Suicides

"Yes, indeed, we must fly, but not with our feet, but with our hands.."

"In my yellow room, sunflowers with purple eyes stand out against a yellow background; the ends of their stalks bathe in a yellow pot on a yellow table. In one corner of the painting, the painter's signature: Vincent. And the yellow sun, coming through the yellow curtains of my room, floods all this flowering with gold, and in the morning, when I wake up in my bed, I have the impression that it all smells very good. Oh yes! he loved yellow, did good Vincent, the painter from Holland, gleams of sunlight warming his soul, which detested fog. A craving for warmth. When the two of us were together in Arles, both of us insane, and constantly at war over beautiful colors, I adored red; where could I find a perfect vermilion? He, taking his yellowest brush, wrote on the suddenly purple wall: I am of sound mind, I am the Holy Ghost."

"Now I think I know what you tried to say to me How you suffered for your sanity How you tried to set them free They would not listen they're not listening still... Perhaps they never will..."

"Starry, starry night, portraits hung in empty halls Frameless heads on nameless walls with eyes that watch the world and can't forget. Like the stranger that you've met, the ragged man in ragged clothes The silver thorn of bloody rose, lie crushed and broken on the virgin snow."

"For they could not love you, but still your love was true And when no hope was left in sight, on that starry starry night You took your life as lovers often do, But I could have told you, Vincent, This world was never meant for one as beautiful as you."

"Weathered faces lined in pain are soothed beneath the artist's loving hand."

"Now I understand what you tried to say to me How you suffered for your sanity How you tried to set them free They would not listen they did not know how, perhaps they'll listen now."

"Starry Starry Night, paint your palette blue and grey Look out on a summer's day with eyes that know the darkness in my soul Shadows on the hills, sketch the trees and the daffodils Catch the breeze and the winter chills, in colors on the snowy linen land."

"Firstly for the design I decided that the two joined figures should be depicted upright [in Zadkine's first attempt the two brothers were sitting shoulder to shoulder].. ..two or three days later I was able to send him a photo of my new attempt, in which the two brothers are not only standing, but where the bond – the main idea is projected onto the statue in a hollow, in the heart of the composition the viewer can see a knot of hands, a symbol of the double inspiration."

"This exchange – mainly in the form of letters [ here all collected ] between the brothers van Gogh]] ] – was not only about painting and art, but covered everything to do with one's existence and the philosophical or religious colouring, in a word: for the reader of the letters written by Vincent to his brother a total of human behaviour is revealed that of the dual being of van Gogh. This is how my first wish and then obsession was started, to build a monument for the two van Gogh brothers [Zadkine made several sculptures of Vincent, and of the two brothers Theo & Vincent Van Gogh, in the 1950's]"

"..the bond is then shown to be a sort of identity of thought, of reaction to the endless small changes, taking place in one brother and immediately passed on to the other, because feeding an idea was always a double barrel, and was eventually enforced after the echo had passed between the two."

"I repeatedly told myself that the life of Vincent van Gogh and his colossal oeuvre – are not an individual outburst but a special and rare occurrence based on the special bond between the two brothers [Vincent and Theo], only broken by Vincent's suicide."

"To all the conflicting influences which had been showered on van Gogh, to the kindness of Pissarro, the cold systematization and a certain uncommunicativeness of Seurat, the lively proselytizing of Signac, Gauguin added a new element: a crude outspokenness, and occasional independence from nature, a vague tendency to use exaggeration as a means to go beyond impressionism."

"He went to work in Asnières together with Signac or Emile Bernard; he paid frequent visits to Guillaumin... he studied the masterpieces of the Louvre and particularly the paintings of Delacroix; he saw more or less frequently Toulouse-Lautrec, who had also been for a while under the influence of the impressionists; he had frantic discussions with almost every one of his new acquaintances, trying to absorb as much as he could... [H]e studied assiduously the paintings at the eighth impressionist exhibition ...he visited the Salon and later the Salon des Indépendants ...Theo and his painter friends also took him to Durand-Ruel's, to [Arsène] Portier's, to père Martin's and especially to the little place of père Tanguy. Van Gogh and père Tanquy quickly became fast friends, much to the distress of Mme Tanguy, who saw her husband supply the young man with canvas and paints (he used much of both) in return for unsaleable paintings. Cézanne... is supposed to have seen in these paintings only the work of a madman. But old Tanguy... divided his admiration equally between Cézanne and van Gogh."

