In that famous collision with Gauguin's "iron pot casserole", Van Gogh cut off his own ear, and his personality and mental state quickly became unbalanced, leading to psychosis, epilepsy, depression and so on. Hiding in his body, he began to self-harm until he shot himself at the age of 37, completing this ultimate self-harm and ending his short life. Van Gogh is a madman.
Van Gogh was poor all his life, full of all kinds of failures in the secular sense, no fame and fortune, no love, unkempt appearance, rude behavior, all kinds of criticism and cold reception before his death, and even could not be understood and rejected by his family. Van Gogh is a tramp in the eyes of the world.
We can speculate that Van Gogh was born perfect. For a person born in poverty, taking the art road of burning money is of course a kind of self-abuse, and it is inevitable to experience all kinds of difficulties and obstacles. However, when we turn over the history of the Van Gogh family, we will be surprised to find that this statement is clumsy.
Van Gogh's family is smart, diligent, well-educated and business-minded, and mainly engaged in three occupations: priest, art dealer and painter.
No matter how many generations there are in the family tree, no one makes a living by hoes and sickles.
Van Gogh's father has six brothers and five sisters. His first uncle was a Dutchman Major General, a shipyard manager. His second uncle was an art dealer in Brussels and later became a painter. My uncle runs an art shop in Amsterdam, and my fourth uncle Vincent is the agent of Dutch Gubil. He was childless and weak, and even appointed Van Gogh as the heir to his career and property.
Van Gogh's father was a Protestant priest, perhaps the most frustrated of the six brothers, but he was the only one who didn't achieve social importance. But he is an intellectual family with his own office and study, and his mother has a maid to help with housework. Although he is not a rich and powerful family, he does not lack financial resources, nor does he eat potatoes for every meal. It is not an exaggeration to be divided into the middle class.
Exaggerated, the Van Gogh family was one of the largest art families in Europe at that time. If he can follow the "right path" arranged by his family, there will inevitably be a middle-class art dealer who is well-off, respected and envied, a talented Van Gogh whose story is still relished and memorable.
Van Gogh/Kloc-dropped out of school at the age of 0/5, and 16 began to make a living. He works as a salesman in Gubil Gallery in The Hague, where his uncle also works. Everything began to go smoothly. Van Gogh was a promising young man at that time.
His cleverness and erudition always show him something important. Even if a painting is not perfect, he looks at every detail, a dead branch full of hints, a properly handled shadow and a beam of sunshine. As long as he is moved, loved and appreciated, he is good at speaking out and conveying his feelings.
When customers come to shop, they will soon recognize him, gather around him, accept and love his love.
Because he can provide potential buyers with reasons that make their choices meaningful, so that when they receive friends and show pictures at home, they can tell these reasons in Kan Kan.
Van Gogh worked in a painting shop for four years and achieved many promotions. Van Gogh's family also regarded him as a new star in the European trading market. They were overjoyed and eager to further cultivate him. 1873, they transferred him to Gubil, London, where talented people were needed to engage in fire fighting business.
No one would have expected that this would be a turning point in his fate.
Van Gogh suffered his first love, Waterloo, and he couldn't extricate himself for several years. The whole life trajectory began to plummet. A young man full of energy and joy at work suddenly collapsed and became depressed and eccentric.
The van Gogh family tried to help him escape from this nightmare, transferred from London and sent to Paris;
The heroine has long been someone else's fiancee. People who are a little more rational and realistic know that this matter is hopeless and should withdraw. However, it is difficult for our Van Gogh to turn over a page, or he can't do it at all. He deliberately wandered between Paris and London to get close to his first love. He became indifferent to everything, as if he were willing to deliberately destroy himself and provide Gubil with various reasons to dismiss himself. He will casually criticize the works he is responsible for selling, and even criticize the artistic taste of customers and discourage them from buying a certain work. . . . . Van Gogh became a nuisance to his boss, colleagues and customers. The company can only let him find another job when he can't stand it.
During the following period from 1874 to 1880, he took a detour for six years, and everything he did was unsatisfactory and ended in failure.
