A book newly acquired by the Thammasat University Libraries helps explain the artist Vincent van Gogh.
Vincent van Gogh: Ever Yours: The Essential Letters collects some of the painter’s correspondence, describing the professional failure he lived with. Although now his paintings sell for millions of dollars, during his lifetime very few people appreciated them. Van Gogh was born in 1853 in the southern Netherlands. He faithfully wrote to his younger brother Theo, explaining his hopes and difficulties. He tried to become a teacher and preacher, but failed at these jobs, before becoming a full-time painter at age 27. He worked in France, which was then a center for painting, and his works grew brighter and more dazzling under the influence of French painters of the 19th century. Among the paintings Van Gogh created in the late 1880s were a now-famous series of paintings of sunflowers. After a quarrel with a friend and fellow painter, Paul Gauguin, Van Gogh notoriously cut off part of his own ear with a razor. Although the details of this unpleasant episode are not known today, even people who have no idea what kind of art Van Gogh produced have heard that he cut off his ear, or part of it. In February, a UK tourist won a prize from the Daily Telegraph travel writing competition for his description of a stray dog with one ear which he saw on Koh Samui; he nicknamed the dog Vincent, after Van Gogh. In 1986, Dr. Somchai Charkrabhandu of the Department of Mental Health, the Thai Ministry of Public Health, published a pioneering study in the Journal of The Psychiatric Association of Thailand: Van Gogh Syndrome; Two Cases Reported in Thailand. about people who mutilated themselves. This is one example set by Van Gogh that is very unhealthy to imitate. Unfortunately, the last part of Van Gogh’s life was spent in psychiatric hospitals, and suffering from depression, he shot himself in 1890 and died as a result of his injury. In little more than ten years, he had produced over 2000 artworks, of which the best are widely admired now.
Explaining to his brother.
Although Van Gogh’s life was mostly miserable, he enjoyed writing to his brother, who supported him financially. He explained his beliefs and what kept him working on his art in the face of total failure in the eyes of the world. In 1878 he wrote:
I’ve been thinking about what we discussed, and I couldn’t help thinking of the words ‘we are today what we were yesterday’. This isn’t to say that one must stand still and ought not try to develop oneself, on the contrary, there are compelling reasons to do and think so. But in order to remain faithful to those words one may not retreat and, once one has started to see things with a clear and trusting eye, one ought not to abandon or deviate from that…By persevering in those ideas and things that one at last becomes thoroughly leavened with a good leaven, that of sorrowful yet always rejoicing, and which will become apparent when the time of fruitfulness is come in our lives, the fruitfulness of good works. The ray from on high doesn’t always shine on us, and is sometimes behind the clouds, and without that light a person cannot live and is worth nothing and can do nothing good, and anyone who maintains that one can live without faith in that higher light and doesn’t worry about attaining it will end up being disappointed.. A victory achieved after lifelong work and effort is better than one achieved more quickly. He who lives uprightly and experiences true difficulty and disappointment and is nonetheless undefeated by it is worth more than someone who prospers and knows nothing but relative good fortune…Living means we will inevitably experience sorrow and disappointment. If we but try to live uprightly, then we shall be all right, even though we shall inevitably experience true sorrow and genuine disappointments, and also probably make real mistakes and do wrong things, but it’s certainly true that it is better to be fervent in spirit, even if one accordingly makes more mistakes, than narrow-minded and overly cautious. It is good to love as much as one can, for therein lies true strength, and he who loves much does much and is capable of much, and that which is done with love is well done.
