Vincent Van Gogh
Van Gogh is also known phonetically as Van Gogh, Van Gogh, Vincent, Vincent
Biography by Period
Early Works 1881.4 - 1883.12
The earliest paintings by Van Gogh are shown here. These include the Etten Period, the Hague Period and the Drenthe Period. Van Gogh was almost 30 years old when he painted them. These works were completed around 1881-1883. Previously, Van Gogh had been devastated by the mines of Bolinage and had almost despaired of God, but in the midst of his confusion and perplexity, he finally found his life's calling - painting. He began to copy a large number of famous paintings and made a large number of sketches. It can be said that Van Gogh was a self-taught genius painter. He was nurtured by art from a young age and had a very high literary quality, which made him have a high appreciation of art. Van Gogh loved Rembrandt and Miller, and used his own brush to depict peasants, workers, and people at the bottom of the social ladder. Although his deep and solid style contrasted greatly with his later paintings, the temperament and spirit expressed in his paintings remained unchanged.
Nuenen 1883.12 - 1885.11
Toward the end of 1883, Van Gogh returned to Nuenen, where his father's church was located. During his two years in Nuenen, Van Gogh practiced his sketching skills. After making a number of sketches and exercises, he completed his first famous work (the so-called famous is the result of posterity; Van Gogh was only a young man at the time), The Potato Eaters. This work, along with many of his works of the period, was influenced by the Dutch style of realism, with a deep, earthy atmosphere. It also shows Van Gogh's strong peasant complex, and he seems to have wanted to be a peasant painter. On the one hand, he was influenced by his "spiritual mentor", Millet, but more importantly, it was probably his deepest desire for country life, his respect for simple farmers and his praise for honest labor.
[Note]: Miller was a 19th-century French realist artist who loved to depict peasant life. Van Gogh's spiritual mentor, many of Van Gogh's works were influenced by him and copied many of his works.
Antwerp Antwerp 1885.11 - 1886.2
At the end of November 1885, Van Gogh decided to go to Antwerp, where he spent three months learning to draw and painting hard and becoming absorbed in it. During this time, he was introduced to the paintings of Rubens and came into contact with Japanese ukiyo-e, all of which had a great influence on his painting journey thereafter. Van Gogh's work during this period continued the realism and deep brushwork of his Nuenen period, but he also gradually made his canvases brighter and more colorful.
Paris 1886.3 - 1888.2
At the end of February 1886, Van Gogh arrived in Paris, the "capital of art". Van Gogh was excited by the artistic atmosphere, and was particularly struck by the Impressionist paintings. Introduced by his brother Theo (who was a famous dealer in Paris at that time and had a good relationship with the Impressionists), Van Gogh met many Impressionists, such as Lautrec, Gauguin, Seurat, Pissarro... After being influenced by the Impressionists, Van Gogh's painting style changed and his images became brighter. He also absorbed some of the techniques of the Impressionists in his work, such as the pointillism method. During this period, Van Gogh began to create a large number of self-portraits. 2 years later, Van Gogh grew tired of the city life in Paris. He was not satisfied with the expression and ideas of the Impressionists, and his unique personality tells us that Van Gogh's paintings did not belong to any school. So Van Gogh moved with hope to the south of France, to the sunny town of Arles, and ushered in his most brilliant period of creativity.
Arles 1888.2 - 1889.5
In February 1888, Van Gogh came to the small town of Arles in the south of France on the recommendation of a friend, and soon fell in love with it. The fierce sunlight and piercing wheat fields drove him "crazy". Creation was at its peak. Although influenced by French Impressionism and Japanese Ukiyo-e. But his works have become highly individualized, which comes from his unique perspective and sensitive character. He loved nature and life; he was not satisfied with just rational "imitation of the external image of things", but with the help of painting "to express the artist's subjective opinions and emotions, so that the work has a personality and a unique style" (quotation marks in the original words of Van Gogh). Therefore, Van Gogh was a master who painted with his heart. Van Gogh rented a "yellow house" on the edge of a small town square and wanted to establish a "painter's house". Gauguin came to live with him. Unfortunately, the long hours of overwork and the burning sun made Van Gogh mentally unstable. He and Gauguin quarreled day and night, which led to the famous "ear-cutting incident". After protests from the inhabitants of Arles, Van Gogh was forced to leave and voluntarily went to St. Paul's Psychiatric Hospital in St. Remy, not far from Arles, to receive treatment. Van Gogh produced a large number of works in Arles, but was unable to sell them to support himself. Sunflowers, Harvest Scene, Café Nocturne - Outdoors, and Café Nocturne - Indoors are some of the masterpieces of this period.
