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merlandre's review against another edition
4.0
I gave this 4 stars. If what you want is a thorough, detailed biography of Vincent Van Gogh, you would give it 5 stars. I was looking for some insight having seen the exhibit on tour recently. At close to 1500 pages I learned a lot about his family, associates, and about his tortured life. I'll admit that I skim read a lot but the story was clear. A focused genius with serious mental health problems. Not appreciated during his brief lifetime. He had very difficult interpersonal relations. I'm glad to have read this and if you want to know a lot about Van Gogh, this is your book.
aprilsc0tt's review against another edition
4.0
I began this biography as a wide-eyed Van Gogh worshipper. A 19 year old history student. Over the last five years, I struggled to finish the book as it completely deconstructed my conceptions of Vincent, art, suffering, and self. It is a thoroughly unromantic, beautiful exploration of a complex & complicated man.
neilrcoulter's review
3.0
“Trust in God who sees everything and knows everything,” said Vincent Van Gogh’s mother, Anna, “though His solution may be deeply sad.” This is a fitting summary of one of the saddest family chronicles imaginable. Nearly everyone in Vincent’s family ended life at least disappointed, if not depressed or insane. The glorious French sunlight that Vincent left us in his paintings covers a shadowy lifetime of seemingly unanswered prayers for harmony and wholeness in his family. The massive biography by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith portrays Vincent’s life as a long plea for reconciliation—with his pastor father especially, but also with his stoic mother, his enabling brother, and with fellow artists and the Paris art scene that didn’t understand him or accept him. It’s hard to see exactly where and why this breakdown of the family occurred—the biographers endeavor to present the bare facts, without interpretation of what was “really” happening (though of course any biography is an interpretation, not just the facts). The authors put a negative spin on some aspects of Vincent’s growing-up years that seems to me based more on knowing the tragic outcome than on a neutral view on what was really said and done.
What we learn for certain from this accounting of Vincent’s life is that he was an extraordinarily difficult person to get along with. He struggled all of his adult life with deep feelings of inadequacy, failure, and regret. With hindsight, we see many places in his story where, with our better understanding of depression, interventions could have greatly helped him. But at the time, even near the end of Vincent’s life when he was admitted to asylums, no one knew what depression was. The best diagnosis doctors could offer was that Vincent suffered from a “latent epilepsy” that caused mental seizures, not physical, which led to his darkest periods of depression and rage. The only treatment doctors could prescribe was to keep him in a safe place where he wouldn’t be able to harm himself or others. And after a certain period of apparently good mental health, they saw no reason not to release him back to the world, where he would meet exactly the same situations that brought about the madness in the first place. It all seems sad and ludicrous now, which shows how much we’ve learned in the decades since (and suggests how much we still have to learn).
In those later years of Vincent’s life, when he was in and out of asylums, the biographers want to suggest that his family, and even his beloved brother Theo, were heartless and cold toward him, not reaching out in love and support. But after the hundreds of pages detailing how awful Vincent was to his family, again and again, the reader wants to throw his hands up and say, “Well, what were they supposed to do, though?” They had given Vincent chance after chance and seen him throw it back in their faces every time. I know that by that point in the biography, I was exasperated with him! And only in his late 30s, there was probably little thought that the end was so near. I can understand if the family assumed that this was a short period in his life where he was safely looked after by someone else in an asylum.
“Exasperation” is a key word for my feelings at a lot of points in this 900-page biography. I wanted to learn more about Vincent, beyond the legend, and I suppose this book met that need. But it is a long book. I don’t fear long books—Middlemarch is my favorite novel and Les Misérables, Crime and Punishment, Anna Karenina, and other lengthy tomes are also favorites—but this book felt long. The writing is clear and precise, but something about the style felt ponderous and dull to me. All of it is “fine,” but none of it is “beautiful.”