Van Gogh’s philosophy has impressed many readers over the years with his belief in inner strength to conquer professional challenges:
Love is the best and most noble thing in the human heart, especially when it has been tried and tested in life like gold in the fire, happy is he and strong in himself who has loved much and, even if he has wavered and doubted, has kept that divine fire and has returned to that which was in the beginning and shall never die. If only one continues to love faithfully that which is verily worthy of love, and does not squander his love on truly trivial and insignificant and faint-hearted things, then one will gradually become more enlightened and stronger. The sooner one seeks to become competent in a certain position and in a certain profession, and adopts a fairly independent way of thinking and acting, and the more one observes fixed rules, the stronger one’s character becomes, and yet that doesn’t mean that one has to become narrow-minded. It is wise to do that, for life is but short and time passes quickly. If one is competent in one thing and understands one thing well, one gains at the same time insight into and knowledge of many other things into the bargain. It’s sometimes good to go about much in the world and to be among people, and at times one is actually obliged and called upon to do so, or it can be one way of ‘throwing oneself into one’s work unreservedly and with all one’s might’, but he who actually goes quietly about his work, alone, preferring to have but very few friends, goes the most safely among people and in the world. One should never trust it when one is without difficulties or some worry or obstacle, and one shouldn’t make things too easy for oneself. Even in the most cultured circles and the best surroundings and circumstances, one should retain something of the original nature of a Robinson Crusoe or a savage, for otherwise one hath not root in himself, and never let the fire in his soul go out but keep it going, there will always be a time when it will come in useful. We must launch out into the great sea of life… And not troubling ourselves too much if we have shortcomings, for he who has none has a shortcoming nonetheless, namely that he has none, and he who thinks he is perfectly wise would do well to start over from the beginning and become a fool.
Thailand and Van Gogh
Residents of Bangkok may be familiar with the Bar Vincent van Gogh at Soi 33 off Sukhumvit Road in the city. Opened in 1988, if followed another bar named after a famous painter, Auguste Renoir. Soon other lounges would be named after noted painters, such as Monet, Manet, and Degas, until the Soi 33 night entertainment area became known as the Painter’s Soi or Soi Dead Artists. As one of the oldest such bars, the Van Gogh was clearly trying to add class to what was otherwise just another tourist hangout. The prestige of Van Gogh’s name, even in the world of bars and nighttime entertainment, shows how hugely popular he remains in Asia today. In his lifetime, Van Gogh enjoyed the art of Asia, especially Japan. He studied and copied Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints, or pictures of the floating world with strong compositions and dream-like images. Both Van Gogh and Asian artists are interested in making decorative images. Perhaps this explains why the Dutch painter is a hero in Asia today, as explained in Van Gogh on Demand: China and the Readymade, a book not currently in the TU Libraries collection, but which is available through interlibrary loan. In Dafen, a village in southern China, 8000 workers paint copies of Van Gogh and other Western artists, as many as five million paintings per year. One of them, Zhao Xiaoyong, can reproduce a canvas of Van Gogh’s sunflowers in under two-and-a-half minutes. While the results are done more roughly than the originals, clearly there is a market for the results.
In Thailand, the contemporary artist Jirapat Tatsanasomboon, born in 1971 in Samut Prakarn, has been much influenced by Van Gogh. A graduate of Silapakorn University, Khun Jirapat has created a series of works, such as Heal the Wound (after V. van Gogh): Acrylic on canvas and Dreaming on a Starry Night (after Van Gogh): Acrylic and oil on canvas that are tributes to the Dutch painter. In 2014, another leading Thai painter of today, Kritsana Chaikitwattana, created The Echo of van Gogh’s Sunflowers, 2014, an oil and mixed media on board. Born in 1977 in Hat Yai, Khun Kritsana earned degrees from Chulalongkorn and Silapakorn Universities. Khun Kritsana also painted the complex canvas, This is Neither the Real Vincent van Gogh Nor Pipe. In this challenging look at the nature of reality, Khun Kritsana indicated that a painting of Van Gogh is not the same as Van Gogh himself, just as a painting of a pipe is not the same as a pipe. (The Belgian painter René Magritte was dealing with similar ideas when he famously painted an image of a pipe and wrote underneath it, This is Not a Pipe). As The Nation reported last year, Khun Kritsana, who is
considered one of Thailands most thoughtful young artists,
also produced a painting juxtaposing a Thai flag against one of Van Gogh’s images of sunflowers. Making Van Gogh part of today’s artistic expression in Thailand, these painters show how despite his tragic life, the Dutch artist left a lasting legacy. Khun Kritsana told The Nation about Van Gogh:
He was never a success during his life as an artist but he never quit. I think his life is like a sun that burns itself to express the spiritual all the time till the end. Van Gogh’s Sunflower represents both his success and failure in the same time.
(all images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)