Van Gogh possibly/most likely murdered

[Cordelia]

Just released animated film, hand-painted in Van Gogh’s style....



Looks fascinating and like it also addresses the questions about his death.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRDSTw6mNwY

2016 BBC piece on the making of the film:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CQKHWvK8Ro

[Iamwhomiam]

One I've been looking forward to experiencing! Thanks for news of its release, Cordelia. I'm actually excited for once to go and see a movie!

I recall some claim his work, particularly Starry Night, was due to how he saw the world through an astigmatism. An unprovable claim, but possibly true.

[Burnt Hill]

One I've been looking forward to experiencing! Thanks for news of its release, Cordelia. I'm actually excited for once to go and see a movie!

I recall some claim his work, particularly Starry Night, was due to how he saw the world through an astigmatism. An unprovable claim, but possibly true.

I think it was actually Glaucoma, Cataracts and potentially Foxglove and/or Lead poisoning.

[Cordelia]

One I've been looking forward to experiencing! Thanks for news of its release, Cordelia. I'm actually excited for once to go and see a movie!

If you see it, please give us a thumbs up or down!

I think it was actually Glaucoma, Cataracts and potentially Foxglove and/or Lead poisoning.

I wonder what hasn't been diagnosed.......Van Gogh has probably gotten the most postmortem extensive analysis/examinations in history; there's even a Wiki page devoted to all (and probably more to add) his illnesses. :

Vincent van Gogh's health

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_v ... 7s_disease

and......

Diagnosing Vincent Van Gogh
BY Dr. Howard Markel March 30, 2017

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/dia ... -van-gogh/

[Burnt Hill]

Thanks for the Links Cordelia, I rather enjoyed the insight he expressed with this quote -

"Oh! that beautiful midsummer sun here. It beats down on one's head, and I haven't the slightest doubt that it makes one crazy. But as I was so to begin with, I only enjoy it."

- Vincent Van Gogh

[Cordelia]

^^^ Beautiful quote, and one that's surely a sign of his sanity, imho!

Just discovered this gem-of-a-site.....

Van Gogh's Letters - Unabridged and Annotated
http://www.webexhibits.org/vangogh/

[Harvey]

One I've been looking forward to experiencing! Thanks for news of its release, Cordelia. I'm actually excited for once to go and see a movie!

I recall some claim his work, particularly Starry Night, was due to how he saw the world through an astigmatism. An unprovable claim, but possibly true.

If you need a film to experience the work then you probably can't be told. 'Hollywood' exists to explain away the experience until only the banal is left.

[norton ash]

Harvey's got a problem with film. Wow.

[Iamwhomiam]

One I've been looking forward to experiencing! Thanks for news of its release, Cordelia. I'm actually excited for once to go and see a movie!

I recall some claim his work, particularly Starry Night, was due to how he saw the world through an astigmatism. An unprovable claim, but possibly true.

If you need a film to experience the work then you probably can't be told. 'Hollywood' exists to explain away the experience until only the banal is left.

You need to be told you can be a real ass sometimes, Harvey.

The film is animated. A unique production, a tale with its subject a somewhat mysterious, talented but troubled character and his form of artistic expression and tragic end as interpreted by artists of a different time working in and with a different medium. The subject, and those who tell his story through animation have in common their love of drawing. Loving Vincent, imho, has the potential to reach out and touch an audience even decades from now, just as Vincent's work does and will as long as people continue to appreciate art.

One of the cultural treasures of our area, actually in the Berkshires, 40 miles east, in Williamstown, Massachusetts, is the Clark Art Institute. During the Summer of 2015, the Clark hosted a fantastic showing of Van Gogh's work, Van Gogh and Nature that was critically acclaimed and advertised widely.

You might want to fork over $50 for the book written by the show's curator, so then you could see the works I saw in person. Really, check it out.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/2015/05/16/extraordinary-van-gogh-inspired-nature-clark/0qVYBWGkCbAsgTqyPwrgvL/story.html

http://www.clarkart.edu/Mini-Sites/Van-Gogh-and-Nature/Exhibition

http://vangoghletters.org/vg/

[Harvey]

"You need to be told you can be a real ass sometimes, Harvey."

I'm aiming for 100%, I really must try harder.

[Cordelia]

One I've been looking forward to experiencing! Thanks for news of its release, Cordelia. I'm actually excited for once to go and see a movie!

I recall some claim his work, particularly Starry Night, was due to how he saw the world through an astigmatism. An unprovable claim, but possibly true.

