November 16, 2011 • 29 mins
Today, Vincent van Gogh has come to fit our idea of the tortured artist. Aside from his art, he's best known for cutting off his ear and committing suicide. Yet new research debates both of these van Gogh moments. Listen in to learn more about van Gogh.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Sarah Dowdy and I'm Deblina Chuck reboarding. And it
seems like van Go has been in the news kind
of a lot lately. But when I thought about it,
(00:21):
I realized van Go is always in the news, isn't he.
He is. In fact, you'll see something about his latest
record breaking sale, or show his hidden works, like paintings
that are revealed under paintings through X rays. Love those
because it's like there's seriously a secret hidden painting underneath
another van Go. And then sometimes there's news about frauds too,
(00:43):
and that's always kind of exciting in its own weird way.
But van Go news isn't always all about art. Sometimes
it's about the man. And that's partly because the man
is what we've come to see is the epitome of
the tortured artist almost even though we've talked at about
some other I think really strong contenders on this podcast,
(01:03):
like Caravaggio and Michelangelo, but Vankoh just has this really
compelling life, and I think part of it has to
do with the fact that there are so many opposites
involved in in what he did and who he was.
He was an immensely talented artist, but almost totally unrecognized
in his own lifetime. He was an incredibly warm person,
(01:25):
but also mentally unstable and alcoholic. He was a devoted
letter writer, but also the kind of guy who cuts
off his own ear, wraps it up like a present
and gives it as a Christmas gift to a prostitute.
We're going to talk about that kind of letter delivering something.
It sends a message. I am sure about that. Um
(01:47):
so yeah, I mean, he's just got so much going on.
He's he makes a really interesting figure. So it's not
too surprising that people are still analyzing Van Gogh's health,
his mental state, and even his cause of death, which
was long believed to be suicide. And they're coming up
with new ideas all the time. So we'll talk about
the man and his art, but we'll also talk about
(02:08):
some of the more recent theories about his life, as
well as the high tech advancements in studying his paintings.
And just a note too, before we go any further.
You can tell by now we're gonna save Van Goh,
which is the standard American pronunciation. I think the Brits
have a different way. They say it. Uh, y'all don't
want to hear us try to save and or however
(02:28):
it goes. I don't think our throats could. I mean,
you might find it amusing, but we would just be
sad when you wrote us and made fun of us.
So we're just gonna go with what we know. Van
go So Vincent van Gogh was born in zin Duct
in the Netherlands March eighteen fifty three, and his father
was a Dutch reform minister. His mother was a bookseller's daughter,
(02:49):
and after Vincent was born, they had five more kids,
and the one to really remember is his younger brother, Theo.
He turns out to be one of the most important
figures in Vincent's life. And young Vincent was a pretty
quiet kid who liked nature. He'd often go out walking
and wandering, but it was clear that he'd eventually go
into one of the family businesses, religion or art. So
(03:13):
at sixteen he was apprentice to his art dealer uncle,
who worked at the Hague branch of a well respected dealership,
and it was a good job and Van go eventually
located in London, learned about the Dutch masters like Rembrandt
and the contemporary French artists that were selling big at
the time, people like Jean frescoa Malay, and he also
grew to love British literature and Victorian culture taste that
(03:37):
really stuck with him throughout his life. But after working
in London for two years in Paris for another, Vano
was really ready to get out of the business. He
had suffered his first mental breakdown over and unrequited British
love at this point, and the work of art dealing
just really didn't suit him, so he started job hopping,
as as many twenties some things to do. First, he
(03:57):
was a teacher in England by eighteen seventy seven. Then
he was a bookseller back in the Netherlands. Then he
decided to study theology, but quit that in eighteen seventy
eight to go train as an evangelist in Brussels. He
eventually left that to become a missionary in southwest Belgium
and was kind of into it, but he was actually
(04:18):
so into it and so moved by the poor, impoverished
people who he worked with and who surrounded him, that
he gave up all of his worldly possessions, and the
church thought that was taking things way, way too far
and dismissed him from his position. Vincent later told an
acquaintance quote, they think I'm a madman because I wanted
(04:40):
to be a true Christian. They turned me out like
a dog, saying that I was causing a scandal. So
what's this guy gonna do. He's not going to be
in the art business. He's not going to be a
preacher or a missionary. What gives. Well, his brother, Theo,
who at that point was also an art dealer, had
a few ideas about that. Vengo was twenty seven, and
Theo encouraged him to become an artist himself. He likes art,
(05:03):
he's good at it, and so maybe it will suit
his personality a little better than being a businessman or
a preacher. And as much as van Go's later work
seemed to be entirely natural, like they were just kind
of dashed off in a minute, he sets off in
his art career quite seriously. He plans at first to
master black and white drawing figures in correct perspective, and
(05:25):
then he copies prints, He studies drawing manuals, He studied
drawing at Brussels Academy, though he left after a short time,
and then in eighteen eighty one he decided he needed
some formal training, and so he took lessons from his
cousin Anton Move, a respected Dutch landscape painter, and his
art dealer uncle even commissioned a couple of drawings from him.
So things seemed to be ramping up a little bit
(05:47):
with his new career. He was learning a trade, and
in eighteen eighty two, Van Gogh made the jump to
oil paints, moving in eighteen eighty three to a quiet
Netherlands village where he could paint landscapes. You know, still
does like nature, just like he did when he was
a kid. He can paint peasants there, you know, just
these bucolic sort of scenes. And when he came home
(06:09):
to his parents home, which by that point was in
noon and in the Netherlands, he focused even more on
these portraits of peasants. During the winter he lived with them,
he did more than forty studies of peasants heads. And
I encourage you guys to go and look up some
of these. If you're I mean, I'm sure you are
familiar with Van go everybody is, but he might be
(06:32):
a little surprised if you're not familiar with his early works.
They're very dark brown and dark green and just sort
of almost muddy colors. And one of the more famous
works from this period, called The Potato Eaters, is a
pretty good place to start, i'd say, for forgetting a
sense of this dark very unlike van Go van Go style. Yeah,
(06:54):
you guys should really go check out some of these pictures.