"Van Gogh's work had hitherto been very dark, with scarcely any color, and he was at first bewildered by the rich coloring and the light which he discovered in the impressionist pictures. But when Pissarro explained to him the theory and technique of his own paintings, van Gogh began to experiment and immediately took to the new ideas with great enthusiasm. He completely changed his palette and his execution, even adopting for a while the neo-impressionist dot, although he used it without systematic ."

"Vincent... had come to Paris in the Spring of 1886 to live with his brother Theo and to acquaint himself with all the new art movements. ...[H]e felt a growing desire to see the paintings by the impressionists of which Theo spoke so often in letters. He also began to be preoccupied by the problems of simultaneous contrast and complementaries, which formed the basis of Seurat's theories. ...Theo took it upon himself to introduce his brother to the painters with whom he had dealings."

"Gauguin... [1886] chose to live in Pont-Aven, a well-known resort of artists. There he took quarters... favored by the pupils of Cormon and Julian... The young painter Emile Bernard, who paid him a visit at Schuffenecker's suggestion... managed to see some of his paintings and noted that "small brushstrokes weave the color and remind me of Pissarro; there is not much style." ...Eventually he admitted two painters to intimacy, and a young Frenchman ...who discreetly paid Gauguin's bills. It was through these that the others... learned of his ideas, of his frequently expressed admiration for Degas and Pissarro, of technical questions which preoccupied him and of his search... to preserve the intensity of colors. ...[T]he boldness of his approach left a deep impression on them ...When they returned to Paris ...the pupils of Cormon communicated their new experiences to their fellow students, who had already grieved their teacher... by their lively interest in Seurat's theories. Cormon had even temporarily closed his classes in protest at their revolutionary experiments... One of his pupils, Vincent van Gogh, thereupon had decided not to return... but to work on his own."

"Van Gogh wrote the most amazing autobiography."

"for me to look at a Van Gogh is to look at an artist who was trying to change how we look at the world."

"Paul Cézanne's painting is strictly painting, and its value is immense; but Van Gogh's painting has the Outsider's characteristic: it is a laboratory refuse of a man who treated his own life as an experiment in living; it faithfully records moods and developments of vision on the manner of a Bildungsroman."

"About Van Gogh.. ..a man who is on fire, a torch. His sincerity is absolute. His best painting is the grain field where he kills himself. There we find ourselves at the border of the art of painting. We cannot go further."

"Van Gogh.. .In this world of petty calculations, he was too intense. He frightened people. They cast him out."

"In the last letter which he [Vincent] wrote me and which dates from some four days before his death, it says, "I try to do as well as certain painters whom I have greatly loved and admired." People should realize that he was a great artist, something which often coincides with being a great human being. In the course of time this will surely be acknowledged, and many will regret his early death. He himself wanted to die, when I sat at his bedside and said that we would try to get him better and that we hoped that he would then be spared this kind of despair, he said, "La tristesse durera toujours" [The sadness will last forever]. I understood what he wanted to say with those words."

"I am very happy to be able to tell you that I met Dr. Gachet, that physician [which] Camille Pissarro mentioned to me. He gives the impression of being a man of understanding. Physically he is a little like you. As soon as you come here we are going to see him; he comes to Paris several times a week for consultations. When I told him how your crisis came about, he said to me that he didn't believe it had anything to do with madness, and that if it was what he thought he could guarantee your recovery, but that it was necessary for him to see you and to speak with you in order to be able to make a more definite statement."

"That head of his [Vincent] has been occupied with contemporary society's insoluble problems for so long, and he is still battling on with his good-heartedness and boundless energy. His efforts have not been in vain, but he will probably not live to see them come to fruition, for by the time people understand what he is saying in his paintings it will be too late. He is one of the most advanced painters and it is difficult to understand him, even for me who knows him so intimately. His ideas cover so much ground, examining what is humane and how one should look at the world, that one must first free oneself from anything remotely linked to convention to understand what he was trying to say, but I am sure he will be understood later on. It is just hard to say when."

