On 23 December 1888, Vincent van Gogh cut off his ear. He took it to a prostitute in a hotel in Arles in southern France where he was living at the time. The painter died one and a half years later following a suicide attempt.

Why did Vincent van Gogh cut off his ear? |

There will be a program Saturday 6th August at 21.oohrs on BBC2 when Jeremy Paxman and Bernadette Murphy investigate why Vincent van Gogh took a blade to his own ear in 1888.

Self mutilation, accidental or did he lost it in a fight.

I opt that he lost it in a fight but then I may be wrong.

Will Jeremy and Bernadette have an answer?

Dirk,

I read an interesting biography of him in Dutch.
http://www.nieuwamsterdam.nl/boeken/van-gogh-julian-bell-9789046819852

But it seems to come from an American work:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Van-Gogh-Power-Seething-Icons/dp/0544343735#reader_0544343735

And now I see it is from an English author/painter Julian Bell:

http://www.jbell.co.uk/home/


Kind regards, Paul.

Well at least we now know where the severed ear ended up ...

The Guardian - Woman who received Van Gogh's ear named as Gabrielle Berlatier

Meles meles.

The article below, which I copied and pasted, is another story about van Gogh's ear



"He's known as the tortured genius who cut off his own ear, but two German historians now claim that painter Vincent van Gogh lost his ear in a fight with his friend, the French artist Paul Gauguin.

The official version about van Gogh's legendary act of self-harm usually goes that the disturbed Dutch painter severed his left ear lobe with a razor blade in a fit of lunacy after he had a row with Gauguin one evening shortly before Christmas 1888.
Bleeding heavily, van Gogh then wrapped it in cloth, walked to a nearby bordello and presented the severed ear to a prostitute, who fainted when he handed it to her.

He then went home to sleep in a blood-drenched bed, where he almost bled to death, before police, alerted by the prostitute, found him the next morning. He was unconscious and immediately taken to the local hospital, where he asked to see his friend Gauguin when he woke up, but Gauguin refused to see him.

A new book, published in Germany by Hamburg-based historians Hans Kaufmann and Rita Wildegans, argues that Vincent van Gogh may have made up the whole story to protect his friend Gauguin, a keen fencer, who actually lopped it off with a sword during a heated argument.
The historians say that the real version of events has never surfaced because the two men both kept a "pact of silence" - Gauguin to avoid prosecution and van Gogh in an effort trying to keep his friend with whom he was hopelessly infatuated.
 
Hans Kaufmann, one of the authors of the book "Pakt des Schweigens" - "Pact of Silence" in English - told ABC News that "the official version is largely based on Gauguin's accounts. It contains inconsistencies and there are plenty of hints by both artists that the truth is much more complex than the story we've all known."

"We carefully re-examined witness accounts and letters written by both artists and we came to the conclusion that van Gogh was terribly upset over Gauguin's plan to go back to Paris, after the two men had spent an unhappy stay together at the "Yellow House" in Arles, Southern France, which had been set up as a studio in the south."

"On the evening of December 23, 1888 van Gogh, seized by an attack of a metabolic disease, became very aggressive when Gauguin said he was leaving him for good. The men had a heated argument near the brothel and Vincent might have attacked his friend. Gauguin, wanting to defend himself and wanting to get rid of 'the madman' drew his weapon and made a move towards van Gogh and by that he cut off his left ear."
"We do not know for sure if the blow was an accident or a deliberate attempt to injure van Gogh, but it was dark and we suspect that Gauguin did not intend to hit his friend."
Gauguin left Arles the next day and the two men never saw each other again.

In the first letter that Vincent van Gogh wrote after the incident, he told Gauguin, "I will keep quiet about this and so will you." That apparently was the beginning of the "pact of silence."
Years later, Gauguin wrote a letter to another friend and in a reference about van Gogh he said, "A man with sealed lips, I cannot complain about him."