They aah printed out some for me and they were
a big help while researching. So Van Go left again
in eighty five to study at Antwerp Academy, mainly so
he could see many of Peter Paul Ruben's works, but
he stayed there only three months before taking off for Paris,
where Theo was living at the time. And this is
where Van Go really started to become Van Go. He
(07:15):
saw the work of the Impressionists in person, he saw
Japanese prints, he met contemporaries like Enrida to lose Li
Trek and Paul Goka, and Theo set him up with
some art world personalities too. He got to meet Camille
Pizzarro and George Sura, and Van Go's paintings really started
to incorporate a lot of what he was seeing, so
(07:36):
for instance, the broken brushwork of Impressionism, sometimes the dots
of point all is um and just this really bright,
bright color and light, the kind of things that we
associate with him today. One great example from this period
is self portrait with a straw hat. I printed out
that one too, and it just looks completely different from
(07:57):
self portraits that he was doing just a year foreig
in Paris, like you would just think a completely different
person did it if it was not obviously a portrait
of the same man. And ironically self portrait with a
straw hat is done on the back of one of
those peasant head drawings, and we're gonna talk a little
bit more about that later. To van Go's frugal nature,
(08:18):
but this is where he came into his own. But
after two years in Paris, he was ready to be
in the countryside again, so he left for Arla, which
is in southwest France, in February, and all of that
Paris exposure to color in a lighter palette just turns
to magic and bright sunny Provence. Van Go paints blooming
(08:40):
fruit trees, fields, cottages and locals like the postman Joseph
Roulan and his family, and he's clearly inspired by the
Japanese prince. He did fourteen paintings of orchards in less
than one month, and his technique just got even bolder
from there. I mean, just to illustrate this, there's this
great quote in the Encyclopedia Britannical article out van Go.
(09:01):
It goes, once hesitant to diverge from the traditional techniques
of painting he worked so hard to master, he now
gave free rein to his individuality and began squeezing his
tubes of oil paint directly on the canvas. But I
love that image too. I mean, just stop and talk
about that for a minute. I'm imagining Van Go out
of Paris. You know, he's just mastered it. He's got
(09:23):
all the technique down and going for it with you know,
painting and orchard or whatever, and just squeezing the tube
right out onto the onto the canvas. It sounds fun.
It does sound fun. It sounds like sort of letting
go of of conventions almost. But it wasn't all fun
and games. Van Go had the special hope when he
came to Arla. He wanted to start an artist commune,
(09:46):
the studio of the South where piers like Gogan and
to Lustrek could come and live together and paint. So
he rented a studio called the Yellow House, and he
ultimately wrote to THEO so much about when Gogan comes
that THEO ended up advancing Gogan the money for future
pieces of unsold art, essentially paying him to go live
with his brother. So Paula Gun does not really seem
(10:08):
like the kind of guy you would want to pay
to go live with your sibling. He seems like a
pretty unlikely choice for somebody as upbeat and enthusiastic and
sometimes seriously depressed as van Go was to choose as
a housemaid. Just to give you a little background on Goga,
he had abandoned his stockbroker career for art and had
(10:30):
a reputation of being a bit of a brute. This
is before the Tahiti phase, but still van Go was
really pumped about the idea of finally getting his artist
commune off the ground. And things went okay for a
little more than a month, with the two men producing
works and getting along reasonably okay. Then trouble struck in
(10:51):
a really big way. So it was Christmas and just
to paint the scene a little bit. Van Go had
been spending a lot of time reading the Christmas Books
of Charles Dickens, which, if you have read um, probably
the most famous of Dickens Christmas books. You know that
a lot of times they have to do with a
guy who has a mental breakdown right around the holidays,
(11:14):
and not necessarily the most uplifting, no. I mean maybe
if you go through the end, but you could eventually
go off track, I think if you read too many
of them. He was also spending a lot of time
hanging out with go Gah. So on Christmas Eve, Arlta
police found Van Go bleeding from his self bandaged head
in the Yellow House, and that left some questions about
(11:38):
what on earth happened. So, as the traditional tale goes,
the night before, Van Go had been talking NonStop to
go Gan, who couldn't take it anymore and left the house.
So when Gogan heard his name in the street, he
turned around to find Van Go hollering and waving around
a razor. Van Go didn't attack again. Instead, he went home,
(12:00):
cut off his ear and gave it as a gift
to a local prostitute named Rachel, telling her quote guardless
object carefully. She passed out when she opened it, as
many people would, I think. So go Go was interviewed
by the police about the whole thing, and he told
them that Van Gogh must have done this to himself.
And after all the formalities were over, Goga sent a
(12:21):
telegram to THEO saying you need to get down here immediately,
and then got out of dodge. He left for Paris
and did not come back. But a couple of years
ago another theory emerged. According to Hans Kaufman and Rita Vildegan's,
who are art historians and who wrote Van Go's Ear,
Paul Goga and the Pact of Silence, go Get cut
(12:42):
off Van Go's ear with not a razor but a sword,
and then the two guys decided to keep the whole
thing secret. Pretty wild twist to this story. Yeah, and
Adam got Nick actually wrote a great piece on the
ear mystery for The New Yorker in two thousand ten,
and he set the scene in his article by noting
two important facts that we should point out. For one thing,
(13:04):
Van go despite the lovable nature that comes across in
his correspondence, would have been quote exhausting to live with,
and I can kind of understand that too. All of
Van Gogh's correspondence is online, and that's also very neat
to go look at, in addition to looking at pictures
of his paintings. But he sounds really, really nice. But
if you were with him all the time, that could
(13:27):
definitely get old. I mean, he describes how the sky
looks when he's going out on a walk and how
the trees look and it sounds lovely in a letter,
but maybe if you were living in the Yellow House
with him, it would get kind of old and be
too much. Maybe. Well. The other point that got Nick
made was that go Gan, in addition to being pretty
mean and scary, was a fantastic fencer who definitely carried
(13:51):
a foil around in Arlow when he was going out
at night. Felt self defense. So Kafman and Vildegon's theorized
that when Van go came near Gogan on the streets,
shouting and waving a razor, Gogan attacked with the sword,
accidentally slicing off part of Van Go's ear. Van go
then picked the bit up and the two agreed to
an unspoken code of silence. And there's some potential evidence
(14:12):
out there for this, right, yeah, there seems to be so.