The barrage of minutiae about Vincent’s day-to-day life really wore me down (one reason that I spent months reading this! There always seemed to be another book that I’d rather be reading, until I settled down and forced myself to just finish this one). Before reading the book, I thought that I liked him and his work. Having finished this biography, I find that he has now been thoroughly demystified for me. Getting to the end and finding that even his enduring legacy was in many ways manufactured by people who wanted or needed him to be famous—not that contemporaries saw his works and were instantly blown away by them (though I’m sure that’s some part of it, too)—was particularly disheartening. I would still like to read a collection of Vincent’s letters, because I sense that perhaps the biographers have given a negative reading to some of his writing; but I wish I felt more affection for him after learning this much about his life. It is at least nice to be able to place his work within a timeline and a story—it’s interesting to know, for example, that the sheaves of wheat painting I see at the Dallas Museum of Art is from the end of his life, when he was living in Auvers and still dreaming of recruiting Theo and his family to join him there. But for most people who want to learn about Vincent, I’d recommend a shorter book—probably one that focuses on his life and work from the period at Arles onward. That phase includes most of his best-known works, and what comes before is extremely repetitive and bleak. A shorter summary of his life up to that point will be sufficient for most readers.
I look forward to watching Loving Vincent and re-watching At Eternity’s Gate, which I think I’ll appreciate more this time.
What we learn for certain from this accounting of Vincent’s life is that he was an extraordinarily difficult person to get along with. He struggled all of his adult life with deep feelings of inadequacy, failure, and regret. With hindsight, we see many places in his story where, with our better understanding of depression, interventions could have greatly helped him. But at the time, even near the end of Vincent’s life when he was admitted to asylums, no one knew what depression was. The best diagnosis doctors could offer was that Vincent suffered from a “latent epilepsy” that caused mental seizures, not physical, which led to his darkest periods of depression and rage. The only treatment doctors could prescribe was to keep him in a safe place where he wouldn’t be able to harm himself or others. And after a certain period of apparently good mental health, they saw no reason not to release him back to the world, where he would meet exactly the same situations that brought about the madness in the first place. It all seems sad and ludicrous now, which shows how much we’ve learned in the decades since (and suggests how much we still have to learn).
In those later years of Vincent’s life, when he was in and out of asylums, the biographers want to suggest that his family, and even his beloved brother Theo, were heartless and cold toward him, not reaching out in love and support. But after the hundreds of pages detailing how awful Vincent was to his family, again and again, the reader wants to throw his hands up and say, “Well, what were they supposed to do, though?” They had given Vincent chance after chance and seen him throw it back in their faces every time. I know that by that point in the biography, I was exasperated with him! And only in his late 30s, there was probably little thought that the end was so near. I can understand if the family assumed that this was a short period in his life where he was safely looked after by someone else in an asylum.
“Exasperation” is a key word for my feelings at a lot of points in this 900-page biography. I wanted to learn more about Vincent, beyond the legend, and I suppose this book met that need. But it is a long book. I don’t fear long books—Middlemarch is my favorite novel and Les Misérables, Crime and Punishment, Anna Karenina, and other lengthy tomes are also favorites—but this book felt long. The writing is clear and precise, but something about the style felt ponderous and dull to me. All of it is “fine,” but none of it is “beautiful.”
The barrage of minutiae about Vincent’s day-to-day life really wore me down (one reason that I spent months reading this! There always seemed to be another book that I’d rather be reading, until I settled down and forced myself to just finish this one). Before reading the book, I thought that I liked him and his work. Having finished this biography, I find that he has now been thoroughly demystified for me. Getting to the end and finding that even his enduring legacy was in many ways manufactured by people who wanted or needed him to be famous—not that contemporaries saw his works and were instantly blown away by them (though I’m sure that’s some part of it, too)—was particularly disheartening. I would still like to read a collection of Vincent’s letters, because I sense that perhaps the biographers have given a negative reading to some of his writing; but I wish I felt more affection for him after learning this much about his life. It is at least nice to be able to place his work within a timeline and a story—it’s interesting to know, for example, that the sheaves of wheat painting I see at the Dallas Museum of Art is from the end of his life, when he was living in Auvers and still dreaming of recruiting Theo and his family to join him there. But for most people who want to learn about Vincent, I’d recommend a shorter book—probably one that focuses on his life and work from the period at Arles onward. That phase includes most of his best-known works, and what comes before is extremely repetitive and bleak. A shorter summary of his life up to that point will be sufficient for most readers.