Kaufmann also cites correspondence between van Gogh and his brother Theo, in which the painter hints at what happened that night without directly breaking the "pact of silence" - he writes that "it is lucky Gauguin does not have a machine gun or other firearms, that he is stronger than him and that his 'passions' are stronger."
"There are plenty of hints in the documents we had at our disposal that prove the self-harm version is incorrect, but to the best of my knowledge, neither of the friends ever broke the pact of silence," says Kaufmann, who suggests that the story about van Gogh's ear needs to be re-written.
Vincent van Gogh, who painted The Starry Night, Sunflowers and the Potato Eaters but also a self-portrait with his bandaged ear to name but a few, died in 1890 from a self-inflicted gunshot wound at the age of 37. Gauguin died in 1903 at age 54.

I listened with interest to the readings from Bernadette Murphy's book on this subject on BBC R4 - seems coherent and at least plausible.

I remember reading an interesting analysis by a Dutch art historian one time regarding "how Van Gogh became an 'alpha' artist" in terms of sales. Style-wise, material-wise and subject-wise Van Gogh, by right, should be regarded as an unimaginative, uninventive, conformist mediochre artist, whose works are crude in execution, less as an artistic statement of chosen style than as frank evidence of his artistic limitations. And indeed this was largely how his works - all of which emulated impressionist trends current during the few decades he painted - were typically regarded in his lifetime. Apart from the efforts of one or two promoters (espcially his brother Theo) who, it can easily be argued, acted out of friendship and compassion more than aesthetic appreciation, the guy found it impossible to eke out a living through his painting.

Yet within 20 years of his death his paintings were already breaking sales records in some of the most exclusive French salons and art auction houses. The key to this, the analysis surmised, was (ironically) Van Gogh's lousy sales record while he was alive and the subsequent death of Theo very shortly after Vincent's own demise. Theo's widow, Johanna Van Gogh-Bonger, suddenly found herself in charge of a back catalogue of Vincent's works which, thanks to his crappy sales as an artist while alive, represented therefore a complete and finite body of work in which, thanks to Theo, the provenance and sequence had been meticulously recorded. Johanna had initially thought of selling the whole collection off as a job-lot but was persuaded by Emile Barnard, a rather unscrupulous auctioneer who had begun amassing a fortune from art sales to the petit-bourgeouis, that it would be far more lucrative to advertise the "limited availability" ahead of any so-called artistic merit and that he would set the ball rolling by organising a "taster" exhibition as a platform to stress this financial lure to "art collectors" of dubious taste but with an eye to investment.

Barnard's genius was in selecting for this taster exhibition just about every work of Van Gogh which subsequently has gone down in history as his "greatest" and most valuable properties. In other words he plucked out the good stuff and then, the master stroke, withdrew them from auction even when a high price had been offered. Their reputation as potentially valuable material thus established he then joined up with Julien Tanguy (often recorded as an art auctioneer himself but in fact Johanna's estate agent) and they sent the mini-exhibition on tour, sometimes arranging teaser auctions such as in Paris earlier, and sometimes even selling some minor works for publicity's sake, so that what started out as inflated evaluations simply grew ever more inflated as the scam progressed.

Tanguy's death in 1894 - pretty early into the scam - meant that Barnard switched tactic, fearful that he might have over-cooked the goose and without a canny business partner any longer who he could trust not to double-cross him. It was at this point that the "great" works as we have grown to know them, began to be sold, though only to the most prestigious of purchasers; aristocrats, large companies and banks, and (crucially) famous art museums and galleries.

The key to the scam was the limited availability of the dead artist's work and its meticulous documentation - Van Gogh "newly discovered" paintings are very easy to fake yet notoriously difficult to sell, so thorough was Theo's initial record of his brother's output. The upshot was an ouevre which from the start was highly collectible for investors but - if one isn't being brainwashed into believing it - very difficult at first glance to appreciate as competent "art". They call it post-impressionist these days, a euphemism for "bad impressionist" (Van Gogh didn't live long enough to be post-impressionist and really believed he was part of that movement anyway).