One is that the wound was clean. It was a slice,
and let's not imagine too much what it would take
with a razor in your own ear, but it does
not seem like it would be a clean job. And
then another factor to consider is that people who self mutilate,
sometimes now called van Go syndrome ironically enough, usually go
(14:34):
for their arms and their hands, and their legs and
their chest, not their ears, although again god Nick pointed
out that van Go would have had a better understanding
of his ears than most people, um since he had
painted himself so many times already. By this point, another
piece of potential evidence. The guys, right, these weird hint
(14:54):
hint sort of things to each other. For example, after
van Go was sufficiently recovered, he writes to Go again
that he'll shortly be returning his left behind fencing equipment.
He says, quote, I'll pluck up the courage in a
few days. Those terrible engines of war will wait until then.
I now write to you very calmly, but I haven't
yet been able to pack up all the rest. And
(15:16):
the two even have this code word of sorts iktus,
which means fish if you know, like ich theology or something,
but it also relates to fencing, meaning a blow or
a hit. And go Gad kind of obsessively writes ittus
in relation to Van Gogh's name, even placing it inside
(15:37):
of this little ear like squiggle doodle drawing. So some
sort of strange factors to consider here, and Van go
makes his own subtle allusions to other people too, not
just like these two have a strange correspondence. Going on
to his brother, he writes, happily, go Ga, I and
other painters aren't yet armed with machine guns and other
(15:59):
dangerous war our weapons, just swords and razors. I mean,
it seems like that might be bad enough, right. So
whatever happened, it majorly shook up Fango. He went back
to work quickly after leaving the hospital, but he had
to go back in for nerves just a few weeks later.
To go back to that Gothnic article, there's a quote
that really illustrates the change that took place inside Van
(16:22):
go after that incident, a change that affected his whole
outlook as an artist. The Christmas Crisis had a real,
if buried effect on Van Gogh's imagination, turning him from
a dream of living and working with a community of
brother artists to one of painting for an unknown audience
that might someday appear a fantasy that was, in the
(16:42):
end and against the odds, not a fantasy at all. Yeah,
So giving up on this idea of the artist commune
and and living for the appreciation of his fellow artists,
you know, all living in harmony together and making work
and um critiquing each other, and that sort of doesn't
work if you bring it's not worth giving up on
that and just making art for himself, accepting that or
(17:08):
hoping that you know, eventually somebody will be there to
appreciate it, which, of course I guess that is us
now and everybody in the twentieth century. He got really
into Van Gogh, but by April nine, Van go wasn't
really recovered mentally from this attack, and he was fearful
that another major nervous attack could permanently impede his work.
(17:30):
He really didn't like these things setting him back that way,
so he voluntarily entered an asylum at Saremie de Provence
and um just a sad quote for you. Around this time,
he wrote his sister, and this sort of gives you
an idea of his state of mind when he is
voluntarily committing himself to an asylum. He said, every day,
(17:51):
I take the remedy that the incomparable Dickens prescribes against suicide.
It consists of a glass of wine, a piece of
bread and cheese, and a pipe of tobacco. It isn't complicated,
you'll tell me. And you don't think that my melancholy
comes close to that place, however, at moments. But so
Van Gogh spent twelve months in the asylum, and he
(18:14):
sometimes had these nervous attacks, and then sometimes he was
really productive. He produced a hundred and fifty canvases, which
I mean that sounds like a lot to me. And
when he was first confined to the grounds, he painted
what he could see. I mean, he'd liked to paint
from life, so he would do pictures of the walled
guard and the irises and the lilacs in it. He
(18:37):
would do copies of Dela Croix and Rembrandt, And when
he was finally allowed more freedom towards the end of
his day, he painted nearby wheat fields and cypress trees
and olive trees. A lot of his most famous paintings
are actually from this period where he is in the institution.
He did portraits of his fellow patients, He did scenes
inside the hospital. He even did Starring Night at this time,
(19:01):
and thought that it was a failure, not at all
what he was hoping it would be. The masterpieces hanging
on so many college freshmans. I mean, I was thinking
the same thing. So, finally, missing family and home, he
left the asylum and moved to over sUAS outside of Paris.
He put himself under the care of an artist friendly
homeopathic doctor, Paul Ferdinand Gauche, and he got back to
(19:24):
work with a vengeance. So two of I think your
favorites from the period, Sarah Thatched Cottages at Cordeville and
the church at over those were painted during that time. Yeah,
I really like these ones. They have a nice I
don't know, they're not quite as yellow and super bright
as some of the paintings he did in the South
(19:46):
of France, but they just have this really nice color.
That Thatched cottage is one has h this pale green
tone to almost the entire painting, which I mean, I
know that sounds weird, but it ends up being quite
love so he's again producing a lot of work. But
then in July, perhaps over guilt relating to his financial
(20:09):
dependency on his brother, or just another attack seizing him,
he shot himself in the chest in a wheat field,
and it took Vango two days to die, so there
was a lot of time to talk to people about
what had happened. He spoke with the police, he met
with THEO and when the police first taught to him,
(20:29):
he said, quote, I shot myself. I only hope I
hadn't botched it. What I've done is nobody else's business.
I'm free to do what I like with my own body.
When he was examined by a doctor who said that
the bullet couldn't be removed, he was asked if he
had tried to commit suicide. Vango responded, I believe, so
don't accuse anybody else, which sounds a little bit suspicious. It's,
(20:54):
on the one hand, definitive and then yeah, also kind
of strange. It leaves it open, I guess, which makes
way for new theories like this one that suggests that
van Go didn't really commit suicide but was murdered. It's
part of a biography by Gregory white Smith and Stephen Nafa.
