According to sociologists, three artists are best known in the world: Leonardo da Vinci, Vincent Van Gogh and Pablo Picasso. Leonardo is "responsible" for the art of the old masters, Van Gogh for the impressionists and post-impressionists of the 19th century, and Picasso for the abstract and modernists of the 20th century. Moreover, if Leonardo appears in the eyes of the public not so much as a painter, but as a universal genius, and as Picasso as a fashionable "secular lion" and a public figure - a fighter for peace, then Van Gogh personifies the artist. He is considered a crazy lone genius and a martyr who did not think about fame and money. However, this image, to which everyone is accustomed, is nothing more than a myth that was used to "spin" Van Gogh and sell his paintings at a profit.
The legend about the artist is based on a true fact - he took up painting, being already a mature person, and in just ten years he "ran" the path from a novice artist to a master who turned the idea of fine art upside down. All this, even during Van Gogh's lifetime, was perceived as a "miracle" with no real explanation. The artist's biography was not full of adventures, such as the fate of Paul Gauguin, who managed to be both a broker on the stock exchange and a sailor, and died of leprosy, exotic for a European man in the street, on the no less exotic Khiva Oa, one of the Marquesas Islands. Van Gogh was a "boring hard worker", and, apart from the strange mental seizures that appeared in him shortly before his death, and this very death as a result of a suicide attempt, the mythmakers had nothing to catch on. But these few "trump cards" were played by true masters of their craft.
The main creator of the Legend of the Master was the German gallery owner and art critic Julius Meyer-Graefe. He quickly realized the scale of the great Dutchman's genius, and most importantly, the market potential of his paintings. In 1893, a twenty-six-year-old gallery owner bought the painting "A couple in love" and thought about "advertising" a promising product. Possessing a lively pen, Meyer-Graefe decided to write a biography of the artist attractive to collectors and art lovers. He did not find him alive and therefore was “free” from personal impressions that burdened the master's contemporaries. In addition, Van Gogh was born and raised in Holland, and as a painter he finally took shape in France. In Germany, where Meyer-Graefe began to introduce the legend, no one knew anything about the artist, and the art gallery owner started with a blank slate. He did not immediately "feel" the image of that mad lone genius,which everyone now knows. At first, Meyer's Van Gogh was "a healthy man of the people", and his work was "a harmony between art and life" and the herald of a new Grand style, which Meyer-Graefe considered modern. But modernity fizzled out in a matter of years, and Van Gogh, under the pen of an enterprising German, "retrained" into an avant-garde rebel, who led the fight against mossy academic realists. Van Gogh the anarchist was popular in artistic bohemian circles, but frightened off the layman. And only the "third edition" of the legend satisfied everyone. In a 1921 "scientific monograph" called "Vincent", with a subtitle unusual for this kind of literature, "The Novel of the Seeker of God", Meyer-Graef introduced to the public the holy madman, whose hand was led by God. The highlight of this "biography" was the story of the severed ear and creative madness,which elevated a small, lonely person like Akaki Akakievich Bashmachkin to the heights of genius.
About the "curvature" of the prototype
The real Vincent Van Gogh had little in common with Meyer-Graefe's "Vincent". To begin with, he graduated from a prestigious private gymnasium, spoke and wrote fluently in three languages, read a lot, which earned him the nickname Spinoza in the artistic circles of Paris. Behind Van Gogh was a large family who never left him without support, although they were not thrilled with his experiments. His grandfather was a famous bookbinder of ancient manuscripts who worked for several European courts, three of his uncles were successful art traders, and one was an admiral and harbor master in Antwerp, in his house he lived when he studied in this city. The real Van Gogh was a rather sober and pragmatic person.
Vincent Van Gogh. 1873 year.
