Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith, Van Gogh: The Life (affiliate link). New York: Random House, 2011. 953 pages.
I confess, this was a difficult book for me to read. It’s the story of someone who clearly suffered from social issues and mental illness. He is famous for cutting off his ear as an expression of devotion, and he has the cloud of possible suicide hanging over him. But he is also one of history’s most famous painters. His paintings have sold for astronomical sums. Yet only near the end of his life did anyone recognize his talent. His own family was embarrassed by him. He had few, if any, friends. His life was cut short by a fateful gunshot.
Van Gogh’s existence was troubled from childhood. Everything he attempted (jobs, school, painting) ended in failure. As I read page after page, I almost felt like a voyeur watching as someone’s life inevitably experienced tragedy after tragedy. I personally found it depressing to read about a life that seemed almost cursed. Van Gogh longed for friendship, love, and acceptance, yet he was incapable of forging true, reciprocal friendships.
One of Van Gogh’s issues was that he entered into every undertaking with unrealistically high expectations and a passion that overwhelmed people. He seemed to be wired for failure. Yet one wonders if, in some way, the idiosyncrasies that led to his undoing were also the building blocks of his greatness.
Van Gogh wrote letters vociferously, and many of his thoughts, as confused and contradictory as they were, have been captured in print. He wrote of himself, “I am a fanatic! I feel a power within me . . . a fire that I may not quench, but must keep ablaze” (4). Yet he only declared himself to be an artist when he had a mere ten years left to live (215). Ironically, he was expelled from every art school he entered. At one point, his submitted work was judged so poorly he was told he should be sent to a remedial art class that included ten-year-olds (487). He once stated, “My pictures are valueless . . .” (722) and “. . . as a painter I shall never amount to anything important, I am absolutely sure of it” (743). Compared to other painters, he confessed, “I am conscious of my inferiority” (783). Tragically, his parents never appreciated their erratic son’s art.
Psychologists could have a field day examining Van Gogh’s family as a cause for Van Gogh’s instability. His parents, Dorus and Anna, were married in 1851. Dorus was an untalented preacher who spent three years trying to find a church that would hire him (61). He finally took a position in a humble congregation on the outskirts of respectable society. The couple fought hard to be “respectable.” Of Van Gogh’s father, the authors state, “When he was not preaching or praying, Dorus remained aloof from his growing family” (53). They add, “Vincent learned early that to disappoint his father was to disappoint God” (54). Van Gogh’s parents craved respectability, and that was one thing he could never give them. His mother, Anna, believed duty was of utmost importance (31). She taught her children that “The outside world was a turbulent and dangerous place; family the ultimate refuge” (25). They note, “Her children grew up clinging to family like shipwreck survivors to a raft” (25). Yet, “After leaving the island parsonage, all of Anna’s children were buffeted by extremes of emotion with which they had no experience and for which they had no defense” (34). The authors note that “Like his mother, he keenly felt the elusiveness and evanescence of happiness” (28).
While Van Gogh was raised to value family above all, it became clear early on that he was not like the rest of his relations. He would spend the rest of his life in a love/hate relationship with his family, constantly striving for their approval while simultaneously pushing them away. By the age of 11, his parents gave up trying to help him succeed in a normal school and sent him to boarding school. He was the youngest child enrolled (45). Yet he quit or was expelled from every school he attended. By age 16, he was sent to work for his rich uncle (68). He was given multiple opportunities to work with successful relatives or friends, but he would invariably have a falling out and be cut off from that well-intentioned relative.
With each failure, Van Gogh felt a growing estrangement and disappointment from his parents. He spent much of his life trying to achieve huge success that would win the approval and love of his family. But he was constitutionally incapable of maintaining discipline and focus. He would attack a new undertaking with fierce energy, but as soon as he received criticism or what he perceived as betrayal, he would either quit or be fired and spiral into despair.
Van Gogh was also socially inept. He desperately longed for a friend. But whenever he met a potential companion, he would overwhelm them with his ideals of what their relationship should be and then react angrily when the person refused to cooperate. This constant rejection led him to find companionship among prostitutes, as the only people willing to spend time with him were the ones he paid (96).
Interestingly, when living in London, Van Gogh became mesmerized by Charles Haddon Spurgeon (104). Van Gogh would attend church services all day on Sunday. He hoped that if he loved God enough, his family would welcome him back (119). He attempted to train as a pastor but failed. He toyed with becoming a missionary or a low-level catechist, but every attempt ended in humiliating failure. Rather than pleasing his father, he continued to embarrass him. At times, he would write letters to his father, longing for his love (150). Yet when he visited home, he would inevitably pick fights with his father that would degenerate into heated arguments.
When Van Gogh began to become imbalanced, his father tried to gain guardianship over him and have him locked up (209). At times, Van Gogh realized he was an embarrassment and an expense to his family. He once stated, “The best and most sensible solution all around would be for me to go away . . . to cease to be” (210). When away from home, he became nostalgic and fantasize about a family that did not exist. Then when he came home, he would isolate himself and ignore his family until the tension became more than they could stand. He longed to be reconciled with his family but did everything he could to scuttle every attempt.
The authors note that “After years of living inside his own head, he had lost almost all sense of social grace and approached almost every interaction as a choice between assailing or being assaulted” (223). Being socially awkward, he had no idea how to maintain a healthy relationship. He tried to find a wife on several occasions, but every attempt was doomed to failure. He tried to have a family with a prostitute and her child (278). Sometimes he fixated on a woman and fell hopelessly in love, even though the woman showed no interest in him. He seemed more consumed with being in love than with actually loving someone.