The author suggest that two teens visiting for the summer
(21:15):
accidentally shot Van Go and that he admitted suicide to
protect them. Their reasons for thinking this or that. For
one thing, the gun was never found, nor were Van
Gogh's painting supplies. Also, the wheat field was a mile
outside of town, which is really far to go if
you're shot in the chest. Definitely. And then finally, one
of the boys, Renee Secotan, admitted in nineteen fifty six
(21:39):
that yes, he and his brother had borrowed the gun
from a or borrowed a gun from a local business owner.
And yes, they also often bullied Van go they'd even
send their girlfriends over to hit on kind of shy,
awkward vincent and um really embarrass him. But they admit
(22:00):
to actually shooting Van Go kind of an important distinction.
In fact, um, this guy said that the artist stole
a gun and the boys hadn't even been in town
when the suicide took place. So there is kind of
strange things going on here, but also not really definitive information.
But according to a recent article in art Info France,
(22:22):
the Van go Museum isn't changing its story, so they're
not going along with with a new theory quite yet.
Leo Johnson, who's the curator at the museum, says, quote,
we do agree with the authors that there are many
unanswered questions regarding van Go's death. It's just that at
this point we feel there's not enough evidence to prove
the new interpretation, and therefore we find it's too early
(22:44):
to abandon suicide as the cause of death. So who knows,
I mean, maybe we'll get more information on this in
the near future. We've learned that um cold cases that
are hundreds of years old can be solved sometimes true.
But what about his legacy After his sunflower filled funeral
and over, van Go finally started to become famous. It's
(23:07):
a well known saying that van Go produced nine hundred
paintings and one thousand one works on paper and only
sold one painting. In his lifetime. Only one article had
been written about him. But that gives the false sense
that van Go was just completely unknown, which is not
the case right. No, people who could see his work
did often like it. Guys like Monet and Goga and
(23:30):
bizarre thought that it was fantastic, thought that he was
a really, really great artist, but his fame hadn't spread yet,
word hadn't spread, or taste for his work hadn't spread.
So THEO, who was a successful art dealer, had been
trying to promote his brother's work for years. I mean,
in addition to supporting him financially, he was kind of
his champion in the art world. He had absolute faith
(23:53):
in him. And really tragically, he died just a few
months after Vincent, and Pat stun that that faith in
Vincent's work to his widow, Joanna, who had a baby
son also named Vincent, to support. So it's Joanna also
known as Joe for short, who really came to to
(24:15):
be the van Go champion. After his death. She called
on her family and her husband's art contacts and started
showing the pieces. She followed Theo's advice to keep the
works together, to not just sell them off piece by
piece to whoever came along looking. And I think this
is a remarkable fact that as late as nineteen o
(24:35):
six she could still show a complete set of van
Go works, and his work influenced the German expressionists. His
published correspondence gave folks all sorts of insight into his
life and his technique, and they're really lovely. They're filled
with sketches, their poetic they're incredibly friendly. As you said before,
and as we've made quite clear, his life is perfect
(24:57):
for research by professionals of all discipline. Psychologists have tried
to diagnose him. Some say that he had epilepsy, some
say schizophrenia, some say that Vincent THEO and his sister
may have all had an inherited metabolic disorder. Yeah, but
there's also lots of modern research taking place around his work,
so not just his life. Two of my favorite examples
(25:18):
of this are really sort of science high tech like.
One is that there's a Cornell electrical engineering professor named
see Richard Johnson Jr. Who has used computer algorithms to
create weave density maps of van Go's canvases. So the
density of the thread patterns lets historians know if one
(25:40):
painting was made from the same role of canvas as another,
so you could tell that, um, a certain work is
authentic because it was made right next to a known work,
or maybe a certain work is a fraud because it
doesn't match the density patterns at all. And then probably
the most helpful thing here, it helps art historians placed
(26:02):
the paintings in the order they were made because they
can tell well that canvas was right next to the other.
He probably painted them around the same time, and according
to a work published on Van Go and analytical chemistry,
chemists figured out the reason why some of Vang's brilliant
chrome yellows have faded over the years. By using UV
light and simulating the aging process of old paint. They
(26:22):
found that chromium oxidized when it was mixed with a
chemical ingredient often found in the white pigment, lithopone. So
they figured he must have stretched his yellow paint with
white and unknowingly created a problem for conservators down the road.
And I thought that was such an interesting piece of
news because it helped answer a question that I had had,
which was how did Van Go eat, pay his rent,
(26:45):
live and buy what are usually pretty expensive supplies I
mean oil paints and canvases with expensive stuff with no job.
So THEO obviously supported him contributed um much of the
money that Van Go used to live, but Van Gol
was clearly penny pinching too, so like painting over the
(27:06):
old canvases, we mentioned that historians have figured that a
huge number of Vano's paintings probably do have other paintings
underneath them, and then even going as far as to
stretch his paint I think it's it's interesting. It is,
but considering all the support that THEO gave Vincent, it's
probably appropriate that in nineteen fourteen, Theo's remains were relocated
(27:28):
to rest near Vincent's, so anyone stopping to pay respects
to the artist can also visit the grave of his
tireless supporter. I think that's so appropriate somebody who had
just total faith in his and his family member and
turned out to be right, even though neither of them
got to see it unfortunately. So UM I had fun
researching this, and for those of you who are interested
(27:51):
in learning more, there's so much. I mean, obviously go
look at um pictures, either in museums of course or online.
But the Trova letters is so fun. I mean I
just looked at random ones, picking different letters to different
correspondence from different time periods, and I think it really
helped give me a better sense of what kind of
(28:12):
person van Go was. So I highly recommend that. And
I also want to thank Rosie for suggesting this topic
to us it was a fun one. It definitely was.
And if you have any more topics like this that
you want to share with us, or maybe you just
you want to write in and share your favorite works
of van Go with us and let us know what
your favorites are. You can write us at history podcast
(28:33):
at how stuff Works dot com, or you can look
us up on Facebook or we're on Twitter at myston History.
And we also have a load of art related articles,
how Cube is and works, How's the Realism works, how
pathe works. Unfortunately don't have van Go, not yet at
least so um you can check out any of those though.