I look forward to watching Loving Vincent and re-watching At Eternity’s Gate, which I think I’ll appreciate more this time.
thomas_hale_womack's review against another edition
3.0
I chose not to continue reading it, although I am tremendously interested in Van Gogh, and this book is truly a sweeping and comprehensive look at the artist's life -- but at times it seemed to be too intent on pursuing a particularly dark slant on his personality, while downplaying clear evidence to the contrary -- instead of more fairly presenting "both sides" and letting the reader come to his own conclusions.
mickeymole's review against another edition
2.0
I honestly don’t know how to review this door-stop of a book. At 879 pages plus notes, there’s a ton of information here.
In every interview I saw of Naifah and Smith, they talked as much about all the material they were privy to, and the time and effort it took to sift through it, as they did of Van Gogh himself. Perhaps it was too much to handle. Their documentation of source notes came to 5,000 pages, which is only available online. I have to give them credit for undertaking and finishing such an almost impossible project. But with so much information that they tried to cram into this thing, it’s no wonder that I find the finished product akin to trying to swim across a lake with a heavy barbell on my back. The reader is presented with so much excruciating detail, the actual story is difficult to follow. I kept thinking that they’d even tell me where and when he took a dump, and how he felt about it. They wore me out with adjectives upon adjectives describing every negative action or suspected thought that Vincent ever had. There were hundreds of direct quotes from his letters to support what a manipulative, selfish, nasty human being he must have been. The repetitive negativity got old in a hurry, and this colossus was loaded with it. If you’re prone to bouts of depression, I’d recommend skipping large chunks, and try to focus on one or two sections of Vincent’s life you might be interested in. Trying to digest the whole thing may push you over the edge.
I also question the accuracy with which they used some of their source material. There seems to be quite a bit of speculation going on here. This may be inevitable when you’re over a century removed from your subject. Even so, I frequently could not make the leap the authors made from a quote to their conclusion, which sometimes took pages.
There are a lot of reviewers here praising how well-written this biography is. Well-written to me means that the prose is presented in a way as to be inviting, easy to follow, and concise. This book just doesn’t have those attributes. Perhaps if it were edited down by 400 pages, it would be more accessible. Imagine trying to read EVERY thought one human being might have had in a lifetime, and you’ll get a feeling of what reading this book is like.
It does have one redeeming feature, an Appendix, “A Note on Vincent’s Fatal Wounding”. Naifeh and Smith present a solid argument for Vincent having not committed suicide, as is the popular belief. The evidence is compelling, and I tend to believe it. This appendix is a must read for those seriously interested in Van Gogh. Except for that, this weighty tome left me tired and depressed.
In every interview I saw of Naifah and Smith, they talked as much about all the material they were privy to, and the time and effort it took to sift through it, as they did of Van Gogh himself. Perhaps it was too much to handle. Their documentation of source notes came to 5,000 pages, which is only available online. I have to give them credit for undertaking and finishing such an almost impossible project. But with so much information that they tried to cram into this thing, it’s no wonder that I find the finished product akin to trying to swim across a lake with a heavy barbell on my back. The reader is presented with so much excruciating detail, the actual story is difficult to follow. I kept thinking that they’d even tell me where and when he took a dump, and how he felt about it. They wore me out with adjectives upon adjectives describing every negative action or suspected thought that Vincent ever had. There were hundreds of direct quotes from his letters to support what a manipulative, selfish, nasty human being he must have been. The repetitive negativity got old in a hurry, and this colossus was loaded with it. If you’re prone to bouts of depression, I’d recommend skipping large chunks, and try to focus on one or two sections of Vincent’s life you might be interested in. Trying to digest the whole thing may push you over the edge.
