The Cold Truth —— The Biography of Van Gogh

I studied the biography of Van Gogh very hard, from June 20 18 to early February 20 19. Besides being very thick, it also lies in its writing technique, which is not a chronicle, but that each chapter will be written around several themes, and each theme will be as detailed as possible, so it will explain the whole story clearly, and sometimes I can't help laughing at my poor memory.

This has to say the characteristics of this book. There are not only extensive references to academic works and rigorous textual research, but also novel-like fluent writing and dramatic plot comparison, striving to restore the real Van Gogh with facts and arguments. In particular, the study of Van Gogh's death is reasonable and convincing. The Biography of Van Gogh is the best biography in recent years, and it is estimated that it will be difficult to surpass it in the short term. Yilin's consistent high quality also escorted this book. Although the quotation in the second volume has become a running script, I don't like it very much.

Van Gogh, a post-impressionist painter, was born in a poor pastor's family in the Netherlands and had a rich uncle who was an art dealer. In fact, he grew up to meet the expectations of his family, but he was disappointed again and again. A person who loves nature, is withdrawn, has social obstacles, is difficult to deal with extreme emotions, and often falls into his own fantasies. Such a person's life is doomed to be miserable.

When he was young, he played truant because he couldn't get along with his classmates. His parents sent him as an apprentice to Uncle Saint, an art dealer. It's a pity that he is not cut out for business. In order to win the trust of his family, he worked as a tutor for a short time and worked hard to become a priest for a long time. He followed in the footsteps of his father and grandparents and became a preacher and sower. Unfortunately, he can neither accept the necessary systematic study nor get along with his audience. He argued with friends, teachers, family and almost everyone.

He believes that the purpose of religion, literature and art should be to appease people's hearts, but his fanatical heart makes his efforts difficult to meet the needs of reality. He always failed, always needed the help of his family (mainly his later brother Theo), and was unable to stand on his own feet for a long time. After failing in business, teaching, preaching and painting, a hobby he cultivated since childhood, became his only lifeline.

He left home in anger and started his career as a professional painter. He asks for guidance, but he doesn't want to accept other people's opinions. He stubbornly practiced in his own way, often falling out with others and becoming an unsociable person. His economic pillar is his brother Theo. He is extravagant, does not make a budget and does not know how to be frugal. He has been leaving his job to ask Theo for the cost of living and art, and he will often get angry in his letters. Such people, in today's view, are "cannibals" that everyone dare not avoid.

Think of Mr Strickland in The Moon and Sixpence. He left his wife and children in London and went to Paris to pursue his painting dream alone, but never brought so much trouble to so many people. But he is also focused on his own style, born poor, and borrowing money from others has become a habit.

This is related to Vincent's worldview at that time. He believes that appearance can express essence, and the type of essence determines the fate of characters. He is an artist, so he should look like an artist. When you are down and out, it is natural to get help. The world he saw was a world full of all kinds of images, and the images were full of emotions. Therefore, his artistic goal is to create works that touch people's hearts and express profound meaning and extensive relevance with the simplest image that embodies the essence.

His burning fanatical heart made him practice very hard after finding some artistic ways to express his feelings. The same painting is often repeated many times. Even with the advice of his peers and criticism from relatives and friends, he still went his own way, which also gave him his own unique style. But he can't see the real world clearly. His people and paintings are one, as if he answered the sentence "No madness, no existence".

He has no friends, and even if he does, it's just a friendship that can't last long. Because he never learned to associate with others, he didn't know how to compromise, he couldn't handle practical difficulties, but he was very demanding of others. As an escape, he often falls into his own fantasy.

The British drama Doctor Who season 5 episode 10, the doctor took Van Gogh back to the museum where his works were exhibited. The doctor asked the commentator how to evaluate Van Gogh, and the commentator said:

For me, Van Gogh is the best of all painters, of course, the greatest, the greatest painter of all time, and the most beloved. His mastery of color is the best. He turned a miserable life into ecstatic beauty. Pain is easy to describe, but using your passion and pain to describe the ecstasy, joy and magnificence of our world has never been done before. Maybe no one will. In my opinion, the strange savage roaming in Yuan Ye in Provence is not only the greatest artist in the world, but also one of the greatest people in history.