In the meantime they are in the entertainment section and
(28:54):
you can find that by visiting our homepage at www
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Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Sarah Dowdy and I'm Deblina Chuck reboarding. And it
seems like van Go has been in the news kind
of a lot lately. But when I thought about it,
(00:21):
I realized van Go is always in the news, isn't he.
He is. In fact, you'll see something about his latest
record breaking sale, or show his hidden works, like paintings
that are revealed under paintings through X rays. Love those
because it's like there's seriously a secret hidden painting underneath
another van Go. And then sometimes there's news about frauds too,
(00:43):
and that's always kind of exciting in its own weird way.
But van Go news isn't always all about art. Sometimes
it's about the man. And that's partly because the man
is what we've come to see is the epitome of
the tortured artist almost even though we've talked at about
some other I think really strong contenders on this podcast,
(01:03):
like Caravaggio and Michelangelo, but Vankoh just has this really
compelling life, and I think part of it has to
do with the fact that there are so many opposites
involved in in what he did and who he was.
He was an immensely talented artist, but almost totally unrecognized
in his own lifetime. He was an incredibly warm person,
(01:25):
but also mentally unstable and alcoholic. He was a devoted
letter writer, but also the kind of guy who cuts
off his own ear, wraps it up like a present
and gives it as a Christmas gift to a prostitute.
We're going to talk about that kind of letter delivering something.
It sends a message. I am sure about that. Um
(01:47):
so yeah, I mean, he's just got so much going on.
He's he makes a really interesting figure. So it's not
too surprising that people are still analyzing Van Gogh's health,
his mental state, and even his cause of death, which
was long believed to be suicide. And they're coming up
with new ideas all the time. So we'll talk about
the man and his art, but we'll also talk about
(02:08):
some of the more recent theories about his life, as
well as the high tech advancements in studying his paintings.
And just a note too, before we go any further.
You can tell by now we're gonna save Van Goh,
which is the standard American pronunciation. I think the Brits
have a different way. They say it. Uh, y'all don't
want to hear us try to save and or however
(02:28):
it goes. I don't think our throats could. I mean,
you might find it amusing, but we would just be
sad when you wrote us and made fun of us.
So we're just gonna go with what we know. Van
go So Vincent van Gogh was born in zin Duct
in the Netherlands March eighteen fifty three, and his father
was a Dutch reform minister. His mother was a bookseller's daughter,
(02:49):
and after Vincent was born, they had five more kids,
and the one to really remember is his younger brother, Theo.
He turns out to be one of the most important
figures in Vincent's life. And young Vincent was a pretty
quiet kid who liked nature. He'd often go out walking
and wandering, but it was clear that he'd eventually go
into one of the family businesses, religion or art. So
(03:13):
at sixteen he was apprentice to his art dealer uncle,
who worked at the Hague branch of a well respected dealership,
and it was a good job and Van go eventually
located in London, learned about the Dutch masters like Rembrandt
and the contemporary French artists that were selling big at
the time, people like Jean frescoa Malay, and he also
grew to love British literature and Victorian culture taste that
(03:37):
really stuck with him throughout his life. But after working
in London for two years in Paris for another, Vano
was really ready to get out of the business. He
had suffered his first mental breakdown over and unrequited British
love at this point, and the work of art dealing
just really didn't suit him, so he started job hopping,
as as many twenties some things to do. First, he
(03:57):
was a teacher in England by eighteen seventy seven. Then
he was a bookseller back in the Netherlands. Then he
decided to study theology, but quit that in eighteen seventy
eight to go train as an evangelist in Brussels. He
eventually left that to become a missionary in southwest Belgium
and was kind of into it, but he was actually
(04:18):
so into it and so moved by the poor, impoverished
people who he worked with and who surrounded him, that
he gave up all of his worldly possessions, and the
church thought that was taking things way, way too far
and dismissed him from his position. Vincent later told an
acquaintance quote, they think I'm a madman because I wanted
(04:40):
to be a true Christian. They turned me out like
a dog, saying that I was causing a scandal. So
what's this guy gonna do. He's not going to be
in the art business. He's not going to be a
preacher or a missionary. What gives. Well, his brother, Theo,
who at that point was also an art dealer, had
a few ideas about that. Vengo was twenty seven, and
Theo encouraged him to become an artist himself. He likes art,
(05:03):
he's good at it, and so maybe it will suit
his personality a little better than being a businessman or
a preacher. And as much as van Go's later work
seemed to be entirely natural, like they were just kind
of dashed off in a minute, he sets off in
his art career quite seriously. He plans at first to
master black and white drawing figures in correct perspective, and
(05:25):
then he copies prints, He studies drawing manuals, He studied
drawing at Brussels Academy, though he left after a short time,
and then in eighteen eighty one he decided he needed
some formal training, and so he took lessons from his
cousin Anton Move, a respected Dutch landscape painter, and his
art dealer uncle even commissioned a couple of drawings from him.
So things seemed to be ramping up a little bit
(05:47):
with his new career. He was learning a trade, and
in eighteen eighty two, Van Gogh made the jump to
oil paints, moving in eighteen eighty three to a quiet
Netherlands village where he could paint landscapes. You know, still
does like nature, just like he did when he was
a kid. He can paint peasants there, you know, just
these bucolic sort of scenes. And when he came home
(06:09):
to his parents home, which by that point was in
noon and in the Netherlands, he focused even more on
these portraits of peasants. During the winter he lived with them,
he did more than forty studies of peasants heads. And
I encourage you guys to go and look up some
of these. If you're I mean, I'm sure you are
familiar with Van go everybody is, but he might be
(06:32):
a little surprised if you're not familiar with his early works.
They're very dark brown and dark green and just sort
of almost muddy colors. And one of the more famous
works from this period, called The Potato Eaters, is a
pretty good place to start, i'd say, for forgetting a
sense of this dark very unlike van Go van Go style. Yeah,
(06:54):
you guys should really go check out some of these pictures.
