Van Gogh
Gary Thompson
Now it seems we can only theorize about the cliche,the Vincent
Van
Gogh in abject caricature, the artist never quite human, the human being
struggling within the artist for humanity, the lover who could never
love
or be loved, the stereotypical artistic dreamer caught within and
perhaps
by his own dream. Was Vincent,ala Yeats, hurt by the external world into
his singular world of art, or was the mercurial climate within his own
soul so intemperate? Why did he so treasure the hopeless peasant and
homely girl,the downtrodden, the unfortunate? Why did he really cut off
his own ear? Was suicide strictly the brainchild of his madness or want
for self esteem? The plethora of uneasily answered quetions continues to
build, unsettled.
Vincent was born March 30, 1853, in the village of Groot Zundert in
the Dutch province of North Brabant. One year before he was born, to the
very day, another child named Vincent Willem Van Gogh was born to the
Van
Gogh family. The child was stillborn, however and lived only four weeks.
But the psychological damage to Vincent, not to mention its influence on
his eventual art, cannot be overestimated by any short olong term
historian. The fact Vincent and his four years younger brother Theo,
became despperately inextricable friends thereafter attests to that.
At a young age Vincent was enrolled in a boarding school but was
"often troublesome,moody;" school could neither tolerate nor reform
those
traits in him. At 16, he joined an art dealer uncle also named Vincent.
For the next four years he worked as an apprentice to learn the
fundamentals of art at Goupil and Cy. in Paris. In May,1873,at twenty,
Vincent was transferred to the London branch of Goupil and Cy. During
his
two year stay, Van Gogh fellin love for the first time. Ursula Loyer,
the
landlady's daughter, rejected Vincent upon his revelation to her of his
feelings. The time was one year later and the woman was already secretly
engaged.
For reasons largely unknown, Van Gogh was dismissed from Goupil and
Cy. in April ,1876. Speculation centers around the failed love affair,or
moreover, his fanatical interest in religion,his ascetic devotion to it
in
its purest form (he once advised Theo not to read any book other than
the
bible). Vincent floundered as a wind blown vagabond. He taught breiefly
in
a boarding school in England,serves as a mimister's curate, worked in a
bookstopre in Dordrecht. Many of the positions various relatives
assisted
Vincent in attaining.
In August,1878, Van Gogh enrolled in a training school for lay
preachers. Althogh accepted on a probationary basis,he was once again
met
with rejection. His parents suggested thhe pursue something like
bookkeeping or carpentry,Theo suggested that he might be "too fond of
idleness." Vincent chose to sustain himself on bread crusts. He had
decided,at long last,to become an artist.
At 27, the sight of peasants laboring in the fiels captured him. He
wondered if he could ever paint "what I love so much." He undertook
another love affair with a woman,this time his first cousin,Kee Vos.
Romantic catastropy interceded (she was widowed with one son) as one day
she cried out at Vincent "No, never,never. Vincent now felt a stronger
need for female companionship than ever before;he courted and then moved
in with a 30 yearold prostitute named Sien .Bearer of one illegitimate
child child and pregnant with another, Sien somehow convinced
Vincent,or
he himself, that marrying her would end her miserable ways. Eventually
he
bore her child , wrote Theo about his "family" and "home", but strangely
never took the the final step towards marriage.
Vincent's final attemts at a truce with his parents came in
1883(they
differed rather acrimoniously with his choice in female companionship
,among other things). After a long walk on a Sunday morning in 1885,
Vincent's father collapsed and died at the front door of the family
home.
Vincent's rtelationship with his father had long since
deteriorated;although the senior Van Gogh was a decent man of the
organized church,Vincent despised the "word" of the organized church. He
preferred to evangelize the God he had devoted his ascetic life style
to.
His artistic reaction was a somber,rather murky portrait of the
quintessential peasant family huddled together at meal, called "The
Potato
Eaters." He thanked Theo for helping to finance the work; Vincent
sincerely believed,for that reason,that it was only half his own
creation.
The following two years in Paris brought brighter colors and more
light into Vincent's impressionistic art. He struck tropical forms which
lent themselves to the mind's eye as well as the soul. He met and
socialized with fellow impressionists. He was perhaps as artistically
happy as he had ever been. A final self portrait,completed in feb.1888,
displays an uterly self confident image of Van Gogh the artist. No
longer
is the canvass as much or more the dominating feature. It is an artist
determinedly contemplating his next creation; the canvassis solidly,but
unobtrusively waiting for him.
