Humans hate madmen, but they are keen to portray artists as madmen.
While amplifying the value of art, they ruthlessly trample on their dignity as human beings. Art does not originate from madness, and the reason why those brilliant works are only fierce resistance before they are driven crazy by the world.
In the British TV series "Doctor Who", there was a fictional story in which the male and female protagonists brought Van Gogh from the nineteenth century to the twenty-first century. When Van Gogh was in a museum full of his works and listened to the commentary "Van Gogh, the greatest painter and even one of the greatest people", his face was nervous and satisfied, and he smiled carefully, he finally heard the praise of the world and received the supreme glory. Everyone was thinking that he should be able to feel the joy of life, but at the end of that incident, Van Gogh returned to the nineteenth century and still chose to commit suicide. Perhaps for an artist like Van Gogh, identity, money, and glory may not be able to compete with the confusion in his heart.
Why is it always him who is lonely?
Several times obsessed with love
Loneliness is a state of mind, no one is born lonely, only when the emotions that need to be sprayed are ignored, loneliness becomes a way to examine and avoid danger, until the avoidance is long, loneliness becomes the norm.
Van Gogh more than once wanted to break out of the shackles of loneliness, with his fierce emotions to exchange for a companionship, in his only 37 years of life, four times in love, each time without hesitation, scarred, this is evidence. Lonely people do not fight so hard, but they often bring loneliness.
In 1869, at the age of 16, Van Gogh was selling paintings at the Gubir Company in London, and he fell in love with the landlord's daughter Eugenia, who at the time took good care of the sick Van Gogh. The introverted Van Gogh fell into the whirlpool of spring in an instant, began to learn humor, learned to express himself, and launched a continuous pursuit of Eugenia. The affection of the young man makes Van Gogh excited and masterless, to know that he himself is not outstanding in appearance, walking is a bit awkward, in the eyes of outsiders he and Eugenia are absolutely incompatible. When Van Gogh plucked up the courage to confess, he learned that Eugenia was already engaged. But the most restrained by secular etiquette is the young man, and Van Gogh even thought that her fiancé must not love her and tried to take her back. It wasn't until the wedding, when Van Gogh witnessed Eugenia kissing in the arms of the tall, thin and handsome man, that he was completely dead-hearted, and returned to the room where he masturbated madly with a picture of Eugenia alone, and Van Gogh must have been lonely at that time.
In 1881, Van Gogh returned home to visit his family and still fell in love with his widowed cousin Kay at first sight, when Van Gogh was 28 years old. Kai has a great insight into painting, which makes Van Gogh, who has already begun to create at that time, intoxicated van Gogh in front of Kai's sleeping child, rudely hugging Kai into his arms and saying sweet words, Kai panicked and broke free and ran away.
Later, Van Gogh was scolded by his relatives, including his mother, and once again broke the loneliness and declared a failure.
In 1882, Van Gogh finally had a "wife" and a "child". The "wife" is a street woman in The Hague, the Netherlands, more than ten years taller than Van, and the "child" was born of a woman and an unknown man, but Van Gogh lived with her and raised the child together despite the objections of friends and family. I think the reason Van Gogh loved so crazy every time must be that it must be difficult to control his fiery emotions, and life can usually extinguish that fire. It wasn't long before the hardships of life struck Van Gogh, and his poor life was exacerbated by his purchase of painting materials, the "wife" did not need a painter, and Van Gogh could not give up painting. Eventually returning to his old business at "wife", Van Gogh left the only home he ever owned.
Van Gogh's last love affair came from a crush, but he was the passive side. Margault, a 40-year-old neighbor, regarded van Tougao, who was full of artistic charm, the person he admired the most in his life. She confessed fiercely and proactively to Van Gogh, who was also happy to accept the woman who was more than ten years older than herself. But the world did not accept it, the woman's family vigorously opposed, and eventually ended in Margaut's poisoning suicide, although the woman took a life, but Van Tiangao has since lost the ability to love.
In these four relationships, whether active or passive, Van Gogh gained nothing.
"My desire to get married and have children has faded, and sometimes I feel a little sad because I have this mentality at an age, I am only thirty-five years old, and I should have felt something completely different." 」 In a letter to his brother he said.
Why is he always lonely?
Van Gogh did many careers in his life, visited several teachers, but had few friends. His association with Paul Gauguin, also a famous painter, was one of his most cherished friendships.
At the age of 35, Van Gogh, who had been creating in Paris for a long time, gradually could not stand the eternally low sky of Paris, and moved alone to Arles in the south of France, enjoying the last two years of his life, but also the most brilliant two years.
"Theo, I want to tell you that this corner of the world is empty and fresh in my eyes, and the colors are intoxicating to me, and the pale orange sunset makes the fields almost blue, and there is a brilliant yellow sun." Van Gogh said this in a letter to his brother. He had almost no one to talk to except for some coffee, it was all peasant women, no one knew how to draw or how to talk to painters. Although the scenery here gave him excellent convenience in creation, the loneliness dried up his erosion of innocence, and he was in urgent need of a little watering.
Desperate Van Gogh recalled the crowded artist salons of Paris, the ideal utopias of like-minded ideals. He thought that Al was in need of such a paradise for the house of art, so Van Gogh, who had been depressed for a long time, began to write letters and spread letters inviting the young painters he knew in Paris to come to Arle and build a paradise in the south of France that belonged to the ideals of artists. In his imagination, they could rally around him every day, talk about art, talk about ideas, and delve into paintings.