They aah printed out some for me and they were
a big help while researching. So Van Go left again
in eighty five to study at Antwerp Academy, mainly so
he could see many of Peter Paul Ruben's works, but
he stayed there only three months before taking off for Paris,
where Theo was living at the time. And this is
where Van Go really started to become Van Go. He
(07:15):
saw the work of the Impressionists in person, he saw
Japanese prints, he met contemporaries like Enrida to lose Li
Trek and Paul Goka, and Theo set him up with
some art world personalities too. He got to meet Camille
Pizzarro and George Sura, and Van Go's paintings really started
to incorporate a lot of what he was seeing, so
(07:36):
for instance, the broken brushwork of Impressionism, sometimes the dots
of point all is um and just this really bright,
bright color and light, the kind of things that we
associate with him today. One great example from this period
is self portrait with a straw hat. I printed out
that one too, and it just looks completely different from
(07:57):
self portraits that he was doing just a year foreig
in Paris, like you would just think a completely different
person did it if it was not obviously a portrait
of the same man. And ironically self portrait with a
straw hat is done on the back of one of
those peasant head drawings, and we're gonna talk a little
bit more about that later. To van Go's frugal nature,
(08:18):
but this is where he came into his own. But
after two years in Paris, he was ready to be
in the countryside again, so he left for Arla, which
is in southwest France, in February, and all of that
Paris exposure to color in a lighter palette just turns
to magic and bright sunny Provence. Van Go paints blooming
(08:40):
fruit trees, fields, cottages and locals like the postman Joseph
Roulan and his family, and he's clearly inspired by the
Japanese prince. He did fourteen paintings of orchards in less
than one month, and his technique just got even bolder
from there. I mean, just to illustrate this, there's this
great quote in the Encyclopedia Britannical article out van Go.
(09:01):
It goes, once hesitant to diverge from the traditional techniques
of painting he worked so hard to master, he now
gave free rein to his individuality and began squeezing his
tubes of oil paint directly on the canvas. But I
love that image too. I mean, just stop and talk
about that for a minute. I'm imagining Van Go out
of Paris. You know, he's just mastered it. He's got
(09:23):
all the technique down and going for it with you know,
painting and orchard or whatever, and just squeezing the tube
right out onto the onto the canvas. It sounds fun.
It does sound fun. It sounds like sort of letting
go of of conventions almost. But it wasn't all fun
and games. Van Go had the special hope when he
came to Arla. He wanted to start an artist commune,
(09:46):
the studio of the South where piers like Gogan and
to Lustrek could come and live together and paint. So
he rented a studio called the Yellow House, and he
ultimately wrote to THEO so much about when Gogan comes
that THEO ended up advancing Gogan the money for future
pieces of unsold art, essentially paying him to go live
with his brother. So Paula Gun does not really seem
(10:08):
like the kind of guy you would want to pay
to go live with your sibling. He seems like a
pretty unlikely choice for somebody as upbeat and enthusiastic and
sometimes seriously depressed as van Go was to choose as
a housemaid. Just to give you a little background on Goga,
he had abandoned his stockbroker career for art and had
(10:30):
a reputation of being a bit of a brute. This
is before the Tahiti phase, but still van Go was
really pumped about the idea of finally getting his artist
commune off the ground. And things went okay for a
little more than a month, with the two men producing
works and getting along reasonably okay. Then trouble struck in
(10:51):
a really big way. So it was Christmas and just
to paint the scene a little bit. Van Go had
been spending a lot of time reading the Christmas Books
of Charles Dickens, which, if you have read um, probably
the most famous of Dickens Christmas books. You know that
a lot of times they have to do with a
guy who has a mental breakdown right around the holidays,
(11:14):
and not necessarily the most uplifting, no. I mean maybe
if you go through the end, but you could eventually
go off track, I think if you read too many
of them. He was also spending a lot of time
hanging out with go Gah. So on Christmas Eve, Arlta
police found Van Go bleeding from his self bandaged head
in the Yellow House, and that left some questions about
(11:38):
what on earth happened. So, as the traditional tale goes,
the night before, Van Go had been talking NonStop to
go Gan, who couldn't take it anymore and left the house.
So when Gogan heard his name in the street, he
turned around to find Van Go hollering and waving around
a razor. Van Go didn't attack again. Instead, he went home,
(12:00):
cut off his ear and gave it as a gift
to a local prostitute named Rachel, telling her quote guardless
object carefully. She passed out when she opened it, as
many people would, I think. So go Go was interviewed
by the police about the whole thing, and he told
them that Van Gogh must have done this to himself.
And after all the formalities were over, Goga sent a
(12:21):
telegram to THEO saying you need to get down here immediately,
and then got out of dodge. He left for Paris
and did not come back. But a couple of years
ago another theory emerged. According to Hans Kaufman and Rita Vildegan's,
who are art historians and who wrote Van Go's Ear,
Paul Goga and the Pact of Silence, go Get cut
(12:42):
off Van Go's ear with not a razor but a sword,
and then the two guys decided to keep the whole
thing secret. Pretty wild twist to this story. Yeah, and
Adam got Nick actually wrote a great piece on the
ear mystery for The New Yorker in two thousand ten,
and he set the scene in his article by noting
two important facts that we should point out. For one thing,
(13:04):
Van go despite the lovable nature that comes across in
his correspondence, would have been quote exhausting to live with,
and I can kind of understand that too. All of
Van Gogh's correspondence is online, and that's also very neat
to go look at, in addition to looking at pictures
of his paintings. But he sounds really, really nice. But
if you were with him all the time, that could
(13:27):
definitely get old. I mean, he describes how the sky
looks when he's going out on a walk and how
the trees look and it sounds lovely in a letter,
but maybe if you were living in the Yellow House
with him, it would get kind of old and be
too much. Maybe. Well. The other point that got Nick
made was that go Gan, in addition to being pretty
mean and scary, was a fantastic fencer who definitely carried
(13:51):
a foil around in Arlow when he was going out
at night. Felt self defense. So Kafman and Vildegon's theorized
that when Van go came near Gogan on the streets,
shouting and waving a razor, Gogan attacked with the sword,
accidentally slicing off part of Van Go's ear. Van go
then picked the bit up and the two agreed to
an unspoken code of silence. And there's some potential evidence
(14:12):
out there for this, right, yeah, there seems to be so.