He stubbornly walked on the road without knowing the goal. Maybe he hasn't recognized himself yet, or maybe he dare not admit his passion for painting?
In a word, it should be the worst period of his life, and he prepared for his own failure.
He worked as a primary school teacher and a bookstore clerk, and he couldn't persist in just a few months;
With the best financial and resource support of his family, Van Gogh went to Amsterdam Theological Seminary for more than 65,438+0 years, preparing to become a priest. He studied hard and sometimes even forced himself with cruel corporal punishment, but in the end he had to give up halfway.
Later, he lowered his requirements and wanted to be a missionary and practice in Borina Ri Coal Mine. But he was so enthusiastic and devoted that the church that paid him Weibo's salary was also dismissed. . . . .
Van Gogh never put the pursuit of art first from the beginning. For him, the most important thing is to seek redemption and save the soul. This is his deep-rooted values and the reason why he decided to follow in his father's footsteps and join in religion.
However, going deep into the miner's missionary life extinguished his religious ambition. He realized that any religious comfort was ridiculous for those who lived a life worse than slaves and buried underground all their lives; He wants to engage in the art of the poor.
Next, Van Gogh's life seems to follow a life cycle? -Mysterious 2-year cycle, including Borina Ri Coal Mine in front, he basically can only stay for 2 years at each station; At this point in time, Van Gogh's situation became unbearable, and something seemed to be broken in his mind. He must escape to the next stop and find a new world to be reborn.
1879.7 Van Gogh decided to devote himself to art with his consistent impulse and enthusiasm. He wants to start painting by himself.
1880.6 wrote a letter, decided to subsidize my brother to engage in artistic creation, provided living expenses every month, and began to write the myth that the two brothers loved each other.
As a beginner in painting, Vincent showed amazing talent in both gregarious and wisdom.
First, loneliness will become a trap. We should actively establish relationships with various painters in order to learn from each other, which will effectively shorten the process of self-exploration.
Second, in the necessary time, prepare to be a mediocre painter in a down-to-earth manner; Mediocrity is a stage, which may take a long time, but it is inevitable.
Van Gogh decided to teach himself painting when he was 28. He is still in the groping stage of sketching method and has not received any formal training. It's a little late, and he also encountered many unexpected problems.
Generally speaking, oil painters and sketchers start very early and are regarded as talented or loving people from an early age. The initial graffiti and the exploration of ideas are basically intertwined.
On the other hand, Van Gogh's situation is very abnormal. When he first learned painting, his artistic taste and imagination were mature, but he could hardly make any decent works with his hands. He has a very clear modeling idea in his mind, but he is very clumsy in his hands, so he must constantly and repeatedly develop his intentions until he fully grasps his art.
Van Gogh encountered many difficulties because of his lack of skills, but he always overcame them with extraordinary willpower, calmness and patience, and then pulled through the difficulties.
From 1880 to 1885, his life trajectory basically repeats in a fixed pattern of going back and forth between his parents' home and other places-for economic and physical reasons, Van Gogh had to rely on his parents, but he didn't stay long, which led to family crisis and forced him to leave.
After living with my parents at Eton College for 1.5 years, my second love was opposed by my family, which triggered a war at home. Later, because Van Gogh refused to go to church, the war escalated and the relationship between father and son broke down. My father's tone was firm, and Van Gogh was unequivocal. He immediately packed up his things and went to The Hague.
He has smelled that "staying at home is not a long-term solution" and made arrangements in advance.
When Van Gogh was a missionary on Borina Day, he had learned to live without eating anything. Now he studies painting and risks his health. After receiving the money from Theo, he immediately spent it, bought expensive painting materials and found a model.
Despite this, Van Gogh still lived beyond his means in The Hague and was heavily in debt. Before he was 365,438+0 years old, his physical condition was already worrying. Therefore, he must assess the situation and sell his works tomorrow. At present, he must hide his strength, take good care of his health, reduce expenses, get rid of debts, and ensure that painting can continue and return to his parents.