"I'm going to begin by telling you a great piece of news.. around February probably, we're hoping to have a baby, a pretty little boy – whom we'll call Vincent if you'll consent to be his godfather.. ..to tell the truth, when I found out I wasn't at all pleased, on the contrary I was very unhappy.. ..neither Theo nor I are in very good health, I'm very afraid that we may make a weak child,. ..[but] the doctor reassured me greatly on that score, and then good food and good care can do a great deal.. .Do you remember the portrait of the Roulin baby you sent Theo? Everyone admires it greatly, and many times now people have asked 'but why have you put this portrait in this out-of-the-way corner?' It's because – from my place at table I can just see the child's big blue eyes, its pretty little hands and round cheeks, and I like to imagine that ours will be as strong, as healthy and as beautiful as that one – and because his uncle will consent to do his portrait one day!"

"The last time I saw Vincent.. ..was in Arles in the spring of 1889. He was already at the hospital of this city. Several days earlier, he had cut off the lobe of his ear (and not his entire ear) under circumstances of which you know. But the day of my visit he had his wits about him, and the intern permitted me to go out with him. He had the famous bandage on, and the fur cap. He took me to his lodgings at the Place Lamartine, where I saw the marvelous paintings, his masterpieces: Les Alyscamps; The Night Café; La Berceuse; The Drawbridge; the Saintes-Maries; The Starry Night; etc.. Imagine the splendor of those whitewashed walls from which these colors radiated in all their freshness! The whole day he spoke to me about painting, literature, socialism. That night he was a little tired. There was a frightful mistral blowing which might have unnerved him.."

"I knew van Gogh less intimately. I spoke to him for the first time in 1887 in a popular eatery near 'La Fourche', Avenue de Clichy, [Paris], (closed). A huge windowed room was decorated with his canvases. He exhibited at the 'Independants', [Paris] in 1888, 1889, 1890... ... Signac told me of his death this way: 'He [= Vincent] gave himself a bullet in the ribs; it passed through his body and lodged in his groin. He walked for two kilometers, losing all his blood, and went on to die in his inn'."

"When I got up this morning, Wednesday, my landlady handed me your letter, which satisfied me to learn that you had left Arles, to go to St-Rémy of your own accord. Continue your paintings, you are in a beautiful part of the world, the countryside is very beautiful, the soil is very well worked, you will find a great change in the farming down there, you will not find gardens that look like cemeteries, as in Arles. Continue to take good care of yourself, follow properly the good advice which will be given to you by the good Doctor who is attached to the establishment. I have great confidence that your health will be completely restored, with the good will that you have you will succeed in doing very fine paintings, you live in the garden of the Bouches du Rhône, you will not lack for models made by nature, continue and be of good heart."

"I am sorry to say that I think he is lost. Not only is his mind affected, but he is very weak and down-hearted. He recognised me but did not show any pleasure at seeing me and did not inquire about any member of my family.. .When I left him I told him that I would come back to see him; he replied that we would meet again in heaven, and from his manner I realized he was praying."

"He [Vincent] often complained that he was the only painter in town [ Arles ] and therefore could not talk to anyone about his art. For lack of such a colleague, he would talk to me about complementary colors. But I really could not understand why red should not be red, and green not green!. .When I saw that he outlined my head entirely in green (he had only two main colors, red and green), that he painted my hair and my mustache - I really did not have red hair - in a blazing red on a biting green background, I was simply horrified. What shouldn't I do with this present?"

"It was after his return that Camille Pissarro was requested by Theo van Gogh to take in his brother Vincent who was anxious to leave the asylum of Saint-Remy near Arles where he had been confined since May 1889. Pissarro, who had known Vincent van Gogh from his first appearance in Paris in 1886, and who had often advised the Dutch painter during the period when the latter was abandoning his dark style for the impressionist technique, was ready to put him up at Eragny. But Madame Pissarro was afraid of the effect on her children of an unbalanced man. So Camille Pissarro suggested his friend Dr. Gachet at Auvers on the Oise, who was willing to care for Vincent van Gogh."