For example, one of the central “God-seeking” episodes of the legend with “going to the people” was the fact that in 1879 Van Gogh was a preacher in the Belgian mining region Borinage. So many things have not been invented by Meyer-Graefe and his followers! There is both a "break with the environment" and "the desire to suffer along with the poor and the poor." The explanation is simple. Vincent decided to follow in his father's footsteps and become a priest. In order to receive ordination, it was necessary to study at the seminary for five years. Or - take a crash course in three years in an evangelical school using a simplified program, and even free of charge. All this was preceded by a mandatory six-month "experience" of missionary work in the outback. Here Van Gogh went to the miners. Of course, he was a humanist, he tried to help these people, but he did not think to get closer to them, always remaining a representative of the middle class. After serving his due time in Borinage, Van Gogh decided to enter an evangelical school, and then it turned out that the rules had changed and the Dutch like him, unlike the Flemings, had to pay tuition fees. After that, the offended "missionary" left religion and decided to become an artist.
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And this choice is also not accidental. Van Gogh was a professional art dealer - an art dealer in the largest company "Gupil". The partner in it was his uncle Vincent, after whom the young Dutchman was named. He patronized him. "Gupil" played a leading role in Europe in the trade of old masters and solid modern academic painting, but was not afraid to sell "moderate innovators" like the Barbizonians. For 7 years, Van Gogh has made a career in a difficult, family-based antique business. From the Amsterdam branch he moved first to The Hague, then to London, and finally to the firm's headquarters in Paris. Over the years, the nephew of the co-owner of "Gupil" has gone through a serious school, studied the main European museums and many closed private collections, became a real expert in painting not only by Rembrandt and the small Dutch,but also the French - from Ingres to Delacroix. "Surrounded by pictures," he wrote, "I was inflamed with them with a fierce love, reaching to frenzy." His idol was the French artist Jean Francois Millet, who became famous at that time for his "peasant" canvases, which Goupil sold at prices of tens of thousands of francs.
The artist's brother Theodore Van Gogh.
Van Gogh also intended to become such a successful "lower-class writer of everyday life" as Millet, using his knowledge of the life of miners and peasants, gleaned in Borinage. Contrary to legend, the art dealer Van Gogh was not an ingenious dilettante like such "Sunday artists" as the customs officer Russo or the conductor Pirosmani. Having under his belt a fundamental acquaintance with the history and theory of art, as well as with the practice of trade in it, the stubborn Dutchman at the age of twenty-seven began a systematic study of the craft of painting. He began by drawing according to the latest special textbooks, which were sent to him from all over Europe by his uncle-artillery dealers. Van Gogh's hand was put on by his relative, the artist from The Hague Anton Mauve, to whom the grateful student later dedicated one of his paintings. Van Gogh even entered the Brussels Academy of Arts, and then the Antwerp Academy of Arts,where he studied for three months until he went to Paris.
The newly-made artist was persuaded there in 1886 by his younger brother Theodore. This formerly successful art dealer played a key role in the fate of the master. Theo advised Vincent to give up "peasant" painting, explaining that this was already a "plowed field". And, besides, "black paintings" like "The Potato Eaters" at all times sold worse than light and joyful art. Another thing is the "light painting" of the Impressionists, literally created for success: continuous sun and celebration. The audience will surely appreciate it sooner or later.
Theo the seer
So Van Gogh ended up in the capital of the “new art” - Paris and, on the advice of Theo, entered the private studio of Fernand Cormon, which was then the “forge of personnel” for a new generation of experimental artists. There the Dutchman became close to such future pillars of post-impressionism as Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, Emile Bernard and Lucien Pissarro. Van Gogh studied anatomy, painted from plaster casts and literally absorbed all the new ideas that seethed Paris.
Theo introduces him to leading art critics and his artist clients, among whom were not only established Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley, Camille Pissarro, Auguste Renoir and Edgar Degas, but also the "rising stars" Signac and Gauguin. By the time Vincent arrived in Paris, his brother was the head of the "experimental" branch of "Goupil" in Montmartre. A man with a keen sense of the new and an excellent businessman, Theo was one of the first to see the coming of a new era in art. He persuaded the conservative leadership of "Gupil" to allow him to risk trading in "light painting". In the gallery, Theo held personal exhibitions of Camille Pissarro, Claude Monet and other impressionists, to whom Paris began to get used a little. One floor above, in his own apartment, he arranged "changing exhibitions" of paintings by daring youth,which "Gupil" was afraid to show officially. It was the prototype of the elite "apartment exhibitions" that came into vogue in the 20th century, and Vincent's works became their highlight.