Interestingly another great con-artist was to take this scam strategy one step further so he could actually avail of the financial rewards while yet alive, namely by patenting each work through an exclusive and secretive agreement with a private bank which therefore was difficult for any forger to emulate, however easy the works themselves were to fake. He was clever enough to realise that this, more than any supposed artistic merit, automatically rendered his doodles highly collectible and investible almost from the get-go. The bank, assured of a "cut" from each sale, had an incentive to enforce this policy and not double-cross the con-man and so the arrangement persisted throughout his long life, earning both partners absolute fortunes. When he died it was found that he had patented even his own name and signature and willed both to his bank, obviously a deal which had been struck between them many years previously. And so the scam continues even after death with huge royalties continuing to be generated to that merchant bank and presumably with a cut forwarded to his other estate beneficiaries, as purchasers of a certain Citroen model in recent years may be interested to know.

Maybe all this should be on the "what is art?" thread ...

Nordmann,

how are you right. I heard here in my local inner circle that if I write a novel, and at least it has to be "something", but if it has a bit of value they know the right channels to launch the stuff and to do the merchandising. Of course the same goes on in the musical entertainment...if you have a good "agent", who has contacts in the right circles, that's too makes a "sky of difference"...
And after a while by the constant exposure the general public get used to it and says that's indeed a real artistic work...

Kind regards, Paul.

Dirk Marinus wrote:

There will be a program Saturday 6th August at 21.oohrs on BBC2 when Jeremy Paxman and Bernadette Murphy investigate why Vincent van Gogh took a blade to his own ear in 1888.

Self mutilation, accidental or did he lost it in a fight.

I opt that he lost it in a fight but then I may be wrong.

Whether the wound was inflicted by Vincent himself or by Paul Gaugin, I like the fact that in this instance Hollywood actually got it right while sneering European historians got it wrong. That was with regard to exactly how much of the ear was severed. A rare reversal - but not unique.

Quote :

Will Jeremy and Bernadette have an answer?

The question I would like an answer to is how on earth is the artist's name pronounced. Paxman said 'van Goe' while Murphy said 'van Goff'. A curator in the Netherlands said 'van Hough' while another contributor said 'van Gao'. And I'm sure there are further variants again.

Vizzer wrote:

The question I would like an answer to is how on earth is the artist's name pronounced. Paxman said 'van Goe' while Murphy said 'van Goff'. A curator in the Netherlands said 'van Hough' while another contributor said 'van Gao'. And I'm sure there are further variants again.

Well, I'd suggest that the curator in the Netherlands probably gave the pronunciation that Vincent himself would have used.

The letter g in van Gogh is known as a sharp g.

When the German army invaded the Netherlands in May 1940, the Netherlands military/intelligence on questioning any one they thought was not from the Netherlands would ask this person to pronounce:
 
" Scheveningen ligt bij s'Gravenhage"

All so-called sharp g's and for a foreign national difficult to pronounce.


Dirk Marinus

Dirk Marinus wrote:

The letter g in van Gogh is known as a sharp g.

When the German army invaded the Netherlands in May 1940, the Netherlands military/intelligence on questioning any one they thought was not from the Netherlands would ask this person to pronounce:
 
" Scheveningen ligt bij s'Gravenhage"

All so-called sharp g's and for a foreign national difficult to pronounce.


Dirk Marinus

Dirk, also difficult to pronounce for the South Netherlanders...

Your southern ( from the time of your Dutch childhood) friend, Paul

PS: Try once to pronounce the Flemish (French way) Georges (Zuorze?) Meles meles you have to help me...
Or Jerome (Zurom?)...In French: Jerôme...

PaulRyckier wrote:

Dirk Marinus wrote:

The letter g in van Gogh is known as a sharp g.

When the German army invaded the Netherlands in May 1940, the Netherlands military/intelligence on questioning any one they thought was not from the Netherlands would ask this person to pronounce:
 
" Scheveningen ligt bij s'Gravenhage"

All so-called sharp g's and for a foreign national difficult to pronounce.


Dirk Marinus

Dirk, also difficult to pronounce for the South Netherlanders...

Your southern ( from the time of your Dutch childhood) friend, Paul

PS: Try once to pronounce the Flemish (French way) Georges (Zuorze?) Meles meles you have to help me...
Or Jerome (Zurom?)...In French: Jerôme...

Why not pronounce them correctly, as we English do?

"Why not pronounce them correctly, as we English do?"

You... old fox Gil...