One is that the wound was clean. It was a slice,
and let's not imagine too much what it would take
with a razor in your own ear, but it does
not seem like it would be a clean job. And
then another factor to consider is that people who self mutilate,
sometimes now called van Go syndrome ironically enough, usually go
(14:34):
for their arms and their hands, and their legs and
their chest, not their ears, although again god Nick pointed
out that van Go would have had a better understanding
of his ears than most people, um since he had
painted himself so many times already. By this point, another
piece of potential evidence. The guys, right, these weird hint
(14:54):
hint sort of things to each other. For example, after
van Go was sufficiently recovered, he writes to Go again
that he'll shortly be returning his left behind fencing equipment.
He says, quote, I'll pluck up the courage in a
few days. Those terrible engines of war will wait until then.
I now write to you very calmly, but I haven't
yet been able to pack up all the rest. And
(15:16):
the two even have this code word of sorts iktus,
which means fish if you know, like ich theology or something,
but it also relates to fencing, meaning a blow or
a hit. And go Gad kind of obsessively writes ittus
in relation to Van Gogh's name, even placing it inside
(15:37):
of this little ear like squiggle doodle drawing. So some
sort of strange factors to consider here, and Van go
makes his own subtle allusions to other people too, not
just like these two have a strange correspondence. Going on
to his brother, he writes, happily, go Ga, I and
other painters aren't yet armed with machine guns and other
(15:59):
dangerous war our weapons, just swords and razors. I mean,
it seems like that might be bad enough, right. So
whatever happened, it majorly shook up Fango. He went back
to work quickly after leaving the hospital, but he had
to go back in for nerves just a few weeks later.
To go back to that Gothnic article, there's a quote
that really illustrates the change that took place inside Van
(16:22):
go after that incident, a change that affected his whole
outlook as an artist. The Christmas Crisis had a real,
if buried effect on Van Gogh's imagination, turning him from
a dream of living and working with a community of
brother artists to one of painting for an unknown audience
that might someday appear a fantasy that was, in the
(16:42):
end and against the odds, not a fantasy at all. Yeah,
So giving up on this idea of the artist commune
and and living for the appreciation of his fellow artists,
you know, all living in harmony together and making work
and um critiquing each other, and that sort of doesn't
work if you bring it's not worth giving up on
that and just making art for himself, accepting that or
(17:08):
hoping that you know, eventually somebody will be there to
appreciate it, which, of course I guess that is us
now and everybody in the twentieth century. He got really
into Van Gogh, but by April nine, Van go wasn't
really recovered mentally from this attack, and he was fearful
that another major nervous attack could permanently impede his work.
(17:30):
He really didn't like these things setting him back that way,
so he voluntarily entered an asylum at Saremie de Provence
and um just a sad quote for you. Around this time,
he wrote his sister, and this sort of gives you
an idea of his state of mind when he is
voluntarily committing himself to an asylum. He said, every day,
(17:51):
I take the remedy that the incomparable Dickens prescribes against suicide.
It consists of a glass of wine, a piece of
bread and cheese, and a pipe of tobacco. It isn't complicated,
you'll tell me. And you don't think that my melancholy
comes close to that place, however, at moments. But so
Van Gogh spent twelve months in the asylum, and he
(18:14):
sometimes had these nervous attacks, and then sometimes he was
really productive. He produced a hundred and fifty canvases, which
I mean that sounds like a lot to me. And
when he was first confined to the grounds, he painted
what he could see. I mean, he'd liked to paint
from life, so he would do pictures of the walled
guard and the irises and the lilacs in it. He
(18:37):
would do copies of Dela Croix and Rembrandt, And when
he was finally allowed more freedom towards the end of
his day, he painted nearby wheat fields and cypress trees
and olive trees. A lot of his most famous paintings
are actually from this period where he is in the institution.
He did portraits of his fellow patients, He did scenes
inside the hospital. He even did Starring Night at this time,
(19:01):
and thought that it was a failure, not at all
what he was hoping it would be. The masterpieces hanging
on so many college freshmans. I mean, I was thinking
the same thing. So, finally, missing family and home, he
left the asylum and moved to over sUAS outside of Paris.
He put himself under the care of an artist friendly
homeopathic doctor, Paul Ferdinand Gauche, and he got back to
(19:24):
work with a vengeance. So two of I think your
favorites from the period, Sarah Thatched Cottages at Cordeville and
the church at over those were painted during that time. Yeah,
I really like these ones. They have a nice I
don't know, they're not quite as yellow and super bright
as some of the paintings he did in the South
(19:46):
of France, but they just have this really nice color.
That Thatched cottage is one has h this pale green
tone to almost the entire painting, which I mean, I
know that sounds weird, but it ends up being quite
love so he's again producing a lot of work. But
then in July, perhaps over guilt relating to his financial
(20:09):
dependency on his brother, or just another attack seizing him,
he shot himself in the chest in a wheat field,
and it took Vango two days to die, so there
was a lot of time to talk to people about
what had happened. He spoke with the police, he met
with THEO and when the police first taught to him,
(20:29):
he said, quote, I shot myself. I only hope I
hadn't botched it. What I've done is nobody else's business.
I'm free to do what I like with my own body.
When he was examined by a doctor who said that
the bullet couldn't be removed, he was asked if he
had tried to commit suicide. Vango responded, I believe, so
don't accuse anybody else, which sounds a little bit suspicious. It's,
(20:54):
on the one hand, definitive and then yeah, also kind
of strange. It leaves it open, I guess, which makes
way for new theories like this one that suggests that
van Go didn't really commit suicide but was murdered. It's
part of a biography by Gregory white Smith and Stephen Nafa.
The author suggest that two teens visiting for the summer
(21:15):
accidentally shot Van Go and that he admitted suicide to
protect them. Their reasons for thinking this or that. For
one thing, the gun was never found, nor were Van
Gogh's painting supplies. Also, the wheat field was a mile
outside of town, which is really far to go if
you're shot in the chest. Definitely. And then finally, one
of the boys, Renee Secotan, admitted in nineteen fifty six
(21:39):
that yes, he and his brother had borrowed the gun
from a or borrowed a gun from a local business owner.