1884 returned to his parents' home in Newnan, and he was kicked out by his family again because he had an affair with the girl next door and his father died.
1885, Van Gogh stayed in Antwerp/Rubens for nearly a year, and he fell into the same old habit again. As he said in the letter, "when I received the money, although I was hungry, my main desire was not to eat, but to paint, so I immediately started looking for models until my money ran out."
During this period, Vincent's health was seriously damaged, his teeth were broken and he was infected with syphilis. He realized that his life was about to die young.
"Expect to live to 60 years old, and a person who is nearly 30 years old must live to at least 40 years old." It can be seen that Van Gogh is sober and pessimistic, and his expectations for his life are not high, and he has dropped to 20 years old. Who thought about it? Van Gogh's life ended in the heyday of creation.
Van Gogh can't stay any longer. This time he took refuge in his brother Theo and ran to Paris.
This marks a new direction, and Van Gogh entered the stage of pure creation.
He came into contact with different impressionist schools such as separatism and color separation, forged a beautiful friendship with several people without dark clouds, and met Gauguin, a "dangerous figure", which brought a turning point for his artistic life behind him.
Van Gogh has more respect and affection for The Hague School of Painting, but obviously he can't meet his current requirements in color. He began to abandon the dark and heavy scenery in the north, embrace the bright and colorful colors such as magenta, bright blue and colorful yellow, greedily devour their brightness and pour it on the canvas;
Van Gogh also understood why Theo was always reluctant to mention and promote his dark works before, and he no longer mentioned "creating a poor art for the poor"
Technically, he was an impressionist student who followed the rules for a while. On Monday, he studied pissarro, and on Tuesday, he seemed to hand over his homework to Seurat, absorbing both Impressionism and color separation.
But he is still consciously groping, taking his own way, introducing automatic writing into painting, and combining brushwork with coloring. In fact, it is also a new movement, but Van Gogh was too isolated or evasive to play his own banner.
With Van Gogh's progress in mastering art, even though his works are still neglected, he seems less and less worried about selling his paintings, at least less and less unwilling to cater to certain tastes of some people.
We all know that Van Gogh is knowledgeable and extremely intelligent, but he is not a good communicator. In the debate with these avant-garde painters, he can always find solid arguments and convincing examples. If he can be gentle, people can accept his rare knowledge and tolerate his strangeness. However, he is too straightforward, too keen on truth, and completely careless about methods. He is indiscriminate and sometimes even annoying. . . . Van Gogh is still the lonely self, wandering on the edge of impressionism.
Van Gogh's life in Paris was very fruitful, but two years later, he also lost a lot of blood, almost fell ill, became an alcoholic, and sought excitement excessively. Excessive absinthe and tobacco stimulated his already high state.
After a long time, Van Gogh began to get tired of the frivolity and ruthlessness of Paris, the stupid civil war and the incomprehensible xenophobia within the painter group. In any case, Van Gogh absorbed the strengths of all schools of modern painting, and he was eager to lighten the burden of Theo, so he did not regret leaving Paris.
In arles, Van Gogh ushered in his first creative peak. Like the locomotive of painting, he never stopped and created a series of amazing masterpieces.
He immediately found his own style in arles, which he groped for for a long time, and drew a picture with powerful, accurate and incoherent brushwork, a carnival line.
The weather in arles is violent, direct and bright.
Sometimes it is irritable and hot, there is no wind and no shade. Van Gogh stayed alone in the wheat field and didn't care at all. He enjoys himself like a cicada, calling for all kinds of yellow, light sulfur and light lemon gold. . .
Sometimes the wind is shocking and intoxicating, stronger than high-alcohol liquor, blowing faster and faster, and can overturn the fence, but this will not stop Van Gogh's enthusiasm at all. He still has to go out and paint, set up an easel on the ground, and sometimes even spread the canvas on the ground and paint on his knees because the easel can't be fixed at all.
As you can imagine, this painter is alone in the wild, kneeling there to paint in the wind. This kind of image is far from being understood by ordinary people as painters. People have to pose and brew for a long time before they can gently tap a few strokes on the canvas. Look at this one, like a madman, running in the wild on a windy day. What's this, baby?
