[MUSIC PLAYING] If I ask you which painter cut
off part of his ear and painted sunflowers, my guess
is you're instantly going to know who I'm
talking about, right? Vincent van Gogh. But there's a lot more to
van Gogh than just ears and sunflowers that made him one
of the most influential artists who ever lived. Let's dig into, who
was Vincent van Gogh? This episode is funded by The
Glick Fund and the Christel DeHaan Family
Foundation who inspire philanthropy and creativity. On March 30, 1853,
Vincent van Gogh was born in a small
town in the Netherlands to a Protestant minister,
Theodorus van Gogh, and his wife, Anna Carbentus. Unfortunately, one
year earlier, Anna had a baby who died stillborn
whose name was also Vincent. They must have
really liked the name since they used it once again
for the Vincent van Gogh we know. Vincent had three sisters and
two brothers, Anna, Theo, Wil, Lis, and Cor. When Vincent was 11,
his parents sent him off to boarding school. He did not like this at
all, but he did manage to get pretty good grades. And at age 13, he was
sent to secondary school in Tilburg where he did quite
well, especially in languages. By the way, did you know that
Vincent could speak and write in Dutch, English, and French? Yep. Unfortunately, Vincent's family
wasn't doing well financially back home, so he quit
school after his second year to return. That was the last
of his schooling. As you can imagine, van Gogh's
parents started worrying about, what would he do with himself? A concern his parents had pretty
much the rest of their lives. Thankfully, in 1869
at age 16, his uncle-- known as Uncle Cent-- got Vincent a job as a trainee
at the international art dealer Goupil & Cie in a
town of La Hague. It was at this
time that Vincent's younger brother Theo was
working for Goupil as well, but in Brussels. In 1872, Vincent began
writing letters to Theo, a practice that lasted
his entire life. In fact, he wrote some
651 letters to Theo. Good thing texting
wasn't around. I have a feeling Theo's
phone would have been, like, ringing off the hook. [BLEEPING] In 1875, he transferred
to Paris where he became increasingly religious. Even though Vincent was
becoming more interested in art, he was becoming less
interested in his job. So in 1876, he quit and
returned back to England to begin several years of what
we might call his job hunting or experimenting. Vincent tried a variety of jobs
such as teaching and working in a bookstore, but
ultimately decided to follow his dream of studying
theology at the age of 24. He continued to write
to his brother Theo, and began including
sketches in his letters. But Vincent and I shared
a common difficulty when it came to school,
which was staying focused. Vincent preferred to wander
around the city and take long walks through the countryside. Historians guesstimate
Vincent would walk-- get this-- four to six miles a day. As you probably have
guessed, Vincent quit school again, but decided
he still wants to serve God. He moves to Belgium
on a new mission. Work as a preacher in the
mining region of Borinage. Vincent went all in and
lived with the miners, sharing in their poverty. He would sleep on the floor and
gave away just about everything he owned. His nickname was the
Christ of the coal mine. We now come to a pivotal
moment for Vincent when his brother advised
him to concentrate more on his drawings. Vincent started taking
painting lessons from artist Anton Mauve, who
taught him the basics of oils and watercolors. Vincent ate this instruction
up and practiced fanatically. His uncle commissioned him
to draw some perspective drawings of the
city, one of which was this one of the Hague. Vincent moved back
to Nuenen in 1883 where his parents lived,
and rented a small studio on the back of the house. Soon after in 1885,
Vincent's father died, and he started working
on "The Potato Eaters," along with taking up chain
smoking and a terrible diet. MAN: Yummy! On the move once again,
Vincent moves to Paris to live with his brother-- uninvited, I might add-- where Theo introduces
him to artists like Claude Monet, Henri
de Toulouse Lautrec and Emile Bernard. All this exposure to
the new impressionists inspired Vincent to start
using brighter colors. So compare "The Hill of
Montmartre with Stone Quarry" to "The Potato Eaters." Pretty drastic
difference, right? At this time, Vincent was also
amazed by the German composer Wagner, and became
excited by the analogies between painting and music. He even took organ lessons at
one point, which apparently didn't work out, because
Vincent continually compared musical chords with
colors like Prussian blue or cadmium yellow. Yeah. The organist decided he
was dealing with a madman. Vincent also discovered
a new inspiration in Japanese woodcuts,
which sold all over Paris. Both he and his brother Theo
started collecting them. After just two years,
Vincent is getting tired of the busy
lifestyle in Paris, and dreamt of sunshine
and countryside. So he hopped on a train and
headed south to Provence. In 1888, he ended up in
the small town of Arles where he went on one of the
most amazing creative sprints the world has ever seen. Vincent was so excited
after arriving in Arles and seeing all the bright
light and the colors, he immediately got to
work painting flowers such as orchids and workers
gathering the harvest and boats along the coast. Feeling inspired
but a bit lonely, Vincent wrote to
Theo about setting up a Studio of the South
for artists to work at. With this in mind, Vincent
rented a small yellow house with four rooms. It's hard to
imagine just what it was like in that yellow house,
but apparently, paintings were everywhere. Of the 200-plus works created
while Vincent was there, only a few made it back to Theo
in Paris to hopefully sell. The house reeked of pipe smoke,
turpentine, and paint pigment. It was hot, and
with no bathroom, washing arrangements
were a bit limited. Vincent was also addicted
