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Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava (*- unless otherwise credited)
This is a postscript to my piece Van Gogh’s Cypresses: Art From Hell
“How will I know you when I see you
In the brightness of light”*
As I said, I’ve been looking at Van Gogh’s Art for over 40 years. It’s taken almost as long to get closer to the man. Like many, perhaps, most people interested in Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890), I read Irving Stone’s Lust for Life, and Dear Theo (which Stone, who never knew him, gallingly subtitled Vincent’s “Autobiography,”) and later saw the famous Film, Lust for Life, starring Kirk Douglas as Vincent, which was set in some of the actual sites. I bought it all as gospel. I read, but downplayed, the part where Mr. Stone mentioned that he had “made up” episodes to fill the gaps (paraphrased from recollection. I no longer have his books).
Captivated when I saw Vincent’s Art in The Met and MoMA on my very first Art museum visits as a young teen in the early 1970s, I bought 45 picture postcards from both at 10 cents each because they showed work I hadn’t seen. Most were from the new Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam. I was intrigued, and it didn’t go away.
In the 1980s, I was gifted the 3-volume set of Vincent’s Letters, a set that happened to be edited by Jo van Gogh Bonger, wife of Vincent’s brother, Theo, for a year and a half before he died 6 months after Vincent. She inherited Vincent’s estate (i.e. his Art & discovered his Letters in Theo’s desk), but having no experience with Art, didn’t know what to do with it. After delving into the material, she realized that Vincent’s Letters, most of the surviving ones to Theo, were the key to getting people interested in his Art. She edited & published them, put together a large show of his work in 1905, and worked passionately to get his Art seen, even making a trip to the U.S. to assess prospects here.
I didn’t know any of that at the time I got her set. In it, I began to see that Irving Stone was selling fiction. So was the Film! Reading his own words, as Jo well knew, the real man came vividly to life in his exceptional prose. Vincent’s Letters are among the most compelling of any Artist yet published.
“How will lI know you when I see you
In the bareness of spring
I will know you by starlight
where the road’s echoes sing”*
“Many years passed before Vincent was recognized as a great painter,” Jo writes. She omits the fact that it was she that got him that status in the world. Jo van Gogh-Bonger put me, and countless millions before and after me, on the road to knowing Vincent better. If you love Vincent’s Art, you owe her your thanks. Thank you, Jo!
The problem was that Vincent’s 902 Letters only cover part of his life, the earliest dating from September, 1872, when he was 19. Others have undoubtedly gotten lost over time, and some things were withheld by the family. Also in the 1980s, I saw 2 excellent Van Gogh shows at The Met, as I mentioned, Van Gogh in Arles and Saint-Rémy and Van Gogh in Auvres. and then the Drawings in 2005, each of which brought me even closer to Vincent’s Art. For those that missed them, the catalogs for each show are excellent and full of great information.
In 2011, the landmark 958-page exhaustively researched biography, Van Gogh: The Life by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith was published along with the equally exhaustively researched & annotated five-volume set of Van Gogh’s Letters, both with the cooperation of the Van Gogh Museum and Foundation, which exists due to Jo, and then her & Theo’s son, Vincent Wilhelm Van Gogh, who donated Vincent’s Estate to the Dutch state who, in return, built the Museum.
I wasn’t able to put Van Gogh: The Life down. It not only brings Vincent to life on an as close to a day-to-day basis as we’ve yet had, it takes the reader inside his thinking & decisions, his unceasing misfortunes & pain, and then, his illness. One of the most extraordinary biographies I’ve ever read, it completely rewrites our understanding of Vincent’s life and, quite controversially, his death. The Life is essential reading for anyone interested in Art1 or Vincent Van Gogh, in my view. This past year, The Life’s co-author, Steven Naifeh, published Van Gogh and the Artists He Loved, an in-depth look at Vincent’s life-long obsession with Art & Artists, which provides fascinating insights into his exceptional taste and the influences of other Artists on his work.
“Walking by the sea
See the names floating by
Trying to find each other’s
Trails in the sky”*
All of this shows that over 133 years after Vincent’s passing researchers, authors and Art historians have continued to set the record straight and bring the world closer to the man and his life. Given all the “loose ends” that remain in his biography, I look forward to future discoveries & revelations that will bring us still closer.
Among those, I fervently hope the mystery around his death that Van Gogh: The Life reveals can be finally settled and the man left to rest in peace.
“How will I love you when I know you
In the greyness of mist
I will love you forever
Where sadness has kissed.”*
*- Soundtrack for this piece is “Folk Song” by Jack Bruce from his classic album Harmony Row, 1971. Which makes me realize I’ve been looking at Vincent for almost 50 years…
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- Providing insights in to how he was able to succeed as an Artist though he began at age 27! ↩