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A review by wescovington
Van Gogh: The Life by Steven Naifeh, Gregory White Smith
5.0
Naifeh and White, who have specialized in very long and thorough biographies of famous artists (Jackson Pollock was another subject), have produced a weighty (860 or so pages) volume on the life (and controversial death) of one of the art world's most fascinating and most tragic figures in Vincent Van Gogh. With unprecedented access to Van Gogh's correspondence, dutifully kept by his devoted brother Theo, Naifeh and White complete a portrait of a man who was troubled all his life, and yet somehow managed to create some of the most brilliant paintings of all time, most of it in a brief burst of creativity at the end of his life.
The standard work on Van Gogh's life has been Irving Stone's 1934 book "Lust for Life" which later was turned into a film starring Kirk Douglas. Since that time, scholars have learned much more about Van Gogh.
To begin with, Van Gogh showed signs of mental instability from a very young age. He was prone to going on long, solitary walks from his childhood home in the Netherlands. When he failed in his initial career choice as a minister, his parents attempted to have him hospitalized for mental illness, something Van Gogh managed to avoid.
Naifeh and White don't believe that Van Gogh suffered from what would be described as a mental illness, such as depression or mania, but rather from a form of epilepsy, known as temporal lobe epilepsy, a disease that can often seem like a form of mania interrupted by periods of very placid behavior. Van Gogh's chronic malnutrition likely did not help him.
What Van Gogh wanted in life was to have a family that was warm and accepting of him. However, he was extraordinarily difficult to live with because of his illness. Calling his parents unsympathetic would be an understatement. Feelings of abandonment often set Van Gogh off to destructive behavior, such as his mutilation of his ear after Paul Gauguin left Van Gogh's home in Arles. Of course, Van Gogh did not make his dream artists' commune any more likely to take hold after he pulled a knife on Gauguin.
This book does take a while to get through. It is extraordinarily thorough. Van Gogh's life was rarely happy. His most famous work, Starry Night, was painted from his memory of looking out an asylum window. The shadows of death, depression, and abandonment abound. Did these feeling help or hurt his art? They likely did not as Van Gogh produced his best paintings in a very short period of time while working very quickly. Some of his greatest works were created in a period of a day or two.
The book concludes with an appendix about Van Gogh's death, which is commonly considered to be a suicide. Naifeh and White present compelling evidence (as compelling as 120 year old evidence can be) that Van Gogh likely died as the result of an accidental shooting by two French boys who liked to tease the eccentric Dutch painter who lived near them.
The standard work on Van Gogh's life has been Irving Stone's 1934 book "Lust for Life" which later was turned into a film starring Kirk Douglas. Since that time, scholars have learned much more about Van Gogh.
To begin with, Van Gogh showed signs of mental instability from a very young age. He was prone to going on long, solitary walks from his childhood home in the Netherlands. When he failed in his initial career choice as a minister, his parents attempted to have him hospitalized for mental illness, something Van Gogh managed to avoid.
Naifeh and White don't believe that Van Gogh suffered from what would be described as a mental illness, such as depression or mania, but rather from a form of epilepsy, known as temporal lobe epilepsy, a disease that can often seem like a form of mania interrupted by periods of very placid behavior. Van Gogh's chronic malnutrition likely did not help him.
What Van Gogh wanted in life was to have a family that was warm and accepting of him. However, he was extraordinarily difficult to live with because of his illness. Calling his parents unsympathetic would be an understatement. Feelings of abandonment often set Van Gogh off to destructive behavior, such as his mutilation of his ear after Paul Gauguin left Van Gogh's home in Arles. Of course, Van Gogh did not make his dream artists' commune any more likely to take hold after he pulled a knife on Gauguin.
This book does take a while to get through. It is extraordinarily thorough. Van Gogh's life was rarely happy. His most famous work, Starry Night, was painted from his memory of looking out an asylum window. The shadows of death, depression, and abandonment abound. Did these feeling help or hurt his art? They likely did not as Van Gogh produced his best paintings in a very short period of time while working very quickly. Some of his greatest works were created in a period of a day or two.
The book concludes with an appendix about Van Gogh's death, which is commonly considered to be a suicide. Naifeh and White present compelling evidence (as compelling as 120 year old evidence can be) that Van Gogh likely died as the result of an accidental shooting by two French boys who liked to tease the eccentric Dutch painter who lived near them.