If you need a film to experience the work then you probably can't be told. 'Hollywood' exists to explain away the experience until only the banal is left.

You need to be told you can be a real ass sometimes, Harvey.

The film is animated. A unique production, a tale with its subject a somewhat mysterious, talented but troubled character and his form of artistic expression and tragic end as interpreted by artists of a different time working in and with a different medium. The subject, and those who tell his story through animation have in common their love of drawing. Loving Vincent, imho, has the potential to reach out and touch an audience even decades from now, just as Vincent's work does and will as long as people continue to appreciate art.

One of the cultural treasures of our area, actually in the Berkshires, 40 miles east, in Williamstown, Massachusetts, is the Clark Art Institute. During the Summer of 2015, the Clark hosted a fantastic showing of Van Gogh's work, Van Gogh and Nature that was critically acclaimed and advertised widely.

You might want to fork over $50 for the book written by the show's curator, so then you could see the works I saw in person. Really, check it out.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/2015/05/16/extraordinary-van-gogh-inspired-nature-clark/0qVYBWGkCbAsgTqyPwrgvL/story.html

http://www.clarkart.edu/Mini-Sites/Van-Gogh-and-Nature/Exhibition

http://vangoghletters.org/vg/

Thanks Iam for your thoughtful and generous response to Harvey's banal assertion about the art of filmmaking.

[Cordelia]

I finally watched this last night. At first I couldn't get into the 'animation' style, story line, soundtrack (some of it overwhelmed the dialogue and there were no subtitles to fall back on); the flashbacks and all scenes featuring the Vincent V.G. character are in black & white and I almost gave it up. But I'm really glad I kept watching because it's exquisitely beautiful visually and the actors (except I wish they'd cast someone other than Douglas Booth as the lead; someone who looked more like Van Gogh's portraits of the real-life character, rather than a young Johnny Depp) were just right, the black & white scenes were compelling & dramatic and I cried at the end because the story is just so sad.

The debate over his death by murder (a gorgeously painted scene w/Dr. Joseph Mazery who supposedly examined V.G. before he succumbed) or suicide is presented, but at the end I felt that if Van Gogh chose to keep it secret in order to protect someone else, I could honor that. But, given the high financial stakes in the international art world, (I remember when his portrait of Dr.Paul Gachet, was auctioned for a record 82.5M in 1990) I wouldn’t try to guess which narratives produced/supported by that industry are based on myth and which on reality.


Portrait of Dr. Gachet

I was disappointed that the dvd’s only special feature was an interview w/the very handsome Booth; he points out that filming the actors took 2 weeks and producing the painted results took two years; and the reminder that Van Gogh taught himself draftsmanship and painting over the 8 years before his death and produced over 800 works of art. There are no demonstrations on how the film painting was done, but on reflection, I’m just as glad not to know; the techniques can remain a mystery to view again.

I think this site poses some interesting speculations and questions, including the Gachet relationship and somewhat wild stabs about Antonin Artraud.

The Death of Vincent van Gogh: Art History’s Greatest Mystery
https://www.vangoghdeath.com/wish-list

ANTONIN ARTAUD -- This famed actor, author, playwright and visionary theatrical impresario probably never set foot in Auvers but he figures prominently in its mystery because he died in 1948 (another mysterious suicide by a prolific writer who left no suicide note) shortly after publishing a book that held Dr. Gachet responsible for Van Gogh’s death. Several veterans of the period believe he was assassinated by the French Government as quid pro quo for the endowment of the Gachet Collection to the nation. But this mouth-dropping contention has never been thoroughly investigated. Could it be true?

[MacCruiskeen]

Thanks for that, Cordelia. I've just read Van Gogh: A Power Seething*, a very short, very sympathetic biographical study by the painter Julian Bell. There are only a few illustrations, but they're well chosen. It's astounding to look at VvG's earliest drawings and to realise how far he came so fast. He did it all in only eight years, as you say, and not so much by an act of will as by an act of desperate self-surrender out of an impulse one might call religious. His time as a priest among the poor was not wasted time.

His ending makes one of the saddest stories in art history, at least as sad as the short life of Keats, another writer of unforgettable letters.

*The subtitle comes from one of his letters to Theo: "Sometimes I feel a power seething within me..."

on edit: Bell dismisses the suggestion that Vincent was murdered. I don't have the book to hand right now so I can't quote it, but his reasoning convinced me, fwiw.

[Grizzly]

Just watched it in full here:
https://hