considering and rejecting a number of hypotheses, refuses

10 Http://metmuseum.org/toah/hd/gogh/hd/hd_gogh.htm. Department of European Paintings 11 The World of Van Gogh. Robert Wallace. Pg.148 12 Http://metmuseum.org/toah/hd/gogh/hd/hd_gogh.htm. Department of European Paintings 13 The World of Van Gogh. Robert Wallace. Pg.176-177 14 The World of Van Gogh. Robert Wallace. Pg.166 15 The World of Van Gogh. Robert Wallace. Pg.141

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to give Van Gogh’s ailment any name at all, concluding simply that “he was an individual in his illness, as well as in his art.”16

1,700 works survive, 900 of which are paintings. Only one piece of art was sold while Vincent was alive and it was for the equivalent of $80. His pieces now sell for millions of dollars. Many of his works reside in the Vincent van Gogh Museum, others are displayed in other museums, and the rest are scattered around the world by private collectors. His legacy is preserved in the paintings and drawings he left behind, along with a large amount of correspondence between Vincent and Theo. Not only has Van Gogh been a fantastic artist, but he has also influenced many other artists throughout history. His struggle with mental illness has made a profound influence on how we view the mind and art.

16 The World of Van Gogh. Robert Wallace. Pg.142