And yes, they also often bullied Van go they'd even
send their girlfriends over to hit on kind of shy,
awkward vincent and um really embarrass him. But they admit
(22:00):
to actually shooting Van Go kind of an important distinction.
In fact, um, this guy said that the artist stole
a gun and the boys hadn't even been in town
when the suicide took place. So there is kind of
strange things going on here, but also not really definitive information.
But according to a recent article in art Info France,
(22:22):
the Van go Museum isn't changing its story, so they're
not going along with with a new theory quite yet.
Leo Johnson, who's the curator at the museum, says, quote,
we do agree with the authors that there are many
unanswered questions regarding van Go's death. It's just that at
this point we feel there's not enough evidence to prove
the new interpretation, and therefore we find it's too early
(22:44):
to abandon suicide as the cause of death. So who knows,
I mean, maybe we'll get more information on this in
the near future. We've learned that um cold cases that
are hundreds of years old can be solved sometimes true.
But what about his legacy After his sunflower filled funeral
and over, van Go finally started to become famous. It's
(23:07):
a well known saying that van Go produced nine hundred
paintings and one thousand one works on paper and only
sold one painting. In his lifetime. Only one article had
been written about him. But that gives the false sense
that van Go was just completely unknown, which is not
the case right. No, people who could see his work
did often like it. Guys like Monet and Goga and
(23:30):
bizarre thought that it was fantastic, thought that he was
a really, really great artist, but his fame hadn't spread yet,
word hadn't spread, or taste for his work hadn't spread.
So THEO, who was a successful art dealer, had been
trying to promote his brother's work for years. I mean,
in addition to supporting him financially, he was kind of
his champion in the art world. He had absolute faith
(23:53):
in him. And really tragically, he died just a few
months after Vincent, and Pat stun that that faith in
Vincent's work to his widow, Joanna, who had a baby
son also named Vincent, to support. So it's Joanna also
known as Joe for short, who really came to to
(24:15):
be the van Go champion. After his death. She called
on her family and her husband's art contacts and started
showing the pieces. She followed Theo's advice to keep the
works together, to not just sell them off piece by
piece to whoever came along looking. And I think this
is a remarkable fact that as late as nineteen o
(24:35):
six she could still show a complete set of van
Go works, and his work influenced the German expressionists. His
published correspondence gave folks all sorts of insight into his
life and his technique, and they're really lovely. They're filled
with sketches, their poetic they're incredibly friendly. As you said before,
and as we've made quite clear, his life is perfect
(24:57):
for research by professionals of all discipline. Psychologists have tried
to diagnose him. Some say that he had epilepsy, some
say schizophrenia, some say that Vincent THEO and his sister
may have all had an inherited metabolic disorder. Yeah, but
there's also lots of modern research taking place around his work,
so not just his life. Two of my favorite examples
(25:18):
of this are really sort of science high tech like.
One is that there's a Cornell electrical engineering professor named
see Richard Johnson Jr. Who has used computer algorithms to
create weave density maps of van Go's canvases. So the
density of the thread patterns lets historians know if one
(25:40):
painting was made from the same role of canvas as another,
so you could tell that, um, a certain work is
authentic because it was made right next to a known work,
or maybe a certain work is a fraud because it
doesn't match the density patterns at all. And then probably
the most helpful thing here, it helps art historians placed
(26:02):
the paintings in the order they were made because they
can tell well that canvas was right next to the other.
He probably painted them around the same time, and according
to a work published on Van Go and analytical chemistry,
chemists figured out the reason why some of Vang's brilliant
chrome yellows have faded over the years. By using UV
light and simulating the aging process of old paint. They
(26:22):
found that chromium oxidized when it was mixed with a
chemical ingredient often found in the white pigment, lithopone. So
they figured he must have stretched his yellow paint with
white and unknowingly created a problem for conservators down the road.
And I thought that was such an interesting piece of
news because it helped answer a question that I had had,
which was how did Van Go eat, pay his rent,
(26:45):
live and buy what are usually pretty expensive supplies I
mean oil paints and canvases with expensive stuff with no job.
So THEO obviously supported him contributed um much of the
money that Van Go used to live, but Van Gol
was clearly penny pinching too, so like painting over the
(27:06):
old canvases, we mentioned that historians have figured that a
huge number of Vano's paintings probably do have other paintings
underneath them, and then even going as far as to
stretch his paint I think it's it's interesting. It is,
but considering all the support that THEO gave Vincent, it's
probably appropriate that in nineteen fourteen, Theo's remains were relocated
(27:28):
to rest near Vincent's, so anyone stopping to pay respects
to the artist can also visit the grave of his
tireless supporter. I think that's so appropriate somebody who had
just total faith in his and his family member and
turned out to be right, even though neither of them
got to see it unfortunately. So UM I had fun
researching this, and for those of you who are interested
(27:51):
in learning more, there's so much. I mean, obviously go
look at um pictures, either in museums of course or online.
But the Trova letters is so fun. I mean I
just looked at random ones, picking different letters to different
correspondence from different time periods, and I think it really
helped give me a better sense of what kind of
(28:12):
person van Go was. So I highly recommend that. And
I also want to thank Rosie for suggesting this topic
to us it was a fun one. It definitely was.
And if you have any more topics like this that
you want to share with us, or maybe you just
you want to write in and share your favorite works
of van Go with us and let us know what
your favorites are. You can write us at history podcast
(28:33):
at how stuff Works dot com, or you can look
us up on Facebook or we're on Twitter at myston History.
And we also have a load of art related articles,
how Cube is and works, How's the Realism works, how
pathe works. Unfortunately don't have van Go, not yet at
least so um you can check out any of those though.
In the meantime they are in the entertainment section and
(28:54):
you can find that by visiting our homepage at www
dot how stuff works dot com. Be sure to check
out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join
how Stop Work staff as we explore the most promising
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