The message about Van Gogh is brief. The life of Vincent van Gogh. A unique talent gifted by nature
When 37-year-old Vincent van Gogh died on July 29, 1890, his work was almost unknown to anyone. Today, his paintings are worth stunning sums and adorn the best museums in the world.
125 years after the death of the great Dutch painter, it is time to learn more about him and dispel some of the myths that, like all art history, his biography is full of.
He changed several jobs before becoming an artist
The son of a minister, Van Gogh started working at the age of 16. His uncle hired him as an intern for an art dealership in The Hague. He happened to travel to London and Paris, where the firm's branches were located. In 1876 he was fired. After that, he worked briefly as a schoolteacher in England, then as a bookstore clerk. From 1878 he served as a preacher in Belgium. Van Gogh was in need, he had to sleep on the floor, but less than a year later he was fired from this post. Only after that he finally became an artist and did not change his occupation anymore. In this field, he became famous, however, posthumously.
Van Gogh's career as an artist was short
In 1881, the self-taught Dutch artist returned to the Netherlands, where he devoted himself to painting. He was supported financially and materially by his younger brother Theodore, a successful art dealer. In 1886, the brothers settled in Paris, and these two years in the French capital turned out to be crucial. Van Gogh took part in exhibitions of the Impressionists and Neo-Impressionists, he began to use a light and bright palette, experimenting with methods of applying strokes. The artist spent the last two years of his life in the south of France, where he created some of his most famous paintings.
In his entire ten-year career, he sold only a few of over 850 paintings. His drawings (there are about 1300 of them left) were then unclaimed.
He probably didn't cut off his own ear.
In February 1888, after living in Paris for two years, Van Gogh moved to the south of France, to the city of Arles, where he hoped to found a community of artists. He was accompanied by Paul Gauguin, with whom they became friends in Paris. The officially accepted version of events is as follows:
On the night of December 23, 1888, they quarreled, and Gauguin left. Van Gogh, armed with a razor, pursued his friend, but, not catching up, returned home and, in annoyance, partially cut off his left ear, then wrapped it in a newspaper and gave it to some prostitute.
In 2009, two German scientists published a book suggesting that Gauguin, being a good swordsman, cut off part of Van Gogh's ear with a saber during a duel. According to this theory, Van Gogh, in the name of friendship, agreed to hide the truth, otherwise Gauguin would have been threatened with prison.
The most famous paintings were painted by him in a psychiatric clinic
In May 1889, Van Gogh sought help from the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole psychiatric hospital, located in a former convent in the city of Saint-Remy-de-Provence in southern France. Initially, the artist was diagnosed with epilepsy, but the examination also revealed bipolar disorder, alcoholism and metabolic disorders. Treatment consisted mainly of baths. He remained in the hospital for a year and painted a number of landscapes there. Over a hundred paintings from this period include some of his most famous works such as Starry Night (purchased by New York's Museum of Modern Art in 1941) and Irises (purchased by an Australian industrialist in 1987 for a then record-breaking $ 53.9 million)
The biography of Vincent van Gogh is a vivid example of how a talented person was not recognized during his lifetime. He was only appreciated after his death. This talented post-impressionist artist was born on March 30, 1853 in the Netherlands in a small village, which was located near the border with Belgium. In addition to Vincent, his parents had six children, of which the younger brother Theo can be distinguished. He had a great influence on the fate of the famous artist.
Childhood and early years
As a child, Van Gogh was a difficult and "tedious" child. This is how his family described him. With outsiders, he was quiet, thoughtful, friendly and affable. At the age of seven, the boy was sent to a local village school, where he studied for only a year, then he was transferred to home schooling. After some time, he was sent to a boarding school, where he felt miserable. This greatly affected him. Then the future artist was transferred to college, where he studied foreign languages and drawing.
Attempt at writing. The beginning of an artist's career
At the age of 16, Vincent got a job in a branch of a large company that sold paintings. His uncle owned this company. The future artist worked very well, so he was transferred to . There he learned to understand painting and appreciate it. Vincent attended exhibitions and art galleries. Because of unhappy love, he began to work poorly and was transferred from one office to another. Around the age of 22, Vincent began to try his hand at painting. He was inspired to do this by exhibitions at the Louvre and the Salon (Paris). Because of his new hobby, the artist began to work very poorly and he was fired. He then worked as a teacher and assistant pastor. The choice of the last profession was influenced by his father, who also chose to serve God.
Acquisition of skill and fame
At the age of 27, the artist, with the support of his brother Theo, moved to, where he entered the Academy of Arts. But, a year later, he decided to quit his studies, because he believed that diligence, not study, would help him become an artist. He painted his first known paintings in The Hague. There, for the first time, he mixed several techniques at once in one work:
- watercolor;
- feather;
- sepia.
Vivid examples of such paintings are “Backyards” and “Roofs. View from van Gogh's studio. Then he had another unsuccessful attempt to start a family. Because of this, Vincent leaves the city and settles in a separate hut, where he paints landscapes and working peasants. During that period, he painted such famous paintings as "Peasant Woman" and "Peasant and Peasant Woman Planting Potatoes."
Interestingly, Van Gogh was not able to draw human figures correctly and smoothly, so in his paintings they have somewhat straight and angular lines. After a while, he moved in with Theo. There he again took up the study of painting in a local famous studio. Then he began to gain fame and participate in exhibitions of the Impressionists.
Death of Van Gogh
The great artist died on July 29, 1890 from blood loss. The day before that day, he had been injured. Vincent shot himself in the chest with a revolver he took with him to scare away birds. There is, however, another version of his death. Some historians believe that he was shot by teenagers with whom he sometimes drank in bars.
Van Gogh paintings
The list of Van Gogh's most famous works includes the following paintings: "Starry Night"; "Sunflowers"; "Irises"; "Wheat field with crows"; "Portrait of Dr. Gachet".
- There are several facts in Van Gogh's biography that historians are still arguing about. So, for example, it is believed that during his lifetime only one of his paintings “Red Vineyards in Arles” was bought. But, despite this, it is absolutely undeniable that Van Gogh left behind a great legacy and made an invaluable contribution to art. In the 19th century, he was not appreciated, and in the 20th and 21st centuries, Vincent's paintings are sold for millions of dollars.
Vincent van Gogh is a famous artist and a scandalous figure in the art world of the 19th century. Today, his work continues to be controversial. The ambiguity of the paintings and their fullness of meanings make us take a deeper look at them and at the life of their creator.
Childhood and family
He was born in 1853 in the Netherlands, in the small village of Grot-Zundert. His father was a Protestant pastor, and his mother was from a family of bookbinders. Vincent van Gogh had 2 younger brothers and 3 sisters. It is known that at home he was often punished for his wayward character and temper.
The men in the artist's family worked in the church or sold paintings and books. From childhood, he was immersed in 2 contradictory worlds - the world of faith and the world of art.
Education
At the age of 7, the elder Van Gogh began attending a village school. Just a year later, he switched to home schooling, and after another 3 he left for a boarding school. In 1866, Vincent became a student at Willem II College. Although the departure and separation from loved ones were not easy for him, he achieved some success in his studies. Here he received drawing lessons. After 2 years, Vincent van Gogh interrupted his basic education and returned home.
In the future, he repeatedly made attempts to get an art education, but none of them was successful.
Searching for yourself
From 1869 to 1876, working as an art dealer for a large firm, he lived in The Hague, Paris and London. During these years, he got to know painting very closely, visited galleries, daily in contact with works of art and their authors, and for the first time tried himself as an artist.
After his dismissal, he worked in 2 English schools as a teacher and assistant pastor. Then he returned to the Netherlands and sold books. But most of the time he spent on drawings and translating fragments of the Bible into foreign languages.
Six months later, having settled in Amsterdam with his uncle Jan van Gogh, he was preparing to enter the university in the department of theology. However, he quickly changed his mind and went first to the Protestant missionary school near Brussels, and then to the mining village of Paturazh in Belgium.
Since the mid 80s of the XIX century. and until the end of his life, Vincent van Gogh actively painted and even sold some paintings.
Some time in 1888 he spent in a psychiatric hospital with a diagnosis of epilepsy of the temporal lobes. The incident with cutting off the earlobe, because of which he ended up in the hospital, is well known - Van Gogh, after a quarrel with Gauguin, separated it from his left ear and took it to a familiar prostitute.
The artist died in 1890 from a bullet wound. According to some versions, the shot was fired by him.
Van Gogh short biography.
According to sociologists, there are three most famous artists in the world: Leonardo da Vinci, Vincent van Gogh and Pablo Picasso. Leonardo is "responsible" for the art of the old masters, Van Gogh for the impressionists and post-impressionists of the 19th century, and Picasso for the abstract and modernists of the 20th century. At the same time, if Leonardo appears in the eyes of the public not so much as a painter as a universal genius, and Picasso as a fashionable "secular lion" and public figure - a fighter for peace, then Van Gogh embodies the artist. He is considered a crazy lone genius and a martyr who did not think about fame and money. However, this image, to which everyone is accustomed, is nothing more than a myth that was used to “hype” Van Gogh and sell his paintings for a profit.
The legend about the artist is based on a true fact - he took up painting when he was already a mature person, and in just ten years he "ran" the path from a novice artist to a master who turned the idea of fine art upside down. All this, even during the life of Van Gogh, was perceived as a "miracle" that had no real explanation. The artist's biography was not full of adventures, such as the fate of Paul Gauguin, who managed to be both a stock broker and a sailor, and died of leprosy, exotic for a European layman, on the no less exotic Hiva-Oa, one of the Marquesas Islands. Van Gogh was a "boring hard worker", and, apart from the strange mental seizures that appeared in him shortly before his death, and this death itself as a result of a suicide attempt, there was nothing for the myth-makers to cling to. But these few "trump cards" were played by true masters of their craft.
The main creator of the Legend of the Master was the German gallerist and art historian Julius Meyer-Graefe. He quickly realized the scale of the genius of the great Dutchman, and most importantly, the market potential of his paintings. In 1893, a twenty-six-year-old gallery owner bought the painting "Couple in Love" and thought about "advertising" a promising product. Possessing a lively pen, Meyer-Graefe decided to write an attractive biography of the artist for collectors and art lovers. He did not find him alive and therefore was “free” from personal impressions that weighed down the master’s contemporaries. In addition, Van Gogh was born and raised in Holland, but as a painter he finally took shape in France. In Germany, where Meyer-Graefe began to introduce the legend, no one knew anything about the artist, and the art gallery owner started from a “blank slate”. He did not immediately “feel” the image of that crazy lone genius that everyone now knows. At first, Meyer's Van Gogh was a "healthy man of the people", and his work was "harmony between art and life" and a forerunner of the new Grand style, which Meyer-Graefe considered modern. But Art Nouveau fizzled out in a matter of years, and Van Gogh, under the pen of an enterprising German, "retrained" as an avant-garde rebel who led the fight against mossy realist academics. Van Gogh the anarchist was popular in bohemian artistic circles, but he scared the layman away. And only the "third edition" of the legend satisfied everyone. In the "scientific monograph" of 1921 entitled "Vincent", with an unusual subtitle for literature of this kind, "The Novel of the God-Seeker," Meyer-Graefe introduced the public to the holy madman, whose hand was led by God. The highlight of this "biography" was the story of a severed ear and creative madness, which elevated a small, lonely person, like Akaky Akakievich Bashmachkin, to the heights of genius.
 Vincent Van Gogh. 1873 |
The real Vincent van Gogh had little in common with "Vincent" Meyer-Graefe. To begin with, he graduated from a prestigious private gymnasium, spoke and wrote fluently in three languages, read a lot, which earned him the nickname Spinoza in Parisian artistic circles. Behind Van Gogh was a large family that never left him without support, although they were not enthusiastic about his experiments. His grandfather was a famous bookbinder of old manuscripts for several European courts, three of his uncles were successful art dealers, and one was an admiral and harbor master in Antwerp, in his house he lived when he studied in this city. The real Van Gogh was a rather sober and pragmatic person.