Back in 1884, the Van Gogh brothers entered into an agreement between themselves. Theo, in exchange for Vincent's paintings, pays him 220 francs a month and provides him with brushes, canvases and paints of the best quality. By the way, thanks to this, the paintings of Van Gogh, in contrast to the works of Gauguin and Toulouse-Lautrec, who, due to lack of money, wrote on anything, were so well preserved. 220 francs was a quarter of the monthly salary of a doctor or lawyer. The postman Joseph Roulin in Arles, whom the legend made something like the patron saint of the "beggar" Van Gogh, received half as much and, unlike a lonely artist, fed a family with three children. Van Gogh had enough money even to create a collection of Japanese prints. In addition, Theo supplied his brother with "uniforms": blouses and famous hats, necessary books and reproductions. He also paid for Vincent's treatment.
All this was not a simple charity. The brothers drew up an ambitious plan - to create a market for Post-Impressionist painting, a generation of artists who followed Monet and his friends. And with Vincent Van Gogh as one of the leaders of this generation. Combine the seemingly incompatible - the risky avant-garde art of the bohemian world and commercial success in the spirit of the respectable "Gupil". Here they were almost a century ahead of their time: only Andy Warhol and other American popartists managed to immediately get rich on avant-garde art.
Unrecognized
Overall, Vincent Van Gogh's position was unique. He worked as an artist on a contract with an art dealer who was one of the key figures in the "light painting" market. And that art dealer was his brother. Gauguin, a restless vagabond who considers every franc, for example, could only dream of such a situation. On top of that, Vincent was not a mere puppet in the hands of businessman Theo. Nor was he an unmercenary person who did not want to sell his paintings to the profane, which he handed out for free to “kindred spirits,” as Meyer-Graefe wrote. Van Gogh, like any normal person, wanted recognition not from distant descendants, but during his lifetime. Confessions, an important sign of which for him was money. And as a former art dealer himself, he knew how to achieve this.
One of the main themes of his letters to Theo is by no means seeking God, but discussions about what needs to be done in order to sell the paintings profitably, and which painting will quickly find its way to the heart of the buyer. To promote the market, he developed an impeccable formula: "Nothing will help us sell our paintings better than being recognized as good decoration for middle-class homes." To clearly show how the post-impressionist paintings will "look" in a bourgeois interior, Van Gogh himself in 1887 organized two exhibitions at the Tambourine cafe and the La Forche restaurant in Paris and even sold several works from them. Later, the legend played up this fact as an act of despair for the artist, whom no one wanted to let go to normal exhibitions.
Meanwhile, he is a regular participant in exhibitions at the Salon des Independents and the Free Theater - the most fashionable places of Parisian intellectuals of the time. His paintings are exhibited by art dealers Arsene Porter, George Thomas, Pierre Martin and Tanguy. The great Cezanne got the opportunity to show his work at a solo exhibition only at the age of 56, after almost four decades of hard labor. While the work of Vincent, an artist with six years of experience, could be seen at any time at Theo's "apartment exhibition", where all the artistic elite of the capital of the art world - Paris, stayed.
The real Van Gogh is the least like the hermit from the legend. He is his own among the leading artists of the era, the most convincing evidence of which are several portraits of the Dutchman, painted by Toulouse-Lautrec, Roussel, Bernard. Lucien Pissarro portrayed him talking to the most influential art critic of those years, Fenelon. Camille Pissarro was remembered for the fact that he did not hesitate to stop the person he needed on the street and show his paintings right at the wall of a house. It is simply impossible to imagine a real hermit Cézanne in such a situation.