Saint-Rémy 1889.5 - 1890.5
On May 8, 1889, Van Gogh voluntarily came to Saint-Rémy, 25 kilometers from Arles. He was treated at the St. Paul Psychiatric Hospital. By this time Van Gogh was in a state of fear of mental illness and confusion about his future. He had episodes of illness every few months, but was very lucid afterwards and often went outdoors to paint. Amazingly, Van Gogh was not disillusioned under these circumstances, but produced a more mature, daring, and striking body of work. Many of the works of this period show strong emotions and "visual impact", with swirling lines, rough and powerful, letting people feel the painter's complex and strong feelings and the urge to express. Representative works include: "Night of the Stars and Moon", "Cypress Tree" and so on. It is worth mentioning that it was at this time that critics began to comment on Van Gogh, and sold the only oil painting in his lifetime.
Auvers-sur-Oise 1890.5 - 1890.7
On May 17, 1890, Van Gogh traveled to Paris to meet with Theo, his wife, and their newborn nephew Vincent (who shared Van Gogh's name). On Theo's recommendation, Van Gogh went to Auvers, a small town not far from Paris, to be treated by Dr. Gachet and to continue his work. Van Gogh got along well with the locals and seemed to be improving, but on the afternoon of July 27, he shot himself while out painting, and at dawn on the 29th, Van Gogh died next to Theo. He was only 37 years old. The reasons for Van Gogh's suicide have always been debated. Personally, I believe that Van Gogh's suicide was not simply due to mental problems. Works such as The Crow in the Wheatfield were definitely painted while the artist was extremely lucid, but these paintings hint at Van Gogh's death, but it is very obvious. Van Gogh's sudden suicide on the eve of his fame may remain a mystery. But remember his last words: "The sadness will lastforever..."
On January 25, 1891, Theo died, six months after Van Gogh.
Theo's body was buried next to Van Gogh's grave in Auvers in 1914. The two good brothers were together forever...
Vincent? Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) was born in Gruzondale, South Brabant, and died in Auvers-sur-Oise. It was in December 1885 that he became a painter. At that time, he began an artistic career that was both prolific and short, since he completed his great work in only five years. At that time, if he hadn't had a sudden revelation, we would undoubtedly be remembering him today as the great painter of labor and poverty, of the toil of workers and peasants, and as the first of Dutch Expressionism. His paintings are among the most valuable objects in the world today, yet during his life he was struck by coldness and poverty; he spoke four languages and was well read, yet lived and worked like a peasant; he cut off his right ear in a state of madness and offered it to a prostitute; his paintings are full of mesmerizing colors and lines, a beauty that is hard to imitate; and finally, he shot himself in the face and ended his life. He was Van Gogh. An unforgettable and passionate painter! I hope you can know more about Van Gogh while enjoying his paintings.
Van Gogh and his paintings
Born in 1853, Van Gogh was born in a Protestant family in the Netherlands. As a teenager, he worked for dealers in London, Paris and The Hague, and later as a missionary among miners in Belgium.
He began painting around 1881, and in 1886 went to Paris to join his brother, where he was first exposed to the work of the Impressionists, who also influenced him, along with the famous painter Rubens, Japanese prints and the famous painter Gauguin.
In 1888, Van Gogh began to express strong feelings based on color. He briefly dated Gauguin before suffering a nervous breakdown and being institutionalized. After several emotional breakdowns, Van Gogh committed suicide in Auvers in 1890. He was a huge influence on Fauvism and German Expressionism.
Van Gogh was a sensitive, irritable, and brilliant man who achieved little success in many things during his lifetime. His personal life was unfortunate and difficult, but he was always ready to devote himself to the love of others, friendship and passion for art. During his missionary work in Belgium, he witnessed the hard life of the poor and decided to help the coal miners with the greatest zeal. He volunteered to take in miners who were dying from serious injuries, hoping to help the weak in their struggle with soothing words and self-sacrifice, but he was dismissed from his job after only six months because he was over-enthusiastic about his work.
In his short life of 37 years, Van Gogh devoted the most important period of his life to art. His early paintings were in the brownish tones of Dutch painting, but the fiery passion of his nature led him to abandon the bleakness and silence of the Dutch school and to move quickly away from Impressionism - whose quest for instant authenticity in the external world was far removed from his subjective state of mind. He captured the object not by the line but by the environment; he re-altered reality to achieve a tangible reality, leading to the birth of Expressionism.