For example, one of the central "god-seeking" episodes of the "going to the people" legend was the fact that in 1879 Van Gogh was a preacher in the Belgian mining region of Borinage. What did Meyer-Graefe and his followers not compose! Here and "a break with the environment" and "the desire to suffer along with the poor and the poor." Everything is explained simply. Vincent decided to follow in his father's footsteps and become a priest. In order to receive the dignity, it was necessary to study at the seminary for five years. Or - to take an accelerated course in three years in an evangelical school according to a simplified program, and even for free. All this was preceded by a mandatory six-month "experience" of missionary work in the outback. Here Van Gogh went to the miners. Of course, he was a humanist, he tried to help these people, but he never thought of getting close to them, always remaining a representative of the middle class. After serving his term in the Borinage, Van Gogh decided to enter an evangelical school, and then it turned out that the rules had changed and the Dutch like him, unlike the Flemings, had to pay tuition. After that, the offended "missionary" left religion and decided to become an artist.
And this choice is not accidental either. Van Gogh was a professional art dealer - an art dealer in the largest company Goupil. The partner in it was his uncle Vincent, after whom the young Dutchman was named. He patronized him. "Goupil" played a leading role in Europe in the trade in old masters and solid modern academic painting, but was not afraid to sell "moderate innovators" like the Barbizons. For 7 years, Van Gogh made a career in a difficult, family-based antiques business. From the Amsterdam branch, he moved first to The Hague, then to London, and finally to the company's headquarters in Paris. Over the years, the nephew of the Goupil co-owner went through a serious school, studied the main European museums and many closed private collections, became a real expert in painting not only by Rembrandt and the Little Dutch, but also by the French - from Ingres to Delacroix. “Being surrounded by paintings,” he wrote, “I kindled for them with a frantic, frenzied love.” His idol was the French artist Jean-Francois Millet, famous at that time for his "peasant" canvases, which Goupil sold at prices of tens of thousands of francs.
 The painter's brother Theodor Van Gogh |
Van Gogh was going to become such a successful “life writer of the lower classes”, like Millet, using his knowledge of the life of miners and peasants, gleaned in the Borinage. Contrary to legend, the art dealer Van Gogh was not a brilliant amateur like such "Sunday artists" as the customs officer Rousseau or the conductor Pirosmani. Having behind him a fundamental knowledge of the history and theory of art, as well as the practice of trading it, the stubborn Dutchman at the age of twenty-seven began to systematically study the craft of painting. He began by drawing according to the latest special textbooks, which were sent to him from all over Europe by uncles who were art dealers. Van Gogh's hand was put by his relative, the artist from The Hague Anton Mauve, to whom the grateful student later dedicated one of his paintings. Van Gogh even entered first the Brussels and then the Antwerp Academy of Arts, where he studied for three months until he went to Paris.
There, the newly minted artist was persuaded to leave in 1886 by his younger brother Theodore. This former on the rise successful art dealer played a key role in the fate of the master. Theo advised Vincent to give up "peasant" painting, explaining that it was already a "plowed field". And, besides, "black paintings" like "The Potato Eaters" at all times sold worse than light and joyful art. Another thing is the “light painting” of the Impressionists, literally created for success: solid sun and a holiday. The public will appreciate it sooner or later.
Theo the Seer
So Van Gogh ended up in the capital of the "new art" - Paris, and on Theo's advice, he entered the private studio of Fernand Cormon, which was then the "forge of personnel" of a new generation of experimental artists. There the Dutchman came into close contact with such future pillars of post-impressionism as Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, Emile Bernard and Lucien Pissarro. Van Gogh studied anatomy, painted from plaster and literally absorbed all the new ideas that Paris was seething with.
Theo introduces him to leading art critics and his artist clients, who included not only the established Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley, Camille Pissarro, Auguste Renoir and Edgar Degas, but also the "rising stars" Signac and Gauguin. By the time Vincent arrived in Paris, his brother was the head of the "experimental" branch of Goupil in Montmartre. A man with a heightened sense of the new and an excellent businessman, Theo was one of the first to see the advent of a new era in art. He persuaded the conservative leadership of Goupil to allow him to venture into the trade in "light painting". In the gallery, Theo held solo exhibitions of Camille Pissarro, Claude Monet and other impressionists, to whom Paris began to get used little by little. Upstairs, in his own apartment, he held "moving exhibitions" of pictures of impudent youth, which Goupil was afraid to show officially. It was the prototype of the elite "apartment exhibitions" that came into vogue in the 20th century, and Vincent's work became their highlight.