to coffee, something else we definitely have in common. Was short on cash. Vincent lived on little
else but coffee and bread. Only one artist ever came
down, which was Paul Gauguin. To welcome Gauguin
to the yellow house, Vincent painted this little gem. Might look a bit
familiar to you. While people often focus on
the dysfunctional aspects of their relationship, they
actually got along quite often. Vincent certainly was
inspired by Gauguin, who was also a bit cocky and
probably hard to deal with. Part of the problem
might have been the room they both
shared to work in, which was less than
16 feet across. At its longest wall,
measured 24 feet. But the room had a
strange shape where it narrowed to nine and a
half feet on the other side. Not a super tiny room,
but they were definitely bound to bump into each other. The two had very different
painting techniques. Gauguin liked to
work from memory, while Vincent preferred to
paint what was in front of him. Vincent also applied
paint with amazing speed, gathering up the paint
as with a shovel. He was known to sit and
stare at the canvas, and then suddenly leap
up, attack the canvas with two or three brush
strokes, and then scramble back to his chair. Both artists had
very differing views on art, which led to some
pretty heated arguments. It was on December
29 in 1888 around 11 PM that Gauguin and Vincent
got into another argument, and Gauguin threatened to leave. Vincent, who always had
a difficult time working through his emotions, grabbed
a razor and sliced off his ear. The part of this story
you may not know about is what happens next. Vincent wrapped up
the ear in newspaper, headed down to the
red light district, and presented the
package to a young lady and said, guard this
object carefully, and they disappeared. After waking up in a
hospital the next morning, Vincent didn't remember
much about the incident, and seemed to be perplexed
by the whole situation, which seems to come out in a
self-portrait done soon after. Vincent's dream of sharing
a studio came to an end, and Gauguin left. van Gogh also realized he
had some sort of illness, and fearing he might
have another episode, he admitted himself to
Saint-Paul-de-Mausole, a psychiatric hospital
in Saint-Remy. There are many different ideas
as to what illness Vincent had. Some believe Vincent
suffered from temporal lobe epilepsy, which causes seizures
as well as manic depression. Interestingly,
another creative who suffered from the same
thing was Edgar Allan Poe. Perhaps this is
why on good days, Vincent would paint the
walled garden at Saint-Remy, and was later even allowed
to work outside as well. But his mental health
would fluctuate, and one time during an
episode of extreme confusion, he ate some of his oil paint. Despite the relapses, Vincent
was incredibly productive. He completed around 150
paintings within a year. Yeah, you heard me right. One year. Of these paintings
was the iconic "Starry Night," which
he painted while looking through the iron-barred
windows in his room. While Vincent did only
sell a few paintings while still alive,
he did start to see some appreciation for his work. In 1890, six of his paintings
were shown in Brussels. One art critic, Albert Aurier,
published a positive article about the show, and Vincent
even sold one painting, "The Red Vineyard." Interestingly, "Starry
Night" was not in this show. As the year continued,
Vincent felt pretty good, and even left the
mental hospital, heading north to
Auvers-Sur-Oise. This was closer to
his brother Theo and there was a Dr. Paul
Gachet to watch over him. Vincent threw himself into
his work, painting gardens and wheat fields
around the village. Unfortunately, it
was during this time that Vincent started to
worry about money since he heard his brother Theo
might quit his job. This sent Vincent
into an episode of extreme worry and depression
concerning the future. It was on July 27 in 1890 he
set out to paint a wheat field and shot himself in the
chest with a pistol. Wounded, he staggered
back to the inn where he was staying,
some two-plus miles away. Two days later, he
died from his injuries. As you can imagine,
medicine at this time was not what it is today,
especially for mental illness and depression. I imagine neither
Vincent nor his doctor had any idea how serious his
condition was or could get. And man, do I wish he could have
had the medicine and doctors we have today. Either way, Vincent's
legacy is like none other, creating over 850 paintings and
nearly 1,300 works on paper. Unfortunately, not six
weeks after Vincent's death, his brother Theo became ill, and
then died a year later in 1891. This brings us Theo's
wife, Jo van Gogh. Jo knew the power
of Vincent's work, and it became her goal to
raise public awareness, including loaning
paintings to museums all over the world,
which finally brought in more and more buyers. In 1914, she also
published the first edition of Vincent's letters to Theo. This passion for seeing
Vincent van Gogh's work appreciated passed down
to her son Vincent. After Jo's death in 1925,
the massive art collection passed down to her
son who loaned it to a museum in
Amsterdam in 1930. After the Vincent van Gogh
Foundation was formed in 1962, work began on a dedicated
museum for the collection. In 1973, the Van
Gogh Museum opened. Over 1.5 million people
visit this incredible museum every year. There was certainly
more to Vincent van Gogh than some flowers
and cut off ears. He was driven to find
his calling in the world, and once he did,
he poured himself into what he was most
passionate about. If anything, it
inspires me to keep creating, keep following what
you believe you are born to do, even if the crowd
does not agree. Until next time, be artragous. Click on the right to get
yourself some more "Artrageous" episodes, and click on the
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day, and be artrageous.