Leave home several times, go home several times. I started as an art dealer and worked as a bookstore clerk in the middle. I preached crazily until I finally made up my mind to practice my faith with art. At first, his paintings were gloomy. He prefers sketches to colors. Under the constant urging of his younger brother, he began to try colors. At first, he still didn't like to use beautiful and rich colors. The paintings he tried to commercialize were gloomy and depressing, just like sketching with several rare colors. From early sketching to experimenting with color, there is a prominent theme in his paintings, that is, portrait painting. Most of his characters come from the bottom of society, such as farmers, miners and weavers. He used his paintings to practice his belief in the suffering and redemption of Jesus.

I have to admit that Vincent's early paintings are mainly dark grayish brown, and his brushwork is depressed and poor. He lives among farmers and wants to paint their afterlife, but his fantasies and paranoia always create ugly works. After his father died, his feelings had the best outlet, which allowed him to find his own artistic path. The Bible left by his father should have been bequeathed to his younger brother Theo, but Vincent drew a picture after seeing it. 1885 10, Bible: Still Life Completion. Father's heavy, regular and perfect Bible is a kind of repressed lilac gray, which seems to tell the narrowness of his father's gospel, while the prominent blue and orange are those sad memories: constant conflict with his father, having sex with a peasant girl, and Murray-style treatment of margot Begemann under family opposition. In the lower right corner of the Bible, there are bright novels, full of corners and serious wear and tear. The joy of life is the life he can't get. In the upper right corner of the Bible is the candle extinguished on the candlestick, just like himself. He's accomplished nothing. That's it.

But by combining personal feelings with artistic creation, I finally achieved my own style. Things from the real world were refined into concise intentions by his emotions. At first glance, it seems so. On closer inspection, this is not the case at all. Come to think of it, it seems so. He discovered art that he had never seen before. He saw it with his own eyes and created it with his own heart. His short-lived impression was swept away by him, and it became eternal at the expense of personal energy and life.

Close cooperation between the two brothers.

1887, Paris, France, brother Theo failed to propose marriage, which enabled him and his brother Vincent to work closely together. Seeing the market of new art represented by "Impressionism", Theo began to borrow the privilege of his store manager in Gupier to buy and sell the paintings of Impressionist painters. Vincent's extensive artistic knowledge, keen insight and equally poor artist status enable him to identify and attract excellent paintings and artists who often fall into poverty. The cooperation between them caught up with the trend of new art, and Theo was able to open up his own art market. Vincent communicated with more artists and tried different styles of painting, which was a happy time for the two brothers.

Japanese printmaking

Unexpectedly, 1878 Japan's exhibition at the World Expo brought "Japanese style" to Europe. Japanese woodcut prints are regarded as the basic expressive force of a "primitive" culture with their original coloring methods, exaggerated perspective and stylized images. In the eyes of symbolists, it keeps close contact with the essential world, so it is sought after and imitated.

Vincent's departure

After Theo failed to propose marriage, he and Vincent started an avant-garde lifestyle, drinking and whoring. This extreme lifestyle seriously threatens the above health. Vincent thought it was a "curse" and he was killing his brother, so he "retreated" from his brother. This is because he clearly knows that he will bring destruction to his brother. Hard-won intimacy had to be abandoned and turned into long-term communication.

Sunflowers and oleander

Vincent's creation follows his inner feelings, and the people and things in his paintings are also the projection of his personal feelings. His paintings are his heart and the color of life. He can draw sunflowers and oleanders, and he will be attracted by the flowers blooming everywhere in the garden. From their generous bloom, from their crazy birth and poor decline, he saw his own shadow. Productive and declining, this is his portrayal at that time. Or his life can only be like this.

Tug of war with Gauguin

The two brothers invited Gauguin to the "Yellow Room" to fulfill Vincent's dream, but Gauguin's shrewd delay made Vincent often fall into repeated and contradictory demands. When Vincent's dream of unity as an impressionist faded away, his guilt and remorse pushed him to the brink of collapse. He began to defend his studio: the exaggerated promise of future success, the guarantee of a new life and the pursuit of brotherhood. Knowing that Theo was ill, he began to abuse himself. He returned to a state of self-destruction. He seeks something that can make him feel calm and comforted, so that he won't feel guilty and cursed, and his life can go on, he won't get lost in loneliness and nothingness, he won't stop every step in fear, and he won't nervously calculate the harm that may be unintentionally caused to others.