Back in 1884, the Van Gogh brothers entered into an agreement with each other. Theo, in exchange for Vincent's paintings, pays him 220 francs a month and provides him with brushes, canvases and paints of the best quality. By the way, thanks to this, Van Gogh's paintings, unlike the works of Gauguin and Toulouse-Lautrec, who, due to lack of money, wrote on anything, are so well preserved. 220 francs was a quarter of the monthly salary of a doctor or lawyer. The postman Joseph Roulin in Arles, whom legend made into something like the patron of the "beggar" Van Gogh, received half as much and, unlike the lonely artist, fed a family with three children. Van Gogh even had enough money to create a collection of Japanese prints. In addition, Theo supplied his brother with “overalls”: blouses and famous hats, necessary books and reproductions. He also paid for Vincent's treatment.
All this was not a simple charity. The brothers came up with an ambitious plan to create a market for Post-Impressionist painting, the generation of artists that would replace Monet and his friends. And with Vincent van Gogh as one of the leaders of this generation. To connect the seemingly incompatible - the risky avant-garde art of the bohemian world and commercial success in the spirit of the respectable Goupil. Here they were almost a century ahead of their time: only Andy Warhol and other American popartists managed to immediately get rich on avant-garde art.
"Unrecognized"
In general, the position of Vincent van Gogh was unique. He worked as an artist on a contract with an art dealer, who was one of the key figures in the "light painting" market. And that art dealer was his brother. The restless vagabond Gauguin, for example, who counts every franc, could only dream of such a situation. In addition, Vincent was not a simple puppet in the hands of businessman Theo. Nor was he an unmercenary who did not want to sell his paintings to the profane, which he handed out for nothing to “kindred souls,” as Meyer-Graefe wrote. Van Gogh, like any normal person, wanted recognition not from distant descendants, but during his lifetime. Confessions, an important sign of which for him was money. And being himself a former art dealer, he knew how to achieve this.
One of the main topics of his letters to Theo is by no means seeking God, but discussions about what needs to be done in order to profitably sell paintings, and which painting will quickly find its way to the heart of the buyer. To promote the market, he came up with an impeccable formula: "Nothing will help us sell our paintings better than their recognition as a good decoration for middle-class homes." In order to clearly show how the paintings of the post-impressionists would “look” in a bourgeois interior, Van Gogh himself in 1887 arranged two exhibitions in the Tambourine cafe and the La Forche restaurant in Paris and even sold several works from them. Later, the legend played on this fact as an act of desperation by the artist, whom no one wanted to let into normal exhibitions.
Meanwhile, he was a regular participant in exhibitions at the Salon des Indépendants and the Free Theater - the most fashionable places for Parisian intellectuals of that time. His paintings are exhibited by art dealers Arsene Portier, George Thomas, Pierre Martin and Tanguy. The great Cezanne got the opportunity to show his work at a solo exhibition only at the age of 56, after almost four decades of hard labor. Whereas the work of Vincent, an artist with six years of experience, could be seen at any time at Theo's "apartment exhibition", where the entire artistic elite of the capital of the art world - Paris, visited.
The real Van Gogh is the least like the hermit of legend. He is at home among the leading artists of the era, the most convincing evidence of which is several portraits of the Dutchman painted by Toulouse-Lautrec, Roussel, Bernard. Lucien Pissarro portrayed him talking to the most influential art critic of those years, Fenelon. Van Gogh was remembered by Camille Pissarro for the fact that he did not hesitate to stop the person he needed on the street and show his paintings right at the wall of some house. It is simply impossible to imagine a real hermit Cezanne in such a situation.
The legend has firmly established the idea of van Gogh's unrecognizedness, that during his lifetime only one of his paintings "Red Vineyards in Arles" was sold, which now hangs in the Moscow Museum of Fine Arts named after A.S. Pushkin. In fact, the sale of this canvas from an exhibition in Brussels in 1890 for 400 francs was Van Gogh's breakthrough into the world of serious prices. He sold no worse than his contemporaries Seurat or Gauguin. According to the documents, it is known that fourteen works were bought from the artist. This was first done by a family friend, the Dutch art dealer Terstig, in February 1882, and Vincent wrote to Theo: "The first sheep passed the bridge." In reality, there were more sales; there was simply no accurate evidence of the rest.
