According to the ancient Dutch tradition, the painter Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) received the name of his brother, who died immediately after birth. And according to some modern psychoanalysts, such a transfer of the name "gives rise to identical fatal problems."
Perhaps that is why, from early childhood, Vincent was forced to identify with his deceased brother, which determined a distorted perception of reality and, accordingly, reflected on the character of the future artist.
Van Gogh around 1866
Vincent, according to the recollections of people who knew him closely, was a difficult, annoying and capricious child in childhood. And the artist himself assessed his adolescence as "cold, gloomy and barren." Nevertheless, in a simple village school, he learned three foreign languages (French, English and German), which he knew perfectly.
According to the governess, there was something strange about him that distinguished him from others: of all the children, Vincent was less pleasant to her, and she did not believe that something worthwhile could come out of him.
When the boy was 12 years old, his parents sent him to a Protestant boarding school, located a few hours from home. However, parting with loved ones and familiar surroundings was for Vincent the first serious mental trauma.
After leaving school, Van Gogh returned to his father's house. And here the psychological state of the young man, whose health in recent years did not cause much concern to his parents, has noticeably deteriorated. Some negative events that took place in a short period of time also contributed to the depressive mood: disappointment in love, a quarrel with his father, dismissal from work.
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In search of a way out of this situation, the sensitive young man tried to find himself in religion. He diligently studied the Bible, taught prayers and church chants. Finally, he decides to devote himself to missionary work; the opportunity opened up to go to Borinage. But for this it was necessary to pass a three-month internship in Brussels.
However, due to his stubbornness, complete lack of humility, eccentric behavior, Vincent did not receive permission to become a missionary.
But he decides to go to the mining village of Borinage without an official direction. Deprived of a livelihood and someone else's support, he finds himself in a dire situation.
Painting "Sunflowers" (1888)
He walks in rags, becomes dirty, does not wash at all, lives in an abandoned hut, where he sleeps on an armful of straw. He confesses the sins of the miners and then publicly punishes himself for those sins by beating himself with a stick. Periodically he makes aimless wanderings, sleeping in haystacks.
At this time, those around him were already looking at him as if he was a madman, and his parents intended to send him to one Belgian village, whose inhabitants took mentally ill people into their families.
In the end, in the missionary career, Vincent failed and returned home again, where he constantly showed his relatives his gloom, gloom, bad mood, soon supplemented by violent displays of sexuality. The artist called his many connections "personal emancipation", which, however, was followed by chronic gonorrheal infection, loss of teeth and hair. In addition, some of his internal organs were infected and his eyes were regularly inflamed.
Suffering during his lifetime with numerous diseases that gradually destroyed the psyche, Vincent van Gogh almost never went to the doctors. Therefore, all the diseases attributed to him were nothing more than a guess. According to journalists, the famous French artist had schizophrenia, a brain tumor, syphilis, epilepsy, metabolic disorders caused by a lack of hemoglobin. However, modern doctors confidently declared only two diseases of Van Gogh - bipolar psychosis and a rare form of epilepsy.
The clinical picture of bipolar psychosis is clearly divided into two parts. The first, manic phase is characterized by an elevated mood, an extraordinary increase in efficiency and increased nervous excitability.
It was this state that Van Gogh experienced in the first creative period, when an interesting occupation was supplemented by a family idyll. His common-law wife was Christian Hoornik; the artist was crazy about her and called her simply Sin.
True, when one day his brother Theodore came to visit Vincent, he froze in horror on the threshold of the room, seeing the object of adoration of his exalted relative. And it is not surprising, because a 30-year-old prostitute could scare even a dead person with her appearance: a face with smallpox marks, a cheap cigar in her mouth, a husky voice and disgusting vulgarity. But, nevertheless, this did not prevent her from becoming a model for the creations of Van Gogh.
The second, depressive phase of bipolar psychosis is marked by a decline in physical and moral strength, a state of constant anxiety, excruciating insomnia and, at the last stage, a desire for suicide. The painful state of his psyche was especially aggravated at the end of 1888.
In December, seeing his own portrait painted by Gauguin, he gets nervous and exclaims: "This is really me, but only gone crazy." In the evening of the same day in a cafe, an excited Van Gogh throws a glass at Gauguin's head. And on December 23, during an evening walk, Gauguin heard hurried steps behind him and quickly turned around just at the moment when Van Gogh was ready to throw himself at him with a razor.
Another day later, that is, on December 24, 1888, an event took place, about which the Arles newspaper "Republican Forum" reported the following in the local chronicle section:
“On Sunday at 11 pm, the artist Van Gogh appeared at the N1 brothel house, summoned a prostitute named Rachel and handed her his severed left ear with the words:“Hide it well.
"Self-portrait with a cut off ear"
The ear was neatly wrapped in a handkerchief. Then he disappeared. The police, notified of this event, which can only be explained by the unfortunate man's madness, found him in his own bed with almost no signs of life."
Vincent was admitted to the hospital. For three days, he chased everyone away from him, washed himself in a coal bucket, refused to write, periodically shouted phrases of religious content, embarked on long discussions about philosophy and theology. Gradually his condition began to improve, and on January 7, 1889 he was discharged from the hospital.
In February 1889, with signs of insanity, Van Gogh was again hospitalized. Three weeks later, the acute condition subsides, the bouts of excitement, during which Vincent was locked in an isolation ward for the violent, became less frequent, and the artist was again discharged home.
In March of the same year, about 80 residents of Arles turned to the mayor with a demand to isolate the mad artist, and he was admitted to the hospital for the third time. The clinical picture was the same.
From May 1889 until the end of his life, Van Gogh lived in an asylum for the insane at the monastery of St. Paul of the Mausoleum in the French city of San Rémy de Provence. Living in a separate room, he continued to paint, having adapted part of the room for a workshop. Walking around the neighborhood, he painted lovely landscapes and even managed to sell one of them to a certain Anna Bosch.
Painting "Starry Night" (1889)
During this period of life, attacks of the disease lasted from two weeks to one month with an interval of four to six months. They manifested themselves in a rather standard way: fears, melancholy appeared, anger appeared, the patient became tense and unfriendly, he began to have hallucinations of a frightening character, he ate his colors, rushed around the room, refused to eat, froze in one position, read prayers …
On July 27, 1890, the artist went for a walk without a minister, which was strictly prohibited by the rules of such institutions. He wandered around the field for a while, then went into the peasant's yard, took out a pistol and suddenly shot himself in the chest.
Van Gogh aimed for the heart, but missed. Clutching the wound with his hand, he returned to the orphanage and calmly went to bed. A doctor who came from the nearest village could not help the artist in any way, although Van Gogh begged the doctor to save his life …
Despite his short creative life (and Van Gogh was engaged in painting for about 10 years), the legacy of the French painter consists of three thousand paintings created by him during the years of peace of mind.
A. S. Bernatsky from the book "Mysteries and Strangeness of the Greats"