The Masterpieces Dearest to Genius

Whenever I speak to someone about "Vincent van Gogh," I see him purse his lips, the muscles of his face contracting as he tries to conceal a smile of mockery and scorn. But that smile always defeats his effort, and it comes out twisted and faint.

To speak of "Van Gogh" is a tangled, difficult matter, for it is to speak of the life of a man who believed and then disbelieved, who was sane and then went mad, who fell into poverty after wealth, and who then found no escape from the injustice of life and its cruelty, and from its unjust vexations, but to do away with himself willingly and contentedly. The greatness of this artist is not revealed, like the greatness of other artists, in a single one of his pictures; it is spread through all his works, and through his life in particular, for his life and his work — including the drawings and the paintings — form a unity of interlocking, tightly joined parts, no one of which can be understood except by understanding the other. If we wish to grasp what his canvases contain, we must at the same time, and before all else, grasp the hour in which he painted these canvases, the place that inspired him with what it inspired, and the psychological state that possessed him at the time. If we know, for example, that this man's emotions were unbridled and burning, and that the psychic impulses latent within him were in rebellion and tumult; if we realize that he never enjoyed a true love in all his life — he who considered that a life without love is a sin against morality — and that he could not earn a single dirham despite his continuous labor, then we understand why glittering lights dominate most of his canvases, why he made such abundant use of hot, blazing colors, and for what reason he persevered at painting with a mad perseverance, as a solace for his tormented soul and a balm for his accumulated pains.

He lived all his days among the poor classes — among the mine workers and the outcast artists who afterward became the masters of modern art, and among the small shopkeepers and the peasants. This naive, simple environment had the greatest effect upon his art, so much so that naiveté and simplicity are two qualities inseparable from nearly all his artistic works. He wanted to confer on his pictures the quality of perpetual motion — that motion which was at its most intense among those classes of the people, and which he felt coursing through his own nerves — so that when he painted the sun, he wanted it to produce in people a clear feeling that it was spinning at tremendous speed and scattering its lights all around it upon the entire world. When he painted the crops, you felt the ripe grain quivering with the wind, swaying, striving to grow and to rise. And when he painted a human being, he painted him with his faults and in his truth — as "Rembrandt" had done before him — neither flattering his appearance, nor hiding an obvious dullness, nor veiling a manifest ugliness. This truth appears plainly in the canvases in which he painted himself: in some of them you see upon his countenance the mien of foolishness; in others a simpleton who stirs mercy and pity; and in most of them a man who has failed in everything, standing before you like an aging man bearing the cares of the world and its tragedies. A single glance at the canvas in which he painted his two shoes lays bare his hidden depths and tells you of his past — of this bewildered, weary man: where he was born, how he was born, and for what purpose he was born. And yet, above all this, you see him in two canvases or more as a burning young man, believing in himself, calm and wisdom in his features, and on his mouth the firmness of resolve and self-confidence. All of this is a truthful record of the many psychological phases through which passed this man who was created in the likeness of mankind and yet was not of them.

Many have spoken of him; one man wrote the story of his life, and he himself wrote a great deal about himself, and that became the nucleus of a whole collection of books, stories, and articles.

"Van Gogh" left nearly six hundred oil paintings in which he immortalized his art, which divides into three periods: the period of Dutch art, in which the dark colors prevail over the others; then the French period, a brief transitional stage; and then the Provençal period, the most important and most fertile stage of his art. This last period is distinguished by brilliant, glowing colors and by burning heat. His canvases were faithful, honest reflections of that rebellious feeling which welled up within his soul and engulfed it, and of that ruling struggle between his unbridled emotions and the restraining forces of society; and so he was driven to drink wine to keep his nerves in their state of excitement, so that he could paint the strange, rebellious visions that passed through his mind.

His end was the best proof of the close bond between his art and his life. He deposited in every one of his canvases a portion of himself, so that one of his contemporaries wrote of him:

"Rarely do we find a single artist who has given of his blood and his heart as 'Van Gogh' did."

And "Gachet," his personal physician, who accompanied him and sheltered him in his last days, said of him:

"We shall not be right if we use the expression 'love of art' in speaking of 'Van Gogh'; rather we must say that he believed in art with a faith that carried him to the degree of martyrdom."

Nor is this strange, for "Vincent" wrote of himself to his brother:

"My works are living parts of my body and my soul, and I risk my life and my reason for their sake."

And he proved true in what he said: he lost his reason the day he went mad, and then he lost his life when he took it with his own hand.

This sad end does not lower the worth of his strange life; on the contrary, it shows that this man was able to drive his mind and his emotions faster than any ordinary man could, until the brain could no longer keep pace with that impetuous mind and those rebellious emotions, and it snapped and broke.