Van Gogh's Ear
Van Gogh once cut off one of his ears with a razor blade when he was close to a nervous breakdown. Was he trying to use this act to wake himself up and stop the growing madness within him?
Or was it an act of madness in itself? I remember a self-portrait of him depicting himself with his ear wound wrapped in gauze - there was no pain in his eyes, only fear, as if he could reflect the shadow of the storm that had just disappeared. If I were allowed to give this painting another title, I would name it The Wounded Soldier in His Own Battle. On his own battlefield, Van Gogh wounded and bandaged himself. -- and also memorialized it with a self-portrait.
Was it a thought, or was it deliberate? He pointed the sharp edge of his hatred at himself, at an innocent ear -- perhaps in that moment he made peace with the world, but doubled down on his hatred of himself, of the ugly and deformed man in the mirror. Thus, his gesture is like an out-of-control train rushing off the tracks, accompanied by a pain-like pleasure or pleasure-like pain, and that blood-soaked ear, a victim of his own. Could it be that in Van Gogh's mind, the ear was already a piece of flab in this life - it could only hear the clamor of the world, but ignored the frenzy of the heart? Or is he too afraid to listen to his own moaning day and night - it is simply more piercing than the outside world's thunder and lightning, more bitter? Otherwise, his blade would not have chosen the object of his venting at random - even if it was aimed at a minuscule ear, it had a purpose. In the initial contact between the icy flow of the iron and the hot flesh, Van Gogh is filled with a destructive desire for himself, and for the world in general, and must gain balance by breaking something. It's called horror:
The psychological madness has evolved into a physical response, even manifesting itself in a certain bloodlust. In a strange scream, Van Gogh himself acquired a double identity: both executioner and victim. The scales of reason tipped: he was more cruel to himself than sympathetic. The first drop of blood meant the first crime he committed against himself.
For Van Gogh's severed ear, the sound of the sea was also the sound of blood, the sound of bright red. It was as if he were going to be drowned by the blood of the world, by the dusk of the sea. The ear is the setting sun on his shoulder, suffering a heavy blow. There is the following passage in the novel by the female writer Chen Dye: "I don't love the strange man with this ear, I only love this strange ear in pure pursuit of death and burning, and I would like to be the eternal widow of this one ear." That ear that crashed to the ground with a sound was the gentlest shrapnel in the world, a souvenir of a silent war - and in our imagination it has been beating in place of the Master's withered heart like a wall clock that never stops. In the eyes of the world, Van Gogh was mad. But in the hearing of this ear, the world went mad.
The world infected the human painter with its madness first - as if it had once imbued his brush with magic. We gaze in amazement at Van Gogh's distorted face, horrified eyes and trembling gestures: it is as if he were being tortured in the place of the whole of mankind, the embodiment of pain. When we think about this, we can also understand the struggling lines and wildly dancing color blocks in Van Gogh's works: the spilled paint is tempered with his blood, and the canvas, however, is just a bandage for his wounds. This is a master who lived in his wounds, who used to speak to the world with them. This is a reaper of pain, whose scythe ultimately reaps its own ear.
The world failed to save the dying patient. Van Gogh put down the blood-dripping razor blade - and soon picked up a revolver. He seemed to think of himself more and more as an imaginary enemy, constantly picking his weapons of attack. The end result was naturally devastating: in a wheat field in Arles, France, he pulled the trigger on himself with the same hand that had been used to holding a paintbrush. Whenever I admire Van Gogh's posthumous works from over a century ago (even in print), for some reason, I can always smell a vague whiff of smoke - or rather, death. But compared to his death, his madness seems even more horrifying. A castrated ear is more shocking than a shot body. Van Gogh died, but left behind a famous ear - a final relic that doesn't seem to have lost its hearing and collects the chatter of posterity. This bloodless ear, present in the story, still pricks our conscience like a stethoscope buried in our lives. Van Gogh died with the ear still alive and possessing a memory. Why not support him as he groans and breaks down - world, do you hear me? Where do your ears grow?