The legend firmly established the idea of unrecognized Van Gogh, that during his lifetime only one of his paintings, "Red Vineyards in Arles", was sold, which now hangs in the Moscow AS Museum of Fine Arts. Pushkin. In fact, the sale of this canvas from an exhibition in Brussels in 1890 for 400 francs was Van Gogh's breakthrough into the world of serious prices. He sold no worse than his contemporaries Seurat or Gauguin. According to the documents, it is known that fourteen works were bought from the artist. The first was done by a family friend, the Dutch art dealer Terstig, in February 1882, and Vincent wrote to Theo: "The first sheep passed through the bridge." In reality, there were more sales, there was simply no accurate evidence of the rest.
As for the lack of recognition, since 1888, famous critics Gustave Kahn and Felix Fénelon, in their reviews of exhibitions of "independent", as the avant-garde artists were then called, highlight the fresh and vibrant works of Van Gogh. The critic Octave Mirbeau advised Rodin to buy his paintings. They were in the collection of such a discerning connoisseur as Edgar Degas. During his lifetime, Vincent read in the newspaper "Mercure de France" that he was a great artist, the heir to Rembrandt and Hals. This was written in an article entirely devoted to the work of the "amazing Dutchman" by the rising star of the "new critic" Henri Aurier. He intended to create a biography of Van Gogh, but, unfortunately, died of tuberculosis shortly after the death of the artist himself.
About the mind, free "from shackles"
But the "biography" was published by Meyer-Graefe, and in it he especially described the "intuitive, free from the shackles of reason" process of Van Gogh's creativity.
Bedroom in Arles. 1889 year. Art Institute of Chicago. The room in the hotel of the Ravus, where Vincent lived in 1890 and where Vincent van Gogh died on July 29 of the same year.
“Vincent painted in a blind, unconscious rapture. His temperament spilled out onto the canvas. The trees were screaming, the clouds were hunting each other. The sun was gaping with a blinding hole leading to chaos.
The easiest way is to refute this idea of Van Gogh in the words of the artist himself: “The great is created not only by impulsive action, but also by the complicity of many things that were brought to a single whole … With art, as with everything else: the great is not something accidental, but must be created by stubborn volitional tension."
The overwhelming majority of Van Gogh's letters are devoted to the "kitchen" of painting: setting goals, materials, technique. An almost unprecedented event in the history of art. The Dutchman was a real workaholic and argued: "In art you have to work like a few blacks, and be skinny." At the end of his life, he really painted very quickly, he could complete a picture from beginning to end in two hours. But at the same time he kept repeating the favorite expression of the American artist Whistler: "I did it at two o'clock, but worked for years to do something worthwhile in those two hours."
Van Gogh did not write on a whim - he worked long and hard on the same motive. In the city of Arles, where he set up his workshop after leaving Paris, he began a series of 30 works related to the common creative task "Contrast". Contrast color, thematic, compositional. For example, the pandanus "Cafe in Arles" and "Room in Arles". In the first picture - darkness and tension, in the second - light and harmony. In the same row there are several variants of his famous "Sunflowers". The entire series was conceived as an example of decorating a “middle class dwelling”. We have before us from start to finish thoughtful creative and market strategies. After seeing his paintings at the exhibition of the "independent", Gauguin wrote: "You are the only thinking artist of all."
The cornerstone of the Van Gogh legend is his madness. Allegedly, only it allowed him to look into such depths that are inaccessible to mere mortals. But since his youth, the artist was not half-mad with flashes of genius. The periods of depression, accompanied by seizures similar to epilepsy, for which he was treated in a psychiatric clinic, did not begin until the last year and a half of his life. Doctors saw in this the effect of absinthe - an alcoholic drink infused with wormwood, whose destructive effect on the nervous system became known only in the 20th century. Moreover, it was precisely during the period of exacerbation of the disease that the artist could not write. So psychotic disorder did not "help" the genius of Van Gogh, but hindered.
