If I ask you which painter cut off part of his ear and painted sunflowers, my
guess is you're instantly gonna know who I'm talking about, right? Vincent van Gogh.
But there's a lot more to Van Gogh than just ears and sunflowers that made him
one of the most influential artists who ever lived.
Let's dig into who was Vincent van Gogh. This episode is funded by the Glick Fund
and the Christel de Hahn Family Foundation who inspire philanthropy and creativity.
On March 30, 1853, Vincent van Gogh was born in a small town in the
Netherlands to a Protestant minister Theodorus van Gogh and his wife Anna Carbentus.
Unfortunately, one year earlier, Anna had a baby who died
stillborn whose name was also Vincent. They must have really liked the name
since they used it once again for the Vincent van Gogh we know.
Vincent had three sisters and two brothers: Anna, Theo, Will, Lies and Cor. When Vincent was 11,
his parents sent him off to boarding school. He did not like this at all, but
he did manage to get pretty good grades, and at age 13, he was sent to
secondary school in Tilburg where he did quite well especially in languages.
By the way, did you know that Vincent could speak and write in Dutch, English, and
French? Yep! Unfortunately, Vincent's family wasn't doing well financially
back home, so he quit school after his second year to return. That was the last
of his schooling. As you can imagine, van Gogh's parents started worrying about
what would he do with himself, a concern his parents had pretty much the rest of
their lives. Thankfully, in 1869 at age 16 his Uncle Cent got
Vincent a job as a trainee at the international art dealer, Goupil and Cie in
a town of the Hague. It was at this time that Vincent's younger brother Theo was
working for Goupil as well, but in Brussels. In 1872, Vincent began writing
letters to Theo a practice that lasted his entire life in fact he
some 651 letters to Theo. Good thing texting wasn't around. I have a feeling
Theo's phone would have been ringing off the hook. In 1875, he
transferred to Paris where he became increasingly religious, even though
Vincent was becoming more interested in art he was becoming less interested in
his job, so at 1876 he quit and returned back to England to begin several years
of what we might call his job hunting or experimenting. Vincent tried a variety of
jobs such as teaching and working in a bookstore but ultimately decided to
follow his dream of studying theology. At the age of 24, he continued to write to
his brother Theo and began including sketches in his letters. But Vincent and
I shared a common difficulty when it came to school, which was staying focused
Vincent preferred to wander around the city and take long walks through the
countryside. Historians guesstimate Vincent would walk (Get this!) four to six
miles a day. As you probably have guessed, Vincent quit school again but decided he
still wanted to serve God. He moved to Belgium on a new mission work as a
preacher in the mining region of Borinage. Vincent went all in and lived
with the miners, sharing in their poverty. He would sleep on the floor and gave
away just about everything he owned. His nickname was "The Christ of the Coal Mine."
We now come to a pivotal moment for Vincent when his brother advised him to
concentrate more on his drawing. Vincent started taking painting lessons from
artist Anton Mauve, who taught him the basics of oils and watercolors. Vincent
ate this instruction up and practiced fanatically. His uncle commissioned him
to draw some perspective drawings of the city, one of which was this one of the
Hague. Vincent moved back to Nuenen in 1883 where his parents lived and rented
a small studio on the back of the house. Soon after, in 1885, Vincent's father
died, and he started working on The Potato Eaters along with taking up
chain-smoking and a terrible diet. On the move once again, Vincent moves to Paris
to live with his brother, (uninvited, I might add) where Theo
introduces him to artists like Claude Monet, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec,
and Emile Bernard. All this exposure to the new impressionists inspired Vincent
to start using brighter colors. So compare The Hill of Montmartre with Stone
Quarry to The Potato Eaters. Pretty drastic difference, right? At this time,
Vincent was also amazed by the German composer Wagner and became excited by
the analogies between painting and music. He even took organ lessons at one point,
which apparently didn't work out because Vincent continually compared musical
chords with colors like Prussian blue or Cadmium yellow. Yeah, the organist decided
he was dealing with a madman. Vincent also discovered a new inspiration in
Japanese woodcuts which sold all over Paris. Both he and
his brother Theo started collecting them. After just two years,
Vincent was getting tired of the busy lifestyle in Paris and dreamt of
sunshine and countryside. So he hopped on a train and headed south to Provence in
1888, he ended up in the small town of Arles where he went on one of the most
amazing creative sprints the world has ever seen. Vincent was so excited after
arriving in Arles and seeing all the bright light and the colors, he immediately got
to work painting flowers such as orchids and workers gathering the harvest and
boats along the coast. Feeling inspired but a bit lonely,
Vincent wrote to Theo about setting up a studio of the south for artists to work at.
With this in mind,Vincent rented a small yellow house with four rooms.
It's hard to imagine just what it was like in that yellow house.
but apparently paintings were everywhere. Of the 200+ works created while
Vincent was there, only a few made it back to Theo in Paris to hopefully sell.
The house wreaked of pipe smoke, turpentine ,and paint pigments. It was hot,
and with no bathroom, washing arrangements were a bit limited.
Vincent was also addicted to coffee, something else we definitely have in common.