Always can't forget the title of a foreign novel: "More People Die of Broken Hearts". What are the characteristics of those who die of broken hearts? I guess their faces are shrouded in a more serene expression than normal. From this, one can understand why Van Gogh, in that self-portrait after his injury, maintains a rock-like calmness and stasis - as if the pain had descended on another person, or had moved away from his flesh. It could be argued that at the moment he cut off his ear uncontrollably, his heart had already been broken - like the porcelain that crashed to the ground. At the moment he examines his mutilated self in the mirror, he himself has died prematurely. The death of the heart precedes the death of life. A broken heart is already a dead body, even if it is alive. Van Gogh was already incomplete before he died. He created a gaping hole in himself with his blade.
Autumn is here, and the lilacs are in tune
This is a line from Van Gogh's letter to Theo. I can't tell if it's a line Van Gogh quoted elsewhere, or if it's his own language. But I believe the joy came from his heart when he wrote this line.
When he wrote this letter, Van Gogh was confronted with the growing brilliance of the colors in the fields, and with the autumn of his own painting career. His palette was growing brighter and brighter as he plowed away in the hot sun, forgetting time, the canvas his field. The times when people misunderstood him the most were the times when he had the most confidence in his creations.
It was only because of this unresolved turmoil that I revisited The Autobiography of Van Gogh (the name of the Chinese translation, which is somewhat speculative, but in fact a collection of Van Gogh's letters; the original was called Dear Theo), in an attempt to see how a man who had endured even greater suffering could continue on his path. This self-congratulatory approach was a bit like quenching one's thirst, but I did feel a lot calmer when I read the whole book.
Before his life came to an end, Van Gogh watched with such joy and serenity the colors of life that flowed out of him. Among these colors was also the pain that had been following him. Because of the presence of these darker colors, something else appeared to shine more brightly.
Van Gogh shot himself, but his life did not seem to stop, but was painted into each painting with a single stroke. These paintings will always be alive, clamoring up as soon as an eye touches them. If you have ever seen a harvest scene and heard the flow of corn or grain, you will be familiar with the sound.
Van Gogh: Crazy for Love
In the fall of 1869, Van Gogh, at the age of 16, was introduced by his uncle to a fine arts firm as a clerk because of his family's growing poverty. He was honest, trustworthy, intelligent and hard-working, and was soon promoted and sent to London. In London, he fell in love at first sight with Ursula, the daughter of his landlady. Van Gogh, who was ugly and walked with a hunched back like a little old man, thought Ursula was a beautiful woman and fell in love with her. Ursula answered his advances with cold words and smiles. Van Gogh, whose first love was broken, went to Paris full of sadness.
Hanging by a thread, Van Gogh continued to read the Bible and the works of Dickens and Zola to relieve his grief. After six years of work, Van Gogh was dismissed by his boss in 1876 because he was too nervous. He returned to London and taught French in a slum school. Van Gogh still went to see Ursula, only to find that she was married. Desperate to teach, Van Gogh accepted an invitation to do charity work in the slums, where he witnessed the misery of the poor depicted in Dickens's paintings, and for the first time developed a desire to express his feelings through painting. His brother, Theo, suggested that he learn to paint, but he decided to become a priest like his father, and in the summer of 1878 he preached in a mining community in the south of Belgium, comforting the elderly and teaching the miners' children to read. There was an epidemic at the time, and he guarded the workers day and night, regardless of his personal safety, and distributed food, clothing, utensils, etc., to the poor, sleeping himself on a straw sack. When the mine exploded? He also risked his life to save a seriously injured miner. His overly serious spirit of sacrifice angered the Church, and in July 1879 Van Gogh was defrocked.
In 1880, his brother Theo, who worked in a painting store, sponsored the 27-year-old Van Gogh to study painting, but the money was only enough for Van Gogh to make ends meet. With no money left for clothes or painting materials, Van Gogh was often forced to eat nothing but chestnuts.
In 1881, Van Gogh confessed his love for his newly-widowed cousin, but was rebuffed. At this point he changed his mind about religion, and on one occasion he argued with his father, "I've learned about your bourgeois religion, you're all hypocrites, I'm done with your religion forever, I'm pursuing the gospel of art!" He abandoned his family and went to The Hague to study painting with his cousin, Mao Wei, but he resented the classical method in which Mao Wei had him constantly painting plaster casts. One day he smashed the plaster statue to pieces and left. He wrote to his brother Theo: "I want to paint humanity! Humanity! Humanity!"