Vincent Van Gogh. Arles Hospital Garden. 1889 year. Arles Hospital Garden, where Van Gogh was placed after a seizure in December 1888
The famous story with the ear is very doubtful. It turned out that Van Gogh could not cut it off to himself "at the root", he would simply bleed out, because he was given help only 10 hours after the incident. Only his lobe was cut off, as stated in the medical report. And who did it? There is a version that this happened during a quarrel with Gauguin, which took place that day. Experienced in sailor fights, Gauguin slashed Van Gogh in the ear, and he suffered a nervous fit from everything he had experienced. Later, to justify his behavior, Gauguin composed a story that Van Gogh, in a fit of madness, chased him with a razor in his hands, and then crippled himself.
Even the painting "A Room in Arles", whose curved space was considered a fixation of Van Gogh's mad state, turned out to be surprisingly realistic. Plans were found for the house in which the artist lived in Arles. The walls and ceiling of his home were indeed sloping. Van Gogh never painted pictures by the moon with candles attached to his hat. But the creators of the legend have always been free to handle the facts. The ominous painting "Wheat Field", with the road going into the distance, covered with a flock of ravens, they, for example, announced the last canvas of the master, predicting his death. But it is well known that after her he wrote a whole series of works, where the ill-fated field is depicted compressed.
The "know-how" of the main author of the myth about Van Gogh, Julius Meyer-Graef, is not just a lie, but the presentation of fictional events mixed with real facts, and even in the form of impeccable scientific work. For example, the true fact - Van Gogh loved to work in the open air because he did not tolerate the smell of turpentine used to dilute paints - used the "biographer" as the basis for a fantastic version of the reason for the master's suicide. Allegedly, Van Gogh fell in love with the sun - the source of his inspiration and did not allow himself to cover his head with a hat, standing under its burning rays. All his hair was burnt, the sun baked his unprotected skull, he went mad and committed suicide. In later self-portraits of Van Gogh and images of the dead artist made by his friends, it is clear that he did not lose the hair on his head until his death.
Insight of the holy fool
Van Gogh shot himself on July 27, 1890, after it seemed that his mental crisis had been overcome. Not long before that, he was discharged from the clinic with the conclusion: "He recovered." The very fact that the owner of the furnished rooms in Auvers, where Van Gogh lived in the last months of his life, entrusted him with a revolver, which the artist needed to scare off crows while working on sketches, suggests that he behaved absolutely normally. Today, doctors agree that the suicide did not occur during a seizure, but was the result of a combination of external circumstances. Theo married, he had a child, and Vincent was oppressed by the idea that his brother would only deal with his family, and not their plan to conquer the artistic world.
After the fatal shot, Van Gogh lived for two more days, was surprisingly calm and endured suffering. He died in the arms of his inconsolable brother, who was never able to recover from this loss and died six months later. The firm "Goupil" sold for a pittance all the works of the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, which Theo Van Gogh had accumulated in a gallery in Montmartre, and closed the experiment with "light painting". The paintings of Vincent Van Gogh were taken to Holland by the widow of Theo Johann Van Gogh-Bonger. Only at the beginning of the 20th century did the great Dutchman receive total glory. According to experts, if it were not for the almost simultaneous early death of both brothers, this would have happened in the mid-1890s and Van Gogh would have been a very rich man. But fate decreed otherwise. People like Meyer-Graefe began to reap the fruits of the labors of the great painter Vincent and the great gallery owner Theo.
Who did Vincent possess?
The novel about the God-seeker "Vincent" of an enterprising German came in handy in the situation of the collapse of ideals after the massacre of the First World War. A martyr of art and a madman, whose mystical work appeared under the pen of Meyer-Graefe as something like a new religion, such a Van Gogh captured the imagination of both jaded intellectuals and inexperienced ordinary people. The legend pushed into the background not only the biography of a real artist, but also distorted the idea of his paintings. They saw some kind of mash of colors in them, in which the prophetic "insights" of the holy fool were guessed. Meyer-Graefe became the main connoisseur of the "mystical Dutchman" and began not only to trade in Van Gogh's paintings, but also for a lot of money to issue certificates of authenticity of works that appeared under the name of Van Gogh on the art market.