His younger brother Theo funded a small two-story building in Al for Van Gogh, which he named the Yellow Cottage, which housed Van Gogh's boundless vision. Unfortunately, reality gave Van Gogh a slap, and most of the letters that were scattered were sunk in the sea, and only one painter agreed to the invitation, and he was Paul Gauguin.
This made the frustrated Van Gogh suddenly come to life, and he specially painted a painting for Gauguin to hang in the room to greet Gauguin, which was Van Gogh's most satisfactory work and the most prestigious "Sunflower" in later generations.
"One day Gauguin told me that he had seen a painting of Claude Monet with a large sunflower in a Japanese vase, but he liked mine more. I don't agree with him, but I feel like I'm really improving."
Gauguin was very satisfied with Al and admired Van Gogh's abundant artistic creativity. The two painted outdoors together during the day and drank together at night to talk about ideals, art, and the future, and that time was probably the most comfortable in Van Gogh's life. The two also exchanged self-portraits, which are the most sincere interactions between artists.
But getting along is an eternal problem, whether it is between men and women or men, time and understanding will make all the freshness of everything disappear. The sweet period between Van Gogh and Gauguin lasted only a month and a half, and the arrogant Gao really could not stand Van Gogh's finger-pointing of his own works, and Van Gogh thought that this was his most sincere expression, but Gauguin's condescending condescension was unbearable.
"I think Gauguin has become very depressed, for the wonderful town of Arles, for our little yellow house, and especially for me. In fact, I think there are still some serious problems between us that need to be overcome by both of us. But these issues are personal to us, not anything else."
The dispute with his best friend and the breakdown of his relationship have left Van Gogh in a self-entanglement, unable to see his own problems, or seeing but unable to change. So he took all the previous experiences and failures, and the pain of the people around him to himself. Later, when the notorious incident of self-harm occurred, Van Gogh cut off a small piece of his own ear and gave it to a street woman. And Gauguin left Al without turning back.
Over the next two years, Van Gogh repeatedly tried to repair his friendship with Gauguin, but repeatedly refused, fearing that he might have been insane. Until the end of Van Gogh's life, he did not win back this friendship.
No one knows about painting
Van Gogh fought and remedied interpersonally and emotionally, failing repeatedly. But what ultimately makes him a lonely patient is his paintings.
His time in Paris had a great influence on Van Gogh's art, and at first Van Gogh was a conservative young man who inherited the style of the Dutch School, and his paintings were dark and slightly gloomy. But when he met young artists such as Monet, Renoir, and Lautrec in Paris, a light came into his painting career. Monet's short strokes and brilliant colors made the three words "Impressionist" deeply imprinted in Van Gogh's mind.
From this time on, Van Gogh's paintings became brighter, and he had his own unique insight into the use of color and light, so much so that he was classified as Impressionism.
However, at this time, Van Gogh gradually had a great divergence from the Impressionist style, he could not identify with the rational and objective artistic state of Monet and others, and gave all those gorgeous and beautiful colors to objective dead things, which seemed to be a blasphemy against those colors. In those Impressionist paintings, there is no emotion, no painter self, and nature has no soul.
Van Gogh wants to use his works to speak for him, to vent his surging emotions that have nowhere to be placed.
He began to improve the style of Impressionism, connecting his emotions with the scenery, and using superb colors to express those fierce emotions. From the moment he questioned Impressionism, it can be seen that Van Gogh was never a man willing to be lonely, he advocated expression and was willing to express, but he replaced speech with painting. In his only 37 years of life, there are 864 oil paintings, 1037 drawings, 150 watercolors, you can see how strong his desire to express.
However, he only sold one painting in his lifetime, for 400 francs, and the buyer did not resonate with Van Gogh, but only looked at the face of Van Gogh's brother Theo, a professional painter seller.
Imagine van Gogh's life, he spent his life painting with all his passion, but most of the time, those paintings were not favored by anyone, let alone the emotions they contained were felt and resonated. It's only a matter of time before a painter who focuses on talking doesn't get a shred of emotional feedback.
Finally, Van Gogh's self-doubt reached its peak, and the double loneliness of worldly emotions and artistic emotions crushed Van Gogh hard. "Why am I always lonely?" This doubt always accompanied him, a person who tried to break through these things, but was beaten down again and again, he had to wonder. It may only be to blame on fate, but once fate is used as the final explanation, then misery can no longer be defeated. Leaving may be the only option.
"I'm still painting cypress trees under the stars, and I'll try it one last time—a dull moon in the night sky, a slender crescent moon peeking out of the opaque shadows cast by the earth onto the moon while the starlight is surprisingly bright, shining a gentle pink and green glow in the ultramarine night sky, and the clouds hurrying by. At the bottom of the painting is a road, along which are tall yellow branches of plants, covering the blue foothills of the Alps, orange light from the windows of an old inn, and a tall, straight cypress tree, dim in color." —— Van Gogh's letter to Gauguin 5 months before his suicide.
Everyone is regretting what happened to Van Gogh with glory behind him, as if giving Him enough appreciation and wealth could prevent his death. But the tragedy is multiple, and the confusion is also unexplainable by wealth and reputation, so it is not a regret, but his relief.