Letter sketches of churches at Petersham and Turnham Green from "Van Gogh: The Life" (November 1876).
By DEBORAH SOLOMON, New York Times, Published: November 25, 2011
Vincent VAN GOGH tends to be remembered as an art saint whose radiant paintings of sunflowers and starry skies seem somehow imbued with moral valor. He identified with the poor and marginalized, and looked upon art as a humanitarian calling. He died unknown, at age 37, and you suspect he will always be a shining hero not only to people who worship art but to those who feel their own talents remain insufficiently acknowledged by their peers — meaning, most everyone.
Vincent VAN GOGH tends to be remembered as an art saint whose radiant paintings of sunflowers and starry skies seem somehow imbued with moral valor. He identified with the poor and marginalized, and looked upon art as a humanitarian calling. He died unknown, at age 37, and you suspect he will always be a shining hero not only to people who worship art but to those who feel their own talents remain insufficiently acknowledged by their peers — meaning, most everyone.
VAN GOGH - The Life
By Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith -Illustrated. 953 pp. Random House. $40
“Self-Portrait With Straw Hat” from “Vang Gogh: The Life” (August/September 1887).
On the other hand, is it possible that we have him entirely wrong, that he was just a creep and selfish user who felt that a life in art basically meant never having to say “Thank you”? Such is the portrait that emerges from Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith’s energetic, hulking and negatively skewed “Van Gogh: The Life.” The artist, as they see him, was bitter and manipulative, more of a perpetrator than a victim. The eldest child of a minister in the Dutch Reformed Church, he grew up in a rural corner of Holland and was not exactly an easy son. For part of his adulthood, we are told, in “a campaign that seemed intended to mortify and embarrass his parents,” he moved into their parsonage in Nuenen and shocked the congregation by swearing, smoking a pipe, drinking Cognac from a flask, dismissing the locals as “clodhoppers” and loudly proclaiming his atheism.
His financial dependency on his brother Theo is already well known, but it is not until now that anyone has publicly accused him of being lavish. Although he pleaded poverty and was forced to cadge, in reality he lived beyond his means, “never budgeting and never saving,” at least according to the authors. They itemize his purchases: art supplies, novels, reproductions of other artists’ work, the services of a “little girl he paid to sweep his studio” as well as models who posed for him. “The problem went beyond simple profligacy,” the authors write. He had a “delusional sense of entitlement.”
Full review at the New York Times.
Earlier story on blog together with local publishing details.
His financial dependency on his brother Theo is already well known, but it is not until now that anyone has publicly accused him of being lavish. Although he pleaded poverty and was forced to cadge, in reality he lived beyond his means, “never budgeting and never saving,” at least according to the authors. They itemize his purchases: art supplies, novels, reproductions of other artists’ work, the services of a “little girl he paid to sweep his studio” as well as models who posed for him. “The problem went beyond simple profligacy,” the authors write. He had a “delusional sense of entitlement.”
Full review at the New York Times.
Earlier story on blog together with local publishing details.