One day he came across an unfortunate pregnant woman on the street and took her home to model for him. He kept painting her and promised to marry her once he had money. The woman was an alcoholic, ugly, irredeemable whore, and Van Gogh cared for her zealously, scrimping on food and clothing, putting a cradle in his studio, and bathing the newborn baby as if it were his own, while the woman stole his money and went to drink for pleasure. If his brother Theo hadn't stepped in to help him out of his predicament, he might have been cut off at the hands of that shameless woman. He wrote to her, "Farewell, I don't believe you will change your ways, but you must at least be honest. Even if you are no more than an unfortunate whore, as soon as you have a child you are a true mother."
Margot was the only woman in Van? Gauguin's life was the only woman who ever loved Vincent. Unfortunately, because of family pressures this love did not come to fruition, Margot swallowed poison, Vincent called a doctor to treat her, Margot eventually recovered. But her dream of one day marrying Vincent did not come true, and it was in Brabant that Van Gogh was finally struck for the first time by the arrow of the goddess of love. Margot, who was older than Van Gogh? Bergmann took a liking to Van Gogh's good nature, and the two lived happily for a few days, but eventually had to part ways due to her parents' interference.In 1885, Van Gogh enrolled at the Antwerp Academy of Fine Arts, the highest school of art, but he was disappointed. Once painting a statue of Venus, he went so far as to paint the goddess with a pair of fat Dutch housewife-like legs, infuriating the teacher who snatched his brush away. He shouted at the teacher, "You don't know what a woman looks like; a woman must have thighs, hips and a pelvis to give birth!" Van Gogh was thrown out of the Academy. At this time, at the age of 33, Van Gogh was suffering from typhoid fever, and in the midst of his poverty and illness, he decided to seek refuge with his brother in Paris. In Paris, he met many Impressionists, including Gauguin, who brought him a series of misfortunes.
Bored by the noise and the glamor of Paris, Van Gogh longed to return to the peace and quiet of nature. With the help of his younger brother, he traveled to Ajo in the south of France, where he stayed in a small inn and painted frantically, sometimes producing a dozen paintings a day. Van Gogh was often very excited when painting, in addition to brushes, but also with fingers, painting knife, sometimes simply squeeze the color directly onto the canvas. He had long lived in the lower strata of society, and y sympathized with the poor and unfortunate: "I would like my works to show the excitement in the heart of an ordinary man." "In October 1888, the talented and cynical Gauguin arrived in Arles, inviting him to live with him as he realized the ideal of a commune of artists.
Gauguin was arrogant, arrogant and contemptuous, from the beginning, he constantly mocked and ridiculed Van Gogh, often made fun of his love affairs, and at the same time, he was jealous of Van Gogh's art and his loyalty to the art of Van Gogh's simple and honest nature, Van Gogh always tolerated his friends. Once Gauguin pre-paid prostitutes, public insults, taunts Van Gogh, humiliated and burst of Van Gogh's anger, and Gao Geng made a scene and left angrily. As Christmas approached, Gauguin paid off another prostitute to play a trick on him. The woman said to Van Gogh: "If you give me five francs, I'll give you a good reception, or I'll give you your big ears for Christmas." Half-drunk, Van Gogh grabbed a sharp razor and cut off his right ear, wrapped it in a canvas and sent it to the brothel. Later, he had painted many self-portraits, of which the one with the cut ear is the most famous.
In May 1889, his brother Theo committed Van Gogh to an insane asylum and later transferred him to a better sanatorium. In the fields near the hospital, Van Gogh painted 150 oil paintings and hundreds of drawings. At this time he changed his style of painting, and was particularly fascinated by the golden wheat fields under the blazing sun, which he painted all day long. He shouted, "Golden yellow! What a beautiful golden color!" In 1890, he asked to be discharged from the hospital to do some sketching, but halfway through, his old illness returned.
One afternoon, sitting under a tree in a small inn, he saw his father's rectory and flowerbeds, Ursula and the miners, Goghun and the "girls", and heard their laughter. He knew he was mad, and kept crying out, "It is impossible! Absolutely impossible!" In the silence of the field, in front of the bright sunlight, he shot himself in the stomach with a pistol, and then calmly packed up his painting equipment and walked back to the hotel as usual. He survived two days of excruciating pain, but he did not cry out. On his deathbed he smoked cigarettes and talked about art with his brother Theo, who died on June 29, 1890, at the age of 37, with a lit pipe in his mouth. His close friend and doctor, Gachet, planted his favorite sunflowers by his grave. Theo, who had always loved his brother, could not bear this heavy blow, and six months later also died of madness in his hometown, and was later buried next to his brother's grave, forever resting with him.