"I received a letter from the brother-in-law of Theo van Gogh. He writes that Theo is calmer and that it will be possible to send him to Holland. The Vingt [art-exhibition in Belgium] are to include van Gogh's works in their exhibition as are the 'Independents' [in Paris] who will have one room for [w:Albert Dubois-Pillet|Dubois-Pillet]], and one for Vincent."

"I, the undersigned, doctor of Medicine, Director of the Saint-Remy mental home, certify that the man, named Vincent van Gogh,.. ..at present domiciled in Arles.. ..suffered an attack of acute mania with visual and auditorial hallucinations that led him to mutilate himself by cutting off his ear. Today he appears to have regained his reasons but he does not feel he has the strength or the courage to live independently.."

"The accepted understanding of what happened in Auvers among the people who knew him was that he was killed accidentally by a couple of boys and he decided to protect them by accepting the blame... .These two boys, one of whom was wearing a cowboy outfit and had a malfunctioning gun that he played cowboy with, were known to go drinking at that hour of day with Vincent.. .So you have a couple of teenagers who have a malfunctioning gun, you have a boy who likes to play cowboy, you have three people probably all of whom had too much to drink.. .It's really hard to imagine that if either of these two boys was the one holding the gun — which is probably more likely than not — it's very hard to imagine that they really intended to kill this painter."

"Certainly, I am not insensitive to the researches on light by M. Georges Seurat.. .I am attracted to M. Denis's small compositions, of so soft a tone, enveloped in such tender mysticism. I recognize, in M. Armand Guillaumin's limited and unimaginative Realism a fine touch.. .And despite the blacks with which he unduly soils his figures, M. de Toulouse-Lautrec shows a real power, spiritual and tragic.. .M. Lucien Pissarro's engravings have verve, sobriety, and distinction.. .But none of these uncontestable artists.. ..captivate me as much as Vincent van Gogh. In his case I sense that I am in the presence of someone higher, more masterful, someone who disturbs me, moves me, and compels recognition. It is perhaps not yet the time to tell the story of Vincent van Gogh as it ought to be told. His death is too recent, and it was too tragic. The memories I would evoke would revive the grief, which still brings tears."

"..It is not a question of trying to reproduce objective features, only of good practice for the fingers and for the perceptive faculty, and that too is very useful. You must have read how Van Gogh was always getting his brother to send him drawings to copy.. ..to get 'du corps'. So one should be always drawing..."

"..he [Vincent van Gogh] is closer to me than [[w:Ferdinand Hodler|[Ferdinand] Hodler]], for he sees colors as I see them. On reading [Van Gogh's letters] I have again and again said, Good Lord, that is just how you would make a poem.. .The difference is that painting is very difficult, whereas writing poetry is terribly easy provided one has eyes to see it."

"One day in the drawing class of the Academy of Antwerp [End of 1885 / beginning of 1886], the students were given, as if by chance, a cast of the Venus de Milo to copy. Van Gogh, struck by one of the essential characteristics of the model, strongly accentuated the width of her hips.. .The beautiful Greek goddess had become a robust Flemish matron. When the honest [art-teacher] M. Sieber saw this he tore Van Gogh's sheet of paper with the furious strokes of his crayon, correcting his drawing while reminding him of the immutable canons of art. ..[Van Gogh] flew into a violent rage and shouted at the horrified professor: "You clearly don't know what a young woman is like, God damn it! A woman must have hips, buttocks, a pelvis in which she can carry a baby!" This was the last lesson that Van Gogh took - or gave - at the Academy of Antwerp."

"In my yellow room, a small still life; this one violet. – Two enormous, worn, deformed shoes. Vincent's shoes. Those he took, one bright, new morning, then, to make his way on foot from Holland to Belgium. The young priest.. ..was on his way to the mines [in the Borinage, Belgium] to see those, he called his brothers.. ..Contrary to his master's teaching, wise Dutchmen, Vincent believed in a Jesus who loved the poor.. ..Undoubtly, undoubtly, Vincent was already mad."

