SYMHC Classics: Vincent van Gogh

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Speaker 1: Happy Saturday. We've gotten a few requests recently from listeners asking for an episode on Vincent van Go, and this is one of those cases where I really envy previous hosts of the show because I really love his artwork. I would love to do an episode on him, but Sarah and Bablina already did, wondering their tenure as hosts in That episode came out on November eleven, But that also means that this episode is more than a decade old, and awareness of some of the preferred language regarding things like alcohol, misuse, sex work, and suicide has evolved a little bit since this was recorded, so keep that in mind. They're also continues to be discussion around Van Goh's cause of death, which is brought up at the end of the episode, for example, whether Van Got did take his own life or whether he was killed. One of the more recent developments in that discussion is a paper published in the American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology. The paper came out in and that calls for the exhamation and autopsy of vang Go to settle the question. So enjoy the episode. Welcome to Stuff you missed in history class. A production of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Sarah Dowdy and I'm debling a chuk reboarding. And it seems like van Go has been in the news kind of a lot lately. But when I thought about it, 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, 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 about some other I think really strong contenders on this podcast, 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, 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 kind of like a letter delivering something. It sends a message. I am sure about that. Um 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 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 go 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 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 going to 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 dog her 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 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 Francois Malay. And he also grew to love British literature and Victorian culture taste that really stuck with him throughout his life. But after working in London for two years in Paris for another van Go 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 twentiesome things do. First he was a teacher in England. By eighteen seventy seven 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 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 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. Van Go was twenty seven, and Theo encouraged him to become an artist himself. He likes art, 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 then he copies prints. He studies drawing manuals. He studied drawing at Brussels Academy, though he left after a short time, and then in one he decided he needed some formal training, and so he took lessons from his cousin Anton Mauve, 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 with his new career. He was learning a trade, and in eighteen eighty two van Go made the jump to oil paints, moving in eighteen eighty three to a quiet Netherlands village where he could paint landscapes. And he 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 to his parents home, which by that point was in Noonan 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 you might be 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, you guys should really go check out some of these pictures. Sarah 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 saw the work of the Impressionists in person, he saw Japanese prints, he met contemporaries like Enrida to Lose the Track and Paul Goga, 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, 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 pi it is self portrait with a straw hat. I printed out that one too, and it just looks completely different from self portraits that he was doing just a year before 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, 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 and a lighter palette just turns to magic and bright sunny Provence. Van Go paints blooming 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 about Van Goh. 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 Vandergo out of Paris. You know, he's just mastered it. He's got all the technique down and going for it when 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, the studio of the South, where peers 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 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 Vano was to choose as a housemaid. Just to give you a little background, and Goga, he had abandoned his stockbroker career for art and had 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 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, 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, Arla police found Van Go bleeding from his self bandaged head in the Yellow House, and that left some questions about what on earth happened. So the traditional tale goes the night before, Van Go had been talking NonStop to Gogan, 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 hollereen and waving around a razor. Van Go didn't attack Go again. Instead, he went home, 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 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 off Van goes 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 Gopnik 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, 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 Go'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 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, 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 a foil around in Arlow when he was going out at night. Felt self defense. So Kaufman and Vildegon's theorized that when van Go came near Gogan on the street, 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 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 for their arms and their hands, and their legs and their chest, not their ears, although again got 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 hint sort of things to each other. For example, after van Gogh is sufficiently recovered, he writes to go Agin 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 the two even have this code word of sorts ittus, which means fish, if you know, like 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 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 dangerous war weapons, just swords and razors. I mean, seems like that might be bad enough, right. So whatever happened, it majorly shook up Van go 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 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 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 do it's not worth giving up on that and just making art for himself, accepting that or 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 Gogh wasn't really recovered mentally from this attack, and he was fearful that another major nervous attack could permanently impede his work. 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, 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 Go spent twelve months in the asylum, and he 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 would do copies of dela QoI 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 The Starring Night at this time, and thought that it was a failure, not at all what he was hoping. It would be the masterpiece that's 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 work with a Vengeance. So two of I think your favorites from the period, Sarah Thatch cottages at Cordeville and the church at Overre 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 of France, but they just have this really nice color. That Thatched cottage as one has a this pale green tone to almost the entire painting, which I mean, I know that sounds weird, but it ends up being quite lovely. So he's again producing a lot of work. But then in July, perhaps over guilt relating to his financial dependency on his brother, or just another attack seizing him. He shot himself in the chest in a wheat field, and it took van Go 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, he said, quote, I shot myself. I only hope I hadn't bought sed it. What I've done is nobody else's business. I'm free to do what I like with my own body. And 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. Van Go responded, I believe, so don't accuse anybody else, which sounds a little bit suspicious. It's 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 authors suggest that two teens visiting for the summer 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. Finitely. And then finally, one of the boys, Rene Secoton, admitted in nineteen fifty six 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 didn't admit to actually shooting Van Go. Kind of an important distinction. In fact, um, this guy said that the artist stole the 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, 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 there's that there are many unanswered questions regarding Van God'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 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 m cold cases that are hundreds of years old can be solved, sometimes very true. But what about his legacy? After his sunflower filled funeral and overre Van Go finally started to become famous. It's 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 Goh was just completely unknown, which is not the case right. No, people who could see his work did often like it. Guess like Monet and Goga and Bizarro 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 in him. And really tragically, he died just a few months after Vincent and passed on 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 be the Van Gogh 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 remark couple fact, but as late as nineteen o 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, they're poetic, they're incredibly friendly. As you said before, and as we've made quite clear, his life is perfect for research by professionals of all disciplines. 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 works. They're not just his life. Two of my favorite examples of this are really sort of science e high tech like. One is that there's a Cornell electrical engineering professor named ce Richard Johnson Jr. Who has used computer algorithms to create We've dense the maps of van Go's canvases, so the density of the thread patterns lets historians know if one 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 place 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 van Go's brilliant chrome yellows have faded over the years. By using UV light and simulating the aging process of old paint. They 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 unknown oninly 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, live and buy what are usually pretty expensive supplies, I mean oil paints and canvases. That's expensive stuff with no job. So THEO obviously supported him contributed um much of the money that van Go used to live, but Vangilt was clearly penny pinching too, so like painting over the old canvases, we mentioned that historians have figured that a huge number of Vango'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 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 in learning more, there's so much. I mean, obviously go look at um pictures, either in museums of course or online, but the trove of 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 person Van Gogh was. Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday. 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