I also question the accuracy with which they used some of their source material. There seems to be quite a bit of speculation going on here. This may be inevitable when you’re over a century removed from your subject. Even so, I frequently could not make the leap the authors made from a quote to their conclusion, which sometimes took pages.
There are a lot of reviewers here praising how well-written this biography is. Well-written to me means that the prose is presented in a way as to be inviting, easy to follow, and concise. This book just doesn’t have those attributes. Perhaps if it were edited down by 400 pages, it would be more accessible. Imagine trying to read EVERY thought one human being might have had in a lifetime, and you’ll get a feeling of what reading this book is like.
It does have one redeeming feature, an Appendix, “A Note on Vincent’s Fatal Wounding”. Naifeh and Smith present a solid argument for Vincent having not committed suicide, as is the popular belief. The evidence is compelling, and I tend to believe it. This appendix is a must read for those seriously interested in Van Gogh. Except for that, this weighty tome left me tired and depressed.
sirlancereads's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
informative
sad
slow-paced
3.75
This was good. But it was long and dense. It was detailed and some might say a little too detailed. But I think it did a very good job of painting the sad and tragic life of VIncent Van Gogh without attempting to soften the very prickly edges of his life.
About the only real gripe I have with the book is the fact that the appendix goes into a little bit of conspiracy theory territory as it attempts to ignore the very real probability that Van Gogh killed himself and tries to make it seem like there was some sort of foul play involved when there is no real evidence that there was and their theory is based in speculation.
jenmat1197's review
5.0
The authors delve into the life of Van Gogh starting from when he was a young boy all the way to his death. Written from help from the Van Gogh museum and letters that were written between Vincent and his brother, Theo, they weave a story that few know about the life of this beloved artist. Readers get a look into his life both personal and professional and how long he struggled before he was "discovered" We get a better picture of his mental illness and his death at the age of 37.
This is a fantastic book - one of the best I have read this year so far. I listened to it (all 42 hours) to pass my endless hours of painting our house this week. I was enthralled with this story from the start. I actually visited the Van Gogh museum just a few years ago with my family and wish now that I would have read this book first. It goes into so much detail of Van Goghs life and how he came about his paintings. You become frustrated with this man (he relies on money from his brother for his entire short life - never getting a job yet always spending heavily) but you also feel sorry for him because he was truly tortured. He does bring on many of his woes himself (he was always obstinate) but he is picked on by towns people wherever he went. Not becomes truly famous until really after he died, I found his path to being one of the greatest artist we have ever know unbelievable. I saw his work in person, and now I know what he was thinking when he made those paintings. Truly amazing.
If you have a lot of time to kill but more importantly want to know more than you ever thought you did about Van Gogh - get this book. It will be worth it - I promise.
This is a fantastic book - one of the best I have read this year so far. I listened to it (all 42 hours) to pass my endless hours of painting our house this week. I was enthralled with this story from the start. I actually visited the Van Gogh museum just a few years ago with my family and wish now that I would have read this book first. It goes into so much detail of Van Goghs life and how he came about his paintings. You become frustrated with this man (he relies on money from his brother for his entire short life - never getting a job yet always spending heavily) but you also feel sorry for him because he was truly tortured. He does bring on many of his woes himself (he was always obstinate) but he is picked on by towns people wherever he went. Not becomes truly famous until really after he died, I found his path to being one of the greatest artist we have ever know unbelievable. I saw his work in person, and now I know what he was thinking when he made those paintings. Truly amazing.
If you have a lot of time to kill but more importantly want to know more than you ever thought you did about Van Gogh - get this book. It will be worth it - I promise.
salina_reading's review against another edition
dark
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
slow-paced
4.0
donnaehm's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
3.25