Van Gogh began to create with an alarming celerity, his most
prolific
period in both quantity and quality. He moved in with an artist named
Paul
Gaugin, the beginning of a relationship rich in complexity, obsession,
and
egotism. At first Van Gogh patronized Gaugin with a curious mixture
of
timidity and subordinance. He had, at least to this point, hero
worshipped
gaugin. But Gaugin's style did not profoundly influence Van Gogh's
during
this relationship. Van Gogh's finest works were responses to some things
emotionaqlly seen and experienced; Gaugin relied more on memory and
imagination,less immediacy,more abstraction.
The two artists quarreled more and more frequently. Gaugin had
nearly
finished a portrait of his artist friend when Vincent,having seen
himself
longjawed and visionarily askewed, remarked that it indeed looked like
himself but himself gone mad. After another quarrel, Guagin
threatened
to leave Vincent. Gaugin wrote to a friend that while he owed the Van
Gogh's much, and was moved by Vincent, Vincent was sick,suffering,and
that
"he asks for me." Vincent's sense of security was not helped by news of
Theo's engagement. The prospect of a wife and child supplanting him in
Theo's affections threatened him both financially and emotionally.
Finally, on Dec.23,the inevitable turbulence came to a head. Gaugin
was leaving the house in the evening when he heard Van Gogh's footsteps
behind him. An altercation of an unsubstantiated origin resulted in
either
Van Gogh threatening Gaugin with a razor or some other foof same.
Regardless, this is where the infamous and incoherent ear cutting
episode
ensued as Vincent had returned to the house. He donated the still
bloodied
piece of his flesh to the local brothel and a prostitute named Gaby. On
Feb.28,the police closed down the yellow house Van Gogh had shared with
Gaugin and escorted him to the hospital. On May 8,1889,accompanied by a
pastor friend, Vincent went to an asylum and committed himself.
By early June, Vincent was pronounced fit enough to venture out in
the company of a guard. Some of his most inspired painting was done in
these cornfields,olive groves,and vineyards. He was painting with an
almost violent distinction, in swirling lines and passionate
resonance.His
most famous work during this period was Starry Night,July 1889. It is
an
intensely mysterious glimpse into an eternity only Vincent knew, stars
aglow as if on fire, galaxies upon and within each other in motion. It
is
a story of a life above the the somnambulent townspeople below.
Upon his arrival at the asylum, Vincent's illness was diagnosed as
epilepsy. The first set of attacks occured just after Theo had announced
his engagement; the next most serious came on July 10,1889, a few days
later after Vincent had learned THeo's wife was pregnant. During these
attacks, Vincent hallucinated and fought back suicidal impulses. He then
fell into a state of torpor for some time. But, between these attacks,
Vincent was lucid and almost entirely capable of a normal lifestyle.
In January of 1890,Vincent's art finally began garnering critical
acclaim. Characteristically, he was bothenamored and loathful at the
prospect of becoming known, and thus of course shedding a singular form
of
privacy and anonymity. Further seizures convinced him to leave the
asylum
for Paris on May 16,1890. He traveled on his own. There, after only four
days spent living with Theo and his family, Vincent left for a small
town
called Auvers. Theo had arranged for him to stay at an inn under the
supervision of a local physician named Paul Gachet. Van Gogh soon
warmed
to the doctor, painting two portraits ohim, the second having given
Gachet
"the sad expression of our timr." Although happy and frantically
productive now, Vincent felt certain pressures building up. Theo was
worried about his baby's health while contemplating setting up his own
business, and Vincent sensed that he himself was being a burden on an
already depressed and troubled brother. He visited Theo in Paris in
early
July, ascertaining he could not control or improve this crucial factor
in
his life.
Signs of an irrevocable decadence and sadness filled his life and
art. To rest the most tranquil eyes of the most restful spirit on
"Crows
in the Wheatfields," his last painting, will not suffice in denying the
intensity of this doomed universe. Crows are seemingly rising from
everywhere, there is no vastness, only a sky falling, the air
suffocating.
On July 27, a sunkissed morning in Auvers, Vincent wandered into the
fields for the last time. Just below the heart he shot himself with a
pistol. He staggered back to the inn,where,two days later, he died in
Theo's arms. "The sadness will last forever", he said, just before he
died.
Vincent could never have died any other way. His true despairing
love
was the air that he breathed, the flowers he could smell and breaking
off,
hold in his hand, trembling. He revered beauty in its rudimentary form
rather than as an art form; beauty was a greying old woman leaning over
a
hot flame to feed her poor family. Beauty was people struggling for a
life, a life of their own, a life far better than they had yet known.
beauty was the starry starry night which never came for him. It was the
eternity he could only dream
about.
Copyright
by
Gary Thompson(garrbearr) 1997
MacCandace
Gary Thompson <gar...@ibm.net> wrote:
<<The child was stillborn, however and lived only four weeks.>>
Excuse me? I think that is impossible where I come from as well as in the
Netherlands. Duh, stillborn means dead.