When painting at home, he will wear a carnival hat and put candles in it. The difference is that with the mood of the day, he will wear a yellow ribbon today and a blue ribbon tomorrow. . .
These scenes are not conducive to his reputation, and the locals will soon think that he is a fool or a whispering madman.
However, our Van Gogh has no time to think and care about these things.
The sky in arles is exceptionally clear and brightly colored. If Newnan's black paintings are Van Gogh's "hell", then the glory here is his "heaven";
Van Gogh pushed the light of color to the extreme, and he didn't feel that he was working when he was working. Brush strokes followed. He uses color to express his passion, and the speed is getting faster and faster. In a few hours, he can create an extraordinary oil painting, as if in a passionate race. The efficiency is amazing.
Let's choose a few words from his letter and feel Van Gogh's poetic passion for color and his talent for feeling happy.
"Now I am sober about painting, or as blind as a lover. . . Speaking of being tired, this is not a problem. I can draw another picture overnight, which is about mistresses. "
"These days, nature is beautiful, and I sometimes wake up to the extreme and feel that I no longer exist. As if in a dream, a painting automatically came under my brush. "
"Isn't this a natural impulse,
Emotional sincerity is guiding us, and this impulse is sometimes extremely strong. When we work, we don't feel that we are working, and our brush strokes follow. The relationship between strokes is like the words in a speech or a letter. "
However, the good times did not last long. As we all know, in the later period of arles, a tragic "ear-cutting incident" happened, which will be described in the later chapter Van Gogh and Gauguin.
After the conflict with Gauguin, Van Gogh was sent to arles Hospital, and his personality and mental state were out of balance. He became extremely fragile and depressed, and any emotional shock would lead to illness. The enthusiasm for painting has also disappeared, with the least achievements and the least progress. Convinced that his art was worthless, he began to belittle himself and hurt himself.
After being discharged from arles Hospital, Van Gogh's helpless tragic situation was presented to the world by the local librarian, Mr. Julian, a sad witness: We were still young at that time, and we were all stupid young people. When we saw this man wearing baggy overalls and a cheap straw hat, we walked silently, laughing and cursing all the way for fun. Now that I think about it, I am ashamed. I threw cabbage roots at him myself. . . . . He looks very strange, smoking a pipe and going to the field to paint. The tall man has a hunchback and looks crazy. He always runs away and doesn't dare to look at anyone. Maybe that's why we chased him and scolded him. He never gets into trouble, even if he drinks, which is common. . . . This man is very gentle and needs love very much, but what we left him was the great loneliness and terrible loneliness of that day. . . .
After reading this passage, people can't help crying. Van Gogh looks like a rough tramp and madman, but close to his heart, we will be surprised by his erudition, intelligence, delicacy and talent. No matter how cold and cruel the world hits him, he always returns with warmth, turning his tortured and painful life into an intoxicating beauty, which makes people sigh that suffering can be so gentle. . . . .
Because of the exclusion and harassment of arles citizens, Van Gogh voluntarily entered a mental hospital, which may be beneficial to him and others.
Theo arranged for him to go to St. Remy's Hospital. Van Gogh began to fight the disease for nearly a year. As for weapons, there are only paintings.
For Van Gogh, painting can strengthen the will and stabilize the mood, and it is the most effective lightning rod against diseases. But to a certain extent, he will be dragged down by the two out-of-control forces of painting and disease, and he will be in a dilemma and miserable. Painting seems to save him, but it also engulfs reason and sends him to hell;
Between the onset of illness, Van Gogh can best perceive the world in Ming Rui.
Once allowed, Van Gogh painted from morning till night until his next illness, as if to find lost time or to race against the little time left in the future.
Van Gogh's rage, if not expressed by color, is implied by lines.
In the olive garden/cypress series of this period, Van Gogh was an expressionist line, tortuous, euphemistic and distorted.
These paintings are wild and extremely rational. He may be aware of the madness that causes the world to fall apart at any time, but his painting skills are superb and better than before.