Short on cash, Vincent lived on
little else but coffee and bread.
Only one artist ever came down, which was Paul Gauguin. To welcome Gauguin
to the yellow house, Vincent painted this little gem. Might look a bit familiar to you.
While people often focus on the dysfunctional aspects of their
relationship, they actually got along quite often.
Vincent certainly was inspired by Gauguin, who was also a bit cocky and probably
hard to deal with. Part of the problem might have been the room they both
shared to work in, which was less than 16 feet across and its longest wall measured
24 feet. But the room had a strange shape where it narrowed to 9.5 feet
on the other side. Not a super tiny room, but they were definitely
bound to bump into each other. The two had very different painting techniques.
Gauguin liked to work from memory, while Vincent preferred to paint what was in
front of him. Vincent also applied paint with amazing speed, gathering up the
paint as with the shove. He was known to sit and stare at the canvas and then
suddenly leap up, attack the canvas with two or three brush strokes, and then
scramble back to his chair. Both artists had very different views on art, which
led to some pretty heated arguments. It was on December 29, 1888 around
11:00 p.m. that Gauguin and Vincent got into another argument and Gauguin
threatened to leave. Vincent, who always had a difficult time working through his
emotions, grabbed the razor and sliced off his ear. The part of this story you
may not know about is what happens next. Vincent wrapped up the ear in newspaper,
headed down to the red-light district, and presented the package to a young
lady and said, "Guard this object carefully," and then disappeared.
After waking up at a hospital the next morning, Vincent didn't remember much about the
incident and seemed to be perplexed by the whole situation, which seems to come
out in a self-portrait done soon after. Vincent's dream of sharing a studio came
to an end and Gauguin left. Van Gogh also
realized he had some sort of illness, and, fearing, he might have another episode he
admitted himself to St. Paul de Mausole a psychiatric hospital in St. Remy.
There are many different ideas as to what illness Vincent had. Some believe Vincent
suffered from temporal lobe epilepsy, which causes seizures as well as manic
depression. Interestingly, another creative who suffered from the same
thing was Edgar Allan Poe. Perhaps this is why, on good days, Vincent would paint
the walled garden at St. Remy and was later even allowed to work outside as well.
But his mental health would fluctuate, and one time, during an episode
of extreme confusion, he ate some of his oil paint.
Despite the relapses, Vincent was incredibly productive. He completed
around 150 paintings within a year. Yeah you heard me right. One year! Of these
paintings, one was the iconic Starry Night which he painted while looking through
the iron barred windows in his room. While Vincent did only sell a few
paintings while still alive, he did start to see some appreciation for his work.
In 1890, six of his paintings were shown in Brussels. One art critic, Albert Aurier
published a positive article about the show, and Vincent even sold one painting,
The Red Vineyard. Interestingly, Starry Night was not in this show.
As the year continued, Vincent felt pretty good and even left the mental hospital, heading
north to Auvers-sur-Oise. This was closer to his brother Theo and there was a doctor,
Paul Guachet to watch over him. Vincent threw himself
into his work, painting gardens and wheat fields around the village. Unfortunately,
it was during this time the Vincent started to worry about money since he
heard his brother Theo might quit his job. This sent Vincent into an episode of
extreme worry and depression concerning the future. It was on July 27th in 1890
he set out to paint a wheat field and shot himself in the chest with a pistol.
Wounded, he staggered back to the inn where he was staying, some two plus miles away.
Two days later, he died from his injuries. As you can
imagine, medicine at this time was not what it is today,
especially for mental illness and depression. I imagine neither Vincent nor
his doctor had any idea how serious his condition was or could get. Man, do I
wish he could have had the medicine and doctors we have today. Either way,
Vincent's legacy is like none other, creating over 850 paintings and nearly
1300 works on paper. Unfortunately, not six weeks after Vincent's death, his
brother Theo became ill and then died a year later in 1891. This brings us to
Theo's wife, Jo van Gogh. Jo knew the power of Vincent's work, and
it became her goal to raise public awareness, including loaning paintings to
museums all over the world, which finally brought in more and more buyers.
In 1914, she also published the first edition of Vincent's letters to Theo. This passion
for seeing Vincent van Gogh's work appreciated passed down to her son,
Vincent. After Jo's death in 1925, the massive art collection passed down to
her son, who loaned it to a museum in Amsterdam in 1930. After the Vincent van
Gogh foundation was formed in 1962, work began on a dedicated museum for the
collection. In 1973, The Van Gogh Museum opened. Over 1.5 million people visit
this incredible museum every year. There was certainly more ti Vincent van Gogh
than sunflowers and cut-off ears. He was driven to find his calling in the world.
And once he did, he poured himself into what he was most passionate about. If
anything, it inspires me to keep creating, keep following what you believe you are
born to do, even if the crowd does not agree. Until next time, be artrageous!
Click on the right to get yourself some more Artrageous episodes and click on
the left on the circle icon to subscribe. And please, I'd love the connect with you on
Instagram, Facebook, Twitter @ ArtrageousNate. Hey, everybody, have a great
day and be artrageous!
Không có nhận xét nào:
Đăng nhận xét