The Creative Motivation of Starry Night

That coffee shop, which is open all night, also provides some comfort for people like him who have no hometown and no family. But for Vincent, the short-lived calming effect of absinthe and gas lamps was never enough. He couldn't accept his sneaky assertion: "Art, like anything else, is just a dream. A person's self is nothing. " His eyes inevitably turned to the starry new sky, where he saw another kind of perfection, which was far away, but more real and profound. With the failure of his "Yellow House" project, his longing for the future has been poured into the canvas, so he can express a transcendental truth through colors and strokes with unprecedented tenderness: to capture the lonely emotional world outside Gare Cafe, especially the hope of redemption, no matter how weak and distant this hope is.

Sex and painting

Vincent was obsessed with painting because of psychological and physical problems, especially syphilis. Because painting and indulgence cannot be balanced, and indulgence will paralyze his brain. For health care, he can only inject all his vitality into the creation of works of art. He regarded art as a lover and painting as sexual intercourse, and created a fertile work in Rapid Eruption, but he gave up not only sex, but also his wife and family. He replaced children with paintings.

The Argument between Gauguin and Vincent

Gauguin insisted that only by separating the image from reality and processing and transforming it through imagination, thinking and memory can we grasp the elusive experience essence. Artists should pursue pure conscious painting, liberate themselves from the interference of reality through a series of abstractions, and integrate messy experiences into pure concepts. Gao prefers painting indoors. In silence and meditation, he can process real materials into pictures, and his paintings are more systematic and detailed. Gauguin abandoned his family and children, and his calculation was ruthless.

Vincent loved nature since he was a child, and his paintings depended on models and perspective frames. All his paintings are based on reality. Because of poor painting skills, it is necessary to use antagonistic colors and deeply personalized symbols to complete the works. Vincent prefers painting in the wild, improvising, rough and colorful. Vincent values family and brotherhood.

After failing to master Gauguin's painting method, Vincent began to fight back and return to his special painting method. He drew two different chairs to show the difference between himself and Gauguin. His own chair is bright, simple, concise and durable, while Gauguin's chair is fancy, beautiful, dark and redundant.

Gauguin painted Vincent who was painting sunflowers, ironically he only saw the flowers in reality and ignored the vast imaginary world outside.

Vincent is crazy.

When Gauguin was about to leave, Vincent felt that he had completely failed. He cut off his left ear and gave it to Gauguin, and he was locked up in the hospital. After that, repeated insanity made the neighbors submit a petition on the grounds of public safety and let the police tie him to the hospital.

Starry night and fate

The stars gather in a whirlpool, the clouds can shine, and the moon can be as bright as the sun-Vincent's ultimate tranquility behind the starlight is actually the negative emotion after "latent" epilepsy, and the grand world outlook and religious fanaticism are the products of neurological diseases. He thought he had painted a "soothing" work, but in fact his brain had already been damaged, and the road to self-destruction was irreversible. Are artists born? This is the price of beauty. Poe, Yukio Mishima, Woolf, etc. Are all people suffering from mental illness and have written works different from ordinary people? Some things are predestined.

luck

188 1 year, after the salon in Paris, France lost its government sponsorship, artists in various fields had to face a crowded, noisy and competitive world composed of private art dealers, galleries and auction houses. Critics and comments flocked to identify this blank area to attract the attention of the dazzling bourgeoisie to buy fireworks.

Gauguin and Bernard promoted a new school including Vincent and himself to the critics in order to gain a place in avant-garde art. The critics took a fancy to Vincent's genius image of epilepsy and thought that his works broke the illusion of reality and pointed to the core of human experience. Artists are just abandoned by society and avant-garde art. Out of love for life and art, they cut off their ears and have enough publicity points. In this respect, Vincent became the theme of the first issue of French Courier.

graveyard

After Vincent died, he couldn't hold a funeral in Orwell's church, because he was a foreign Protestant, and he might have committed suicide. In the end, he can only rest in a cemetery in the suburbs.

The moon and sixpence documentary

This book is like compiling a dictionary of Vincent Van Gogh's life, with a great deal of information and workload. Compared with the romance of longing for life, the imagination and purity of the moon and sixpence, The Biography of Van Gogh has a cold truth, and the cruelty of the real world is far from being dealt with by a fanatical heart. People who want to be artists might as well have a look.