Van Gogh lived in a secluded dormitory all day and almost never left home. He doesn't know that the outside world is fighting around his works, and everything is developing in a good direction. Van Gogh's time seems to be coming, although it is too late:
1. Theo began to realize that his brother was creating a great oil painting. He had to beat the time, began to publicize vigorously, contacted the art world in many ways, and invited celebrities to appreciate Van Gogh's works.
2. Albert arie, a promising young writer and critic and editor-in-chief of Modernist magazine, wrote a long monograph introducing this lonely fighter in the art world.
3. It was the first time that the work officially participated in the Brussels Art Exhibition, which became a major event at that time and aroused strong repercussions from the industry. Pissarro went to the scene to see Van Gogh's works, which particularly attracted the audience; Monet also appeared, claiming that Van Gogh's paintings were the best works in the art exhibition.
4. Two good friends, Lautreck and Sinek, rose to support Van Gogh in an artistic argument, issued gauntlets and risked their lives to fight against those stupid opponents of Van Gogh.
From lack of nutrition to economic dependence, Van Gogh's paintings have been looked down upon in his lifetime. He endured the unbearable tension and pressure of ordinary people and constantly lived in the fear of lack of money and hunger. . . These pressures continued until he was 35 years old, and he created works that will last forever, which shows that he is an extremely strong person, a real man and a fighter of life.
1890, after a trip to the depths of hell, Van Gogh seemed to live up to expectations, overcome his illness and recover. He doesn't want to stay in San Remy any longer. He needs to go out for a walk and change the air. Theo also thought it would be more reassuring to have his brother around, so he arranged for Van Gogh to come to the banks of the Watts River and asked the art-loving psychiatrist Jiashe to take care of him.
However, since the famous ear-cutting incident, Van Gogh's psychological fragility cannot be fully established in a short time. He seems to have recovered from a serious illness, but he is still super sensitive and extremely sensitive. Any emotional change may have a dramatic impact on him, and it is useless for others to be careful.
But Van Gogh was so "normal" that everyone thought he had fully recovered. Theo, while rejoicing, began to tell his younger brother what he said, complaining bitterly: johanna was short of milk, the child was infected by milk, and he was just out of danger, and the family was exhausted to the extreme; His career is threatened. With his current income, he has to support a family of three, Van Gogh and his mother. Even if they tighten their belts, life will be very difficult. . . .
Van Gogh's inner fear and sadness can be imagined. Theo/kloc-supported him month by month for 0/0 years. How can he snatch bread from the children now? Obviously he has become a great burden to Theo; He hoped that Theo's family could come to Ouwei for a holiday and the little ones could breathe fresh air, but they still insisted on going to Holland, and Van Gogh was left in a huge unfathomable loneliness as before.
"We all think that bread is not sustainable. . . I feel sad, and the storm that threatens you is also on my head. What should I do? . . . My life is the same, even my roots have been hit and my steps have stumbled. "
Theo certainly saw his brother's emotional changes from Van Gogh's reply and raised an ominous premonition. He immediately sent two letters to his wife, urging his younger brother to relax in a relaxed tone. Everything is not as bad as he imagined.
So the tragedy began and could no longer be stopped.
1890 On July 27th, Van Gogh picked up a pistol he got from nowhere and shot himself in the left chest, but failed to hit his heart. After more than 20 hours, he was infected with the wound, lying in Theo's arms and stopped breathing. When his consciousness sank, he said the last sentence, "Now, I want to come back."
As a supplement, let's go back and analyze the reasons for Van Gogh's suicide.
A. Character/destiny
It has long been said that personality determines fate, but the truth is often very simple.
Van Gogh was unruly by nature and stubbornly refused to bow to reality. Once he set a goal, he kept moving forward, regardless of everyone's opposition, and at any cost, even if he was cursed and suffered unimaginable hardships, he must firmly move forward toward his own vision.
This character is the root of his absolute pain and absolute success.
As long as he is easy-going and flexible, he should be good at investing, and with his intelligence and hard work, he will not suffer such a great loss of personality.