Eventually his brother Theo, four years his junior, undertook to support Van Gogh financially. Theo was responsible and tried to do the right thing for his family. Van Gogh’s parents admired Theo. Van Gogh spent most of his adult life trying to earn his own living, yet he depended on his parents and then his younger brother for his income. The authors note, “Buffeted by a dependence that he loathed and an indebtedness that he could not deny, Vincent careened back and forth between petulant demands and grudging gratitude” (270). At times Van Gogh would demand more money from Theo and act as if Theo owed it to him as an artist. Van Gogh, as in so many areas of his life, had no self-restraint with money. Even when Theo was sending him one third of his entire income each month, he accused his brother of selfishness and miserliness. Yet Van Gogh refused to be held accountable for how he spent his money on alcohol, tobacco, or prostitutes. “. . . He argued that his hard work and noble purpose entitled him to his brother’s money” (271).
Van Gogh was always driven by a new art form, enterprise, or partnership that would finally grant him the success and respectability that he craved. Yet, “Inevitably, reality disappointed him” (302).
After one particularly humiliating failure, Van Gogh returned home to live with his family. His relatives, trying their best to accommodate him, built him an art studio and asked nothing of him. Yet he took their care as sympathy or condescension, and it only made him angry. He had terrible fights with his father. Eventually Van Gogh concluded that his father was “his worst enemy” (421). His father ultimately died, and the family blamed Van Gogh for his death. Ironically, Dorus died on her son’s 32nd birthday (422). The family finally asked him to leave.
Everywhere Van Gogh went, he was viewed as odd, or even mad. When he enrolled at an art school in Paris, he was doomed to failure. “Prone to anger, quick to take offense, menacingly intense, and untuned to the irony and irreverence of youth, Vincent descended on the artelier like a leaden thundercloud from the North Sea” (511). People did not know what to do with him. “Vincent couldn’t help his vehemence. Every idea he ever seized, he seized it to its fullest margin; every enthusiasm, wrung to its extremity” (559).
Van Gogh finally came to live with Theo in Paris. Yet once he moved in, he acted in ways that made it impossible for his brother to accommodate him. He left messes all over Theo’s apartment. He criticized Theo and embarrassed him in public. Van Gogh also led his younger brother into sexual escapades that caused him to contract syphilis from which he ultimately died (721). Eventually Van Gogh realized he was killing his brother just as he had killed his father, and he moved out. He moved south and attempted, once again, to build a successful life and career. His longsuffering brother continued to support his eccentric, often ungrateful older brother.
In the final stages of Van Gogh’s life, he obsessed over a partnership with another painter, Paul Gaugin (607). Eventually, with Theo’s financial help, Van Gogh convinced Gaugin to move in with him. Van Gogh had heavenly visions of how they could set the art world on its ear. But, as in every relationship, Van Gogh’s passion and need for control drove Gaugin away. It was as Gaugin was leaving that Van Gogh famously cut off his own ear (704). In the months that followed, Van Gogh descended into increasing madness. He was wracked with guilt over having been a burden and disappointment to his family. He had failed to become a great artist. No one valued his painting. He lived on the generosity and charity of his younger brother. He seemed like an old man, yet he was only in his thirties.
Ironically, while he was locked up in an asylum, an art critic named Albert Aurier discovered Van Gogh. He wrote an effusive article about him and his work. Suddenly, Van Gogh was the talk of the art world. But it was too late. One afternoon, Van Gogh came staggering into town with a bullet wound. He claimed, somewhat unconvincingly, that he had shot himself. The authors provide compelling evidence to suggest he did not. What likely happened is that one of the boys who routinely tormented him, and who had a pistol, accidentally shot him. The boys conveniently disappeared from town the day after the incident. No weapon was ever found (841).
After Van Gogh’s death, Theo did everything he could to protect his brother’s name. Being labelled insane and perhaps committing suicide only added more mystery and allure to the artist’s reputation. Sadly, none of his relatives except Theo attended his funeral (860). Theo died as well. Van Gogh’s siblings all suffered in life and died tragically, several by suicide (867).
One can only wonder what Van Gogh would have thought had he known how famous he would become. Having made almost no money from his art during his lifetime, he would have been flabbergasted by the prices people would pay for it after his death. Ironically, Van Gogh was never good at painting human figures. He painted too quickly to be accurate and never mastered the human form. Yet with the advent of Impressionism, his painting no longer needed to be precise, and he was free to express himself in the art world at last. His family was always embarrassed by him because he could not fit in socially. Yet he would rise in people’s estimation while all of his family members slid into obscurity.
One wonders what role his parents played in his madness. He clearly had mental issues, and his parents were obviously unable to help him. They spent far more money than they could afford on him, and they provided room and board for him, even when he treated them shabbily. Yet they could not understand the unbalanced genius they had reared, and they could not give him the unconditional acceptance and affirmation he craved.
The authors do a masterful job writing this tragic life story. They include some eye-catching phrases. They take time to educate the reader on art history of that period (something I needed), but it adds a weightiness to the book at times. The depressing nature of Van Gogh’s life was difficult to read. His flights into enthusiastic fantasy may make readers deeply wish he had achieved some earlier success or had a more patient, understanding friend. But we will never know if he would have become the creative genius he was had he not endured such challenges. His life is captivating, for one cannot help but wonder how someone with so many flaws could create such masterful and sublime works of art. He wondered the same thing, for he once mused, “Oh, if I could have worked without this accursed disease—what things I might have done” (820). Rating:
