Van Gogh: The tragedy looms larger
By Tova Navarra
July 29, 1990

By your standards, Vincent van Gogh was a loser. Whether he suffered from manic depression, epilepsy or schizophrenia matters little. Art historians have focused on his poverty, despite his having worked as hard as he could while enduring his afflictions. He reportedly sold one painting in his lifetime – to his brother, Theo. That’s like having Mother put your latest drawing on the refrigerator with a magnet.
Worse than that, the story of van Gogh’s ear might have influenced modern fascination with his art. According to the latest diagnosis issued by the Journal of the American Medical Association, van Gogh may have had Meniere’s disease, an inner-ear disorder characterized by dizziness, vomiting and a maddening ringing in the ear.
Some medical historians have concluded that the artists’ “madness” (vertige, the French word for vertigo), along with his self-described “bad stomach” and “strange sounds,” induced him to slice off his ear.
Other theories include that he maimed himself in a fit of rage and gave the ear to a prostitute after his friend and idol Gauguin left him. A horrid thought indeed, that van Gogh was forced to believe he had little else of the material world to offer.
In a sense, he’s lent us his ear, but we’ve used it more for profit than as a lesson.
On this day, which marks the centenary of his death by suicide at 37, van Gogh is one of the richest and most famous dead persons of all time. His painting “Irises” sold three years ago at auction for $53.9 million.
His other paintings are now extraordinarily pricey, if not hanging in the world’s most revered museums or respected collections. What went wrong during this man’s brief lifetime?
The answer may not be totally clear, but it must have something to do with the power of other people’s opinion. No one with money to spend on art nibbled at van Gogh’s work possibly because it was too close to home, too great a mirror of despair, too fierce a brushstroke, too oddball or too unknown – too something.
How many people take chances like that, then or now? Courage of one’s convictions in art seems to be a fleeting quality. How many curators or dealers display a gut feeling by exhibiting the work of someone – perish the thought – who’s never been exhibited before? Who wouldn’t prefer that “good Housekeeping Seal of Approval” to avoid having to stick by an opinion of his own?
Moreover, art has long been credited with elevating the quality of life, then left to wilt in the heat like a forgotten head of lettuce. And dipping it in the now icy waters of federal funding surely won’t resuscitate it to its former vitality.
This argument is substantiated by the fact that out culture has just gotten around to its current brouhaha over art. And a mixed brouhaha it is.
As Japanese dealers scoop up more and more Western artwork – especially that of the Impressionists and post-Impressionists – as financial investments, Americans slosh around in the muck created by sudden attention to “standards” in art: What’s pornographic in Cincinnati? What does Jessie Helms have on his walls? What’s worth public funding or not? All of which leads to that $64,000 questions – What the devil is art, anyway?
Van Gogh knew plenty about art. He just didn’t know how to make money to support himself by working as, say, an accountant. He wasn’t irresponsible, either. When he believed his illness was getting entirely out of hand, he checked himself into an asylum. He painted relentlessly during his lucid times, in sound enough mind to realize he might lose his sanity, and therefore his art, altogether.
Where would we be today without the man remembered in the song that begins, “Starry, starry night…?” Isn’t he a symbol of “too late smart”? If he is, it’s frightening to think that if he were a contemporary artist, he might not make it at all.
No doubt today there are at least several “van Goghs” languishing somewhere while charlatans unabashedly rake in the cash by selling junk paintings.
In fact, the Mapplethorpe controversy might all but smother Van Gogh’s most agonizing and inspiring pictures were he alive. He might still be a loser. Talented, but a loser. Certainly, he ranks among many artists who go to their graves unsung and wanting.
We’ve learned very little from van Gogh’s example. In light of our warped aesthetics, he amounts to just another artist who chose to end it all. Don McLean’s song admonished the man who portrayed himself, bandages and all: “I could have told you, Vincent, the world was never meant for one as beautiful as you.”
How sad for all of us.