Used in artistic creation, it is this desperate spirit that has created the genius Van Gogh known to the world today.
Used in other aspects, such as feelings, it has become a psychological defect that the woman dare not avoid.
(This will be carried out separately in the chapter "Van Gogh's Love History")
B. Family calendar
The Van Gogh family is psychologically fragile, which is reflected in at least two generations.
Uncle Vincent has been devastated for many years, and his body will is very fragile; It is said that Cole's younger brother committed suicide in South Africa; My sister William Mina died in a mental hospital;
Van Gogh was depressed since childhood. After the ear cutting incident, his personality and psychology were unbalanced, his sensitivity was abnormal, he had audio-visual hallucinations, and he also had epilepsy and mania from time to time.
C. create
As Van Gogh said in his letter,
"My own work, I put my life into this career, and my reason sank by half. . . "
"I devoted myself to painting, and I lost my mind."
But this can't stop him from indulging and taking risks in painting, just like "fishermen always know that the sea is dangerous and the storm is terrible, but they never feel that these dangers can stop them from going out to sea"
A. painting
Van Gogh had an irresistible passion for painting. Before he faced this point squarely, whenever he encountered misfortune, Van Gogh did not talk to people, but resorted to painting. Even if it is only a few clumsy and lame strokes, he can rebuild harmony and find inner peace in his paintings.
Van Gogh was nearly 30 years old before he officially decided to start painting and take the road of artistic creation. Before that, he had never held a brush, let alone formal training. For ordinary people, this is really a crazy decision; But Van Gogh didn't care, because he realized that he had a pair of hands that could paint naturally, and painting would become an inseparable part of his life.
B. Take a walk
All members of the Van Gogh family love walking, just as some families like watching plays.
This was inherited by Van Gogh's father and passed on to Van Gogh to the greatest extent, and no one can match it.
Van Gogh was independent from childhood, taciturn and did not like to associate with others. Like a wild cat, he often runs away from home for ten kilometers to explore nature. This lonely and wild walk made him wander in his own world, and seemed to find infinite happiness and infinite fantasy.
As an adult, walking is also the time for him to find himself and return to his original heart; No matter how much pain he suffers, when he walks, he will bring his rare gift of feeling happy to the extreme. From the people, events and scenes he sees, he can find all kinds of beauty and feel the happiness of life in any case.
On the other hand, it is this close relationship with nature and his keen observation that laid the foundation for his later artistic path, because painting itself is first and foremost a visual art.
This is also confirmed in his later paintings. His paintings must go to nature, draw real things, stay away from modern and historical materials, and have no ruins and imagination.
Balzac once said that "art is man and nature", which is similar to Van Gogh's view.
C. Writing/correspondence
If it is purely natural, Van Gogh is definitely more suitable as a writer, at least an epistolary writer, rather than a painter.
From more than 900 letters he wrote magnificently (more than 600 of which were addressed to Theo), we can see a writer riding a horse of language and letting go of the reins.
From the perspective of people at that time, it was difficult to understand his deeds without defining him as a madman: his appearance was rough, he was unkempt, his behavior was weird, and he was down and out like a tramp; Doing things is extremely fanatical and easy to go to extremes;
But from his letters, we will be surprised to see another van Gogh, who is sharp-minded, intelligent and knowledgeable to an incredible extent; Seeing Van Gogh's delicate and gentle inner world, no matter how much humiliation and injustice he experienced, his words were always full of warmth, excusing the world, and he was only a few strokes in his own situation, showing helplessness.
He can always analyze his feelings quickly and skillfully, his thoughts are clear and meticulous, and he has his own unique views on everything.
These letters are of great literary and humanistic value.
D. reading
Van Gogh's brilliant writing style is of course related to his love of reading and diligence in thinking.
Books are another inexhaustible source of happiness for him.
No matter what Van Gogh is experiencing, no matter what others think or see, our Van Gogh has not wasted his life wherever he goes.
These four passions have been with him all his life, far away from society and family, and self-taught, showing his thoughts of freedom and independence.