Vincent van Gogh

"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!"

"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 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."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"Van Gogh wrote the most amazing autobiography."

"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."

"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."

"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 ."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"..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."

"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]"

"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."

"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."

"Mit einem Bild möchte ich etwas Tröstliches sagen, so wie Musik tröstlich ist."

"Mein Herz ist wie das Meer // Hat Sturm und Ebb und Fluth // Auch Perlen findest du tief // Nur tief in mein Gemuth."

"Nur vor der Staffelei beim Malen fühle ich ein wenig Leben."

"Je mehr man liebt, um so tätiger wird man sein."

"Ich komme immer mehr zu der Überzeugung, dass man den lieben Gott nicht nach unserer Welt beurteilen darf, denn das ist eine Studie, die ihm misslungen ist. [...] unsere Welt ist offenbar in Eile hingesudelt in einer jener schlechten Stunden, wo der Schaffende nicht mehr wusste, was er machte, oder den Kopf verloren hatte. [...] Nur Meister können sich derart täuschen, das ist vielleicht der beste Trost, denn man darf ja hoffen zu sehen, wie er mit derselben schöpferischen Hand die Scharte auswetzt."