"Boughton together with Abbey are making for Harper in New York drawings called "Picturesque Holland".. ..now I say to myself if the Graphic and Harper send their draughtsmen to Holland they would perhaps not be unwilling to accept a draughtsman from Holland [Vincent himself], if he can furnish some good work for not too much money. I should prefer to be accepted on regular monthly wages rather than to sell a drawing now and then at a relatively high price."

"Involuntarily and without any definite motive, I had a thought that often occurs to me. Not only did I begin drawing relatively late in life, but it may also be that I shall not live for so very many years to come.. .I think I may presume without rashness: that my body will keep a certain number of years "quand bien meme" - a certain number, say between six and ten years for instance.. .This is the period on which I reckon firmly."

"Speaking of Rousseau, do you know Richard Wallace's [owner of a] Rousseau? ['The forest of Fontainebleau': Morning, a landscape, with cattle drinking, c. 1850] An edge of a wood in the autumn after rain, with a vista of meadows stretching away endlessly, marshy, with cows in them, the foreground rich in tone. To me that's one of the finest — is very like the one with the red sun in the Luxembourg ['The edge of the forest of Fontainebleau, at sunset', c. 1849]. The dramatic effect of these paintings is something that helps us to understand 'a corner of nature seen through a temperament' ["

"Your description of Troyon and Rousseau, for instance, is lively enough to give me some idea of which of their manners they are done in. There were other paintings from the time of Troyon's municipal pasture that had a certain 'mood' that one would have to call 'dramatic', even though they aren't figure paintings."

"The work is an absolute necessity for me. I can't put it off, I don't care for anything but the work; that is to say, the pleasure in something else ceases at once and I become melancholy when I can't go on with my work. Then I feel like a weaver who sees that his threads are tangled, and the pattern he had on the loom is gone to hell, and all his thought and exertion is lost."

"When you [Theo] come you must see my woodcuts again. I've got some new ones since last time. It seemed to you perhaps as if the sun shone brighter and everything had acquired a new charm. At any rate, I believe this is always the effect of a serious love [Vincent doesn't call here his love Sien,] and that's a delightful thing.. .I can find no words for how beautiful the old courtyards are here. And although Jozef Israëls does it perfectly, so to speak, I find it strange that so relatively few pay them any attention. Here in The Hague every day, so to speak, I see a world which a great many pass by and which is very different from what most are making. And wouldn't dare say this if I hadn't had the experience of figure painters actually passing it by as well, and remembered walking with them and, when I was struck by this or that figure we encountered, hearing repeatedly 'Oh, but those filthy folk' or 'that sort of people' — in short, expressions one wouldn't expect from a painter."

"Poetry surrounds us everywhere, but putting it on paper is, alas, not so easy as looking at it."

"It constantly remains a source of disappointment to me that my drawings are not yet what I want them to be. The difficulties are indeed numerous and great, and cannot be overcome at once. To make progress is a kind of miner's work; it doesn't advance as quickly as one would like, and as others also expect, but as one stands before such a task, the basic necessities are patience and faithfulness. In fact, I do not think much about the difficulties, because if one thought of them too much one would get stunned or disturbed. A weaver who has to direct and to interweave a great many little threads has no time to philosophize about it, but rather he is so absorbed in his work that he doesn't think but acts, and he feels how things must go more than he can explain it. Even though neither you nor I, in talking together, would come to any definite plans, etc., perhaps we might mutually strengthen that feeling that something is ripening within us. And that is what I should like."

"There are things which we feel to be good and true, though in the cold light of reason and calculation many things remain incomprehensible and dark. And though the society in which we live considers such actions thoughtless, or reckless, or I don't know what else, what can we say if once the hidden forces of sympathy and love have been roused in us? And though it may be that we cannot argue against the reasoning sentiment and to act from impulse, one would almost conclude that some people have cauterized certain sensitive nerves within them, especially those which, combined, are called conscience. Well, I pity those people; they travel through life without compass, in my opinion."

"And my intention is to try to form a collection of many such things, which would not be quite unworthy of the title 'heads of the people.' By working hard, boy, I hope to succeed in making something good. It isn't there yet, but I aim at it, and struggle for it. I want something serious, - some thing fresh - something with soul in it! Forward - forward -"