Van Gogh, The Life: A Book Review

Splendor in the Stars

“Self-Portrait With Straw Hat” from “Van Gogh: The Life” (August/September 1887).

Letter sketches of churches at Petersham and Turnham Green from "Van Gogh: The Life" (November 1876).

By DEBORAH SOLOMON

Published: November 25, 2011

Vincent VAN GOGH tends to be remembered as an art saint whose radiant paintings of sunflowers and starry skies seem somehow imbued with moral valor. He identified with the poor and marginalized, and looked upon art as a humanitarian calling. He died unknown, at age 37, and you suspect he will always be a shining hero not only to people who worship art but to those who feel their own talents remain insufficiently acknowledged by their peers — meaning, most everyone.

On the other hand, is it possible that we have him entirely wrong, that he was just a creep and selfish user who felt that a life in art basically meant never having to say “Thank you”? Such is the portrait that emerges from Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith’s energetic, hulking and negatively skewed “Van Gogh: The Life.” The artist, as they see him, was bitter and manipulative, more of a perpetrator than a victim. The eldest child of a minister in the Dutch Reformed Church, he grew up in a rural corner of Holland and was not exactly an easy son. For part of his adulthood, we are told, in “a campaign that seemed intended to mortify and embarrass his parents,” he moved into their parsonage in Nuenen and shocked the congregation by swearing, smoking a pipe, drinking ­Cognac from a flask, dismissing the locals as “clodhoppers” and loudly proclaiming his atheism. . .



[Book by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith, Illustrated, 953 pp. Random House $40.] To read more, see below. This link does not work normally, so it's necessary to copy it and then paste it into your browser line then enter. Reminder Ctrl+C to COPY then Ctrl+V to PASTE.


http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/books/review/van-gogh-the-life-by-steven-naifeh-and-gregory-white-smith-book-review.html?scp=1&sq=Van Gogh The Life&st=cse