As for non-recognition, since 1888 the well-known critics Gustave Kahn and Felix Fénelon, in their reviews of the exhibitions of the "independent", as the avant-garde artists were then called, have singled out Van Gogh's fresh and vibrant works. The critic Octave Mirbeau advised Rodin to buy his paintings. They were in the collection of such a discerning connoisseur as Edgar Degas. Even during his lifetime, Vincent read in the Mercure de France newspaper that he was a great artist, the heir of Rembrandt and Hals. He wrote this in his article, entirely devoted to the work of the "amazing Dutchman", the rising star of the "new criticism" Henri Aurier. He intended to create a biography of Van Gogh, but, unfortunately, he died of tuberculosis shortly after the death of the artist himself.
About the mind, free "from the shackles"But the “biography” was published by Meyer-Graefe, and in it he especially painted the “intuitive, free from the fetters of reason” process of Van Gogh’s creativity.
“Vincent painted in a blind, unconscious ecstasy. His temperament spilled onto the canvas. Trees screamed, clouds hunted each other. The sun gaped like a dazzling hole leading into chaos."
The easiest way to refute this idea of Van Gogh is by the words of the artist himself: “Greatness is created not only by impulsive action, but also by the complicity of many things that have been brought into a single whole ... With art, as with everything else: the great is not something sometimes accidental, but must be created by stubborn volitional tension.
The vast majority of Van Gogh's letters are devoted to the "kitchen" of painting: setting goals, materials, technique. An event almost unprecedented in the history of art. The Dutchman was a real workaholic and claimed: "In art, you have to work like a few blacks and take off your skin." At the end of his life, he really wrote very quickly, a picture could be done from beginning to end in two hours. But at the same time, he kept repeating the favorite expression of the American artist Whistler: "I did it in two hours, but I worked for years to do something worthwhile in these two hours."
Van Gogh did not write on a whim - he worked long and hard on the same motive. In the city of Arles, where he set up his workshop after leaving Paris, he began a series of 30 works related to the common creative task "Contrast". Contrast color, thematic, compositional. For example, pandan "Cafe in Arles" and "Room in Arles". In the first picture - darkness and tension, in the second - light and harmony. In the same row, there are several variants of his famous "Sunflowers". The whole series was conceived as an example of decorating a "middle-class dwelling". We have a well-thought-out creative and market strategy from beginning to end. After seeing his paintings at an exhibition of "independents", Gauguin wrote: "You are the only thinking artist of all."
The cornerstone of the Van Gogh legend is his madness. Allegedly, only it allowed him to look into such depths that are inaccessible to mere mortals. But the artist was not from his youth a half-madman with flashes of genius. Periods of depression, accompanied by seizures similar to epilepsy, for which he was treated in a psychiatric clinic, began only in the last year and a half of his life. Doctors saw this as the effect of absinthe, an alcoholic drink infused with wormwood, whose destructive effect on the nervous system became known only in the 20th century. At the same time, it was precisely during the period of exacerbation of the disease that the artist could not write. So the mental disorder did not "help" Van Gogh's genius, but hindered it.
The famous story with the ear is very doubtful. It turned out that Van Gogh could not cut him off at the root, he would simply bleed to death, because he was helped only 10 hours after the incident. His only lobe was cut off, as stated in the medical report. And who did it? There is a version that this happened during a quarrel with Gauguin that took place that day. Gauguin, experienced in sailor fights, slashed Van Gogh on the ear, and he had a nervous attack from everything he had experienced. Later, to justify his behavior, Gauguin made up a story that Van Gogh, in a fit of madness, chased him with a razor in his hands, and then crippled himself.
Even the painting “Room at Arles”, whose curved space was considered a fixation of Van Gogh’s insane state, turned out to be surprisingly realistic. Plans have been found for the house where the artist lived in Arles. The walls and ceiling of his dwelling were indeed sloping. Van Gogh never painted by moonlight with candles attached to his hat. But the creators of the legend have always been free with the facts. The ominous picture "Wheat Field", with a road going into the distance, covered with a flock of ravens, they, for example, announced the last canvas of the master, predicting his death. But it is well known that after it he wrote a whole series of works, where the ill-fated field is depicted compressed.
