VINCENT VAN GOGH (Dutch, 1853-1890) is one of the great, tragic/romantic myths of an artist of all time – the mad, misunderstood genius, never appreciated in his lifetime, who dedicated his every waking moment to his craft; whose inner demons drove him to cut off his own ear in a fury, and later shoot himself in a wheat field, dying at age 37, after years of mental illness, depression, alcoholism, and poverty. When I was in elementary school, a teacher told me how he cut off his ear with a razor when the woman he loved left him, and he gave it to her. I still hear this disturbing romance-and-tragedy-tinged story passed on, although it’s untrue; he cut a piece of his ear off in a state of manic depression following a fight with his friend Gauguin, then gave it to a prostitute at a brothel. Van Gogh is often portrayed as a simple-minded lunatic, but if you read his letters, you see a man articulate and intelligent, complicated, wholly dedicated to art and artfully self-taught in studying masters and improving his craft, who painted with a passion that we can assume was unhealthily obsessive, neglecting his physical health. In the ten years from when he decided to become an artist until his death, he created 900 paintings! He only painted from life – still lifes, self-portraits, landscapes and street scenes – and yet nothing he painted looked like what we see in the world around us. Is this how he saw?? His use of brush strokes and color is bizarre and intense and rhythmic and exciting and one-of-a-kind. Possibly the most influential artist of all time, but definitely the most famous of them all.
see Van Gogh’s Self-Portraits
see Van Gogh’s Portraits of Roulin
[Extra special thanks to www.art-vangogh.com, a fantastic website with an immense gallery of Van Gogh’s work as well as some great biographical info!]
Read the comic book, “Brush with Peril”:
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