Vincent Van Gogh. Dr. Paul Gaucher. 1890
In the mid-1920s, a certain Otto Wacker came to him, performing with erotic dances in Berlin cabarets under the pseudonym Olinto Lovel. He showed several paintings with the signature "Vincent", written in the spirit of the legend. Meyer-Graefe was delighted and immediately confirmed their authenticity. In total, Wacker, who opened his own gallery in the trendy Potsdamerplatz district, threw more than 30 Van Goghs onto the market before rumors spread that they were fake. Since it was about a very large amount, the police intervened. At the trial, the dancer-gallerist told the “provenance” bike, which he “fed” his gullible clients. He allegedly acquired the paintings from a Russian aristocrat, who bought them at the beginning of the century, and during the revolution managed to take them from Russia to Switzerland. Waker did not name his name, claimingthat the Bolsheviks, embittered by the loss of the "national treasure," would destroy the aristocrat's family that remained in Soviet Russia.
In a battle of experts that unfolded in April 1932 in the courtroom of Berlin's Moabit district, Meyer-Graefe and his supporters stood up for the authenticity of Waker's Van Goghs. But the police raided the studio of the dancer's brother and father, who were artists, and found 16 fresh van Goghs. Technological expertise has shown that they are identical to the paintings sold. In addition, chemists found out that when creating "paintings of a Russian aristocrat" they used paints that appeared only after the death of Van Gogh. Upon learning of this, one of the "experts" who supported Meyer-Graefe and Wacker told the stunned judge: "How do you know that Vincent did not enter the congenial body after his death and does not create to this day?"
Wacker received three years in prison, and Meyer-Graefe's reputation was destroyed. He died soon after, but the legend, in spite of everything, continues to live to this day. It was on this basis that the American writer Irving Stone wrote his bestseller Lust for Life in 1934, and the Hollywood director Vincent Minnelli directed a film about Van Gogh in 1956. The role of the artist was played by actor Kirk Douglas. The film earned an Oscar and finally established in the minds of millions of people the image of a half-mad genius who took upon himself all the sins of the world. Then the American period in the canonization of Van Gogh was replaced by the Japanese.
Sunflowers at Christie's. 1987 year.
In the Land of the Rising Sun, the great Dutchman, thanks to the legend, began to be considered something in between a Buddhist monk and a samurai who committed hara-kiri. In 1987, the Yasuda company bought Van Gogh's Sunflowers at an auction in London for $ 40 million. Three years later, the eccentric billionaire Ryoto Saito, who associated himself with the legendary Vincent, paid $ 82 million at an auction in New York for Van Gogh's Portrait of Dr. Gachet. For a whole decade, it was the most expensive painting in the world. According to Saito's will, she was to be burned with him after his death, but the creditors of the Japanese, who had gone bankrupt by that time, did not allow this to be done.
While the world was shaken by scandals around the name of Van Gogh, art historians, restorers, archivists and even doctors, step by step, investigated the true life and work of the artist. A huge role in this was played by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, created in 1972 on the basis of a collection donated to Holland by the son of Theo Van Gogh, who bore the name of his great uncle. The museum began to check all the paintings of Van Gogh in the world, weeding out several dozen forgeries, and did a great job of preparing a scientific publication of the brothers' correspondence.
But, despite the enormous efforts of both the museum staff and such luminaries of Vangology as the Canadian Bogomila Velsh-Ovcharova or the Dutchman Jan Halsker, the legend of Van Gogh does not die. She lives her own life, giving rise to new films, books and performances about the "mad holy Vincent", who has nothing to do with the great worker and discoverer of new ways in art, Vincent Van Gogh. This is how a person is arranged: a romantic fairy tale is always more attractive to him than the "prose of life", no matter how great it may be.
Grigory Kozlov