The "know-how" of the main author of the Van Gogh myth, Julius Meyer-Gref, is not just a lie, but the presentation of fictional events mixed with true facts, and even in the form of impeccable scientific work. For example, the true fact that Van Gogh liked to work in the open air because he did not tolerate the smell of turpentine, which is diluted with paints, was used by the "biographer" as the basis for a fantastic version of the reason for the suicide of the master. Allegedly, Van Gogh fell in love with the sun - the source of his inspiration and did not allow himself to cover his head with a hat, standing under its burning rays. All his hair was burned, the sun baked his unprotected skull, he went crazy and committed suicide. Late self-portraits of Van Gogh and images of the dead artist made by his friends show that he did not lose the hair on his head until his death.
"Insights of the holy fool"
Van Gogh shot himself on July 27, 1890, after his mental crisis seemed to have been overcome. Shortly before that, he was discharged from the clinic with the conclusion: "Recovered." The very fact that the owner of the furnished rooms in Auvers, where Van Gogh lived in the last months of his life, entrusted him with a revolver, which the artist needed to scare away crows while working on sketches, suggests that he behaved absolutely normally. Today, doctors agree that the suicide did not occur during a seizure, but was the result of a combination of external circumstances. Theo got married, had a child, and Vincent was oppressed by the thought that his brother would only deal with his family, and not their plan to conquer the art world.
After the fatal shot, Van Gogh lived for two more days, was surprisingly calm and steadfastly endured suffering. He died in the arms of his inconsolable brother, who was never able to recover from this loss and died six months later. The firm "Goupil" for a pittance sold all the works of the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, which Theo Van Gogh had accumulated in the gallery in Montmartre, and closed the experiment with "light painting". Vincent van Gogh's paintings were taken by Theo's widow Johanna van Gogh-Bonger to Holland. Only at the beginning of the 20th century did total fame come to the great Dutchman. According to experts, if it were not for the almost simultaneous early death of both brothers, this would have happened back in the mid-1890s and Van Gogh would have been a very rich man. But fate decreed otherwise. People like Meyer-Graefe began to reap the fruits of the labors of the great painter Vincent and the great gallery owner Theo.
Who has Vincent taken over?
The novel about the god-seeker "Vincent" by an enterprising German came in handy in the situation of the collapse of ideals after the massacre of the First World War. A martyr of art and a madman, whose mystical work appeared under the pen of Meyer-Graefe as something like a new religion, such a Van Gogh captured the imagination of both jaded intellectuals and inexperienced townsfolk. The legend pushed into the background not only the biography of a real artist, but also perverted the idea of \u200b\u200bhis paintings. They saw in them some kind of mess of colors, in which the prophetic "insights" of the holy fool are guessed. Meyer-Graefe turned into the main connoisseur of the "mystical Dutchman" and began not only to trade in Van Gogh's paintings, but also to issue certificates of authenticity for works that appeared under the name of Van Gogh on the art market for a lot of money.
In the mid-1920s, a certain Otto Wacker came to him, performing erotic dances in Berlin cabarets under the pseudonym Olinto Lovel. He showed several paintings signed "Vincent" in the spirit of the legend. Meyer-Graefe was delighted and immediately confirmed their authenticity. In total, Wacker, who opened his own gallery in the trendy Potsdamerplatz district, threw more than 30 Van Goghs on the market before rumors spread that they were fake. Since it was a very large sum, the police intervened. At the trial, the dancer-gallery owner told the “provenance” story, which he “fed” his gullible clients. He allegedly acquired the paintings from a Russian aristocrat, who bought them at the beginning of the century, and during the revolution he managed to take them out of Russia to Switzerland. Wacker did not name his name, arguing that the Bolsheviks, embittered by the loss of the "national treasure", would destroy the family of an aristocrat who remained in Soviet Russia.
In the battle of experts that unfolded in April 1932 in the courtroom of the Berlin district of Moabit, Meyer-Graefe and his supporters stood up for the authenticity of Wacker's Van Goghs. But the police raided the studio of the dancer's brother and father, who were artists, and found 16 fresh Van Goghs. Technological expertise has shown that they are identical to the canvases sold. In addition, chemists found that when creating the “paintings of the Russian aristocrat”, paints were used that appeared only after the death of Van Gogh. Upon learning of this, one of the “experts” who supported Meyer-Graefe and Wacker said to the stunned judge: “How do you know that Vincent did not move into a congenial body after death and still does not create?”
