[Perna]

Don't you love when history gets rewritten?

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...ryId=103990820

[lovelystars]

hmm I think they both had issues...I mean Gogh killed himself so I would say that doesn't make him the most saine person even if it was Gauguin that cut his ear off. Say you don't believe Gauguin did it though, I found this exert in a letter Gauguin wrote to Gogh, "Naturally this band of pigs here find me quite mad, and I that rather pleases me because it proves to me that I am not." If others were questioning his sanity this sort of reaction to that seems abnormal to me. I am also recalling some Gogh letters with overly inflated self esteem between himself and a fellow artist, possibly Gauguin I can't remember. They were talking something about the isolation and of being 'such a great one' and how very few could relate. Gave me a good laugh wish I could find them to see if it was Gauguin...do you know if they exchanged self portraits? I remember that was the case as well with the particular artist that I am thinking he corresponded with. Great article, thanks for sharing!

[lynn P.]

Very interesting and thanks for posting this Perna. Sounds like this was a very toxic and competitive friendship with Van Gogh being a victim of sorts. I wonder if the truth was told, would he ended us famous and maybe he wouldn't have killed himself. Probably the general public shunned him after the ear incident. Does the story of him being crazy and untimely death, make the whole story more dramatic, hence him becoming famous.

[Ygrec23]

Life is sufficiently hard these days (all around the world) that even people with fancy educational backgrounds are willing to come up with historically improbable new interpretations of things that happened in the past and to try and sell such interpretations for financial or academic gain. Vincent van Gogh became psychotic in his later years and his mental state is not really a dubious conclusion, whatever may have happened to his ear.

If trained professionals examine his later works, they have found and will continue to find that those works betray a slide into serious mental illness. The visual self-expression of schizophrenics has remarkably similar characteristics, and van Gogh's paintings for the year or two prior to his suicide illustrate the mental difficulties to which he was prey.

If you'd like to see a similar progression in another artist, whose later work shows amazing similarities to van Gogh's, go to Google Images and enter the search term "Louis Wain." Wain was a professional English artist who at the end of his career, in the earlier twentieth century, went mad and spent the rest of his life in an asylum, though he continued to paint.

If I had to bet money, I'd bet that Vincent cut off his own ear. If any of you out there are in any way familiar with fencing, you'll know that it's quite impossible for Gauguin to have cut off van Gogh's ear with a "rapier." That's just not what rapiers do. Take care.

[Perna]

The rapiers they use to fence with were different from today's foils! They were actual swords that I imagine would nick you good :-) I mostly liked the article because of the controversy over who cut off his ear lobe, I'd always thought it was his entire ear, not whether he was mentally ill or not. I think he was mentally ill too but didn't want to get into ear cutting in the title :-)

I learned a little about him when I was taking a nineteenth century European history class that started with us having to write a paper about Romanticism by picking an eighteenth/nineteenth century "artist" and a piece of their art and analyzing it as to how well/why it "fit" the Romantic Era. I chose music/Schubert and his "Unfinished" Symphony (I was curious why it was unfinished :-) but most of the other students did artists and several did Van Gogh so I read up on him some.

[Ygrec23]

Yup, Perna, you were right. I confused a rapier with a foil. Anyone interested can see the following:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapier

Take care!

[madisgram]

i for one consider his artwork/paintings incredible even if he suffered from MI . it may have helped him to create the vibrant colors and distorted shapes too. i am an art and museum science major and he is one of a group of artists i would have wanted to know if i could go back in time. having said that i may have discovered i preferred our meeting while he was on the other side of the bars for our interview. idk.

[Ygrec23]

Originally Posted by madisgram

i for one consider his artwork/paintings incredible even if he suffered from MI . it may have helped him to create the vibrant colors and distorted shapes too. i am an art and museum science major and he is one of a group of artists i would have wanted to know if i could go back in time. having said that i may have discovered i preferred our meeting while he was on the other side of the bars for our interview. idk.

Before the post that started this thread, I'd never heard that he was in any way a danger to others. A long time ago I read his correspondence with his brother, Theo, who was an art dealer in Paris, I think. This was a good guy. I'm really very doubtful about these physical altercations with Gauguin. French people (like Gauguin) are very verbally aggressive but not physically. So, if you ever did go back in time and meet with van Gogh I really think you could sit down in that night cafe with him that he's painted and not worry about being assaulted. Take care!