🌃 Not Gatekeeping: Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890), the Dutch Painter, perhaps singlehandedly recognized by his famous painting, ‘The Starry Night’, was a truly troubled soul, choosing to convey his feelings through his paintings.
What started as small portraits in his letters to his brother, turned quickly into something far greater under the supervision of Anton Mauve (1838-1888), giving him his initial era as a ‘Peasant Painter’. While his earlier work was quite dark in its shades, his move to France changed his palette completely. Work on impressionism from the likes of Claude Monet made his work much brighter, and colorful too.
His famous art style (much like most in the Post-Impressionism era), was emphasized by vivid, frantic brushstrokes, which often, led to dizzying, hallucinatory experiences while viewing the last of his paintings. He found his style, and produced his most famous work, in his most troubled final years.
After a failed attempt at creating a collaborative art studio with Paul Gauguin (1848-1903), his seeming fear of being left alone, and maybe his addiction to Absinthe, sent him into a meltdown (the one where he cut off his ear). A few months after, fearing another episode, he admitted himself to a mental hospital in Saint-Rémy. It was here that he painted the famous ‘Starry Night’, looking through the bars of his room in the asylum and drawing the scene from memory.
He called the painting a failure, and wanted to redo it. Maybe I’ll talk about the painting itself some other time, it deserves a separate post; but what must be mentioned is he produced his most famous, vivid, and beautiful artwork while he was here. While that may speak a lot on misery being the best muse, it really fucking baffles me, every time I look at his paintings, as to how a man, who was later told to have killed himself, saw the world with such awe, wonder, and beauty, and gave us such a majestic view into his mind too.
(PS: I don't believe he took his own life. You might wanna look up the details behind his death. It's quite the mystery.)