Wacker received three years in prison, and Meyer-Graefe's reputation was destroyed. Soon he died, but the legend, in spite of everything, continues to live to this day. It was on its basis that the American writer Irving Stone wrote his bestseller Lust for Life in 1934, and the Hollywood director Vincente Minnelli made a film about Van Gogh in 1956. The role of the artist there was played by actor Kirk Douglas. The film earned an Oscar and finally confirmed in the minds of millions of people the image of a half-mad genius who took upon himself all the sins of the world. Then the American period in the canonization of Van Gogh was replaced by the Japanese.
In the Land of the Rising Sun, the great Dutchman, thanks to the legend, was considered something between a Buddhist monk and a samurai who committed hara-kiri. In 1987, the Yasuda Company bought Van Gogh's Sunflowers at an auction in London for $40 million. Three years later, the eccentric billionaire Ryoto Saito, who identified himself with the Vincent of the legend, paid $82 million for Van Gogh's "Portrait of Dr. Gachet" at an auction in New York. For a whole decade it was the most expensive painting in the world. According to Saito's will, she was to be burned with him after his death, but the creditors of the Japanese who had gone bankrupt by that time did not allow this to be done.
While the world was rocked by scandals around Van Gogh's name, art historians, restorers, archivists and even doctors, step by step, explored the true life and work of the artist. A huge role in this was played by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, created in 1972 on the basis of a collection that was donated to Holland by Theo Van Gogh's son, who bore the name of his great uncle. The museum began to check all the paintings of Van Gogh in the world, weeding out several dozen fakes, and did a great job of preparing a scientific publication of the brothers' correspondence.
But, despite the great efforts of both the museum staff and such luminaries of vango studies as the Canadian Bogomila Velsh-Ovcharova or the Dutchman Jan Halsker, the legend of Van Gogh does not die. She lives her own life, giving rise to regular films, books and performances about the "holy madman Vincent", who has nothing to do with the great worker and pioneer of new paths in art, Vincent van Gogh. This is how a person works: a romantic fairy tale is always more attractive for him than the “prose of life”, no matter how great it may be.
Vincent van Gogh is one of the greatest artists in the world, whose work has a great influence on the development of modern trends in painting and gives impetus to the development of impressionism. Today, countries such as the Netherlands, France and England are proud that such a great creator once lived and worked on their territory, and the value of his paintings, located in different parts of the world, cannot be calculated by any monetary unit, like the cost of irobot. However, no matter how sad it may sound, during the life of Vincent van Gogh, his paintings were of no value to the society of that time, and this genius was dying in a state of madness and complete loneliness.
Van Gogh's work was influenced by many factors, so, undoubtedly, his childhood, his temperament, the time in which he was born influenced him. However, despite the fact that in his short life the creator experienced many illnesses, depressions, poverty, loneliness, he was never afraid and did not stop experimenting. And he experimented with everything that was possible. So during his short career, Van Gogh experimented with light and shadow, with color schemes, with form, with models and with various artistic techniques. His work also changed as his worldview changed.
So, born at the end of the nineteenth century in a low-income Dutch family of the working class, Van Gogh used to observe the life of ordinary people and empathize with her. At that time, the poor barely had enough money for food, and therefore it was not possible to imagine that in a couple of centuries people would be able, sitting at home in an armchair, to purchase equipment for themselves by asking in the browser search line: “buy irobot roomba 790”.
The hard times and impressionability of the young Van Gogh served as the main impetus for the development of his work, in which the main characters were people of the working class. In the paintings of that time, the creator conveyed the gravity of the situation of poor people. Performing canvases in dark colors, the artist clearly and accurately conveyed the oppressive and oppressive atmosphere of that time.
However, having moved to sunny France, the artist begins to paint life-filled landscapes and still lifes. The paintings of that period of Van Gogh's work seemed to flow with light, thanks to the use of blue, golden yellow, red colors, as well as writing them using the technique of small strokes.
The end of the short, but so rich artistic life of Vincent van Gogh, is considered the dawn of his work. It was in the last years of his life that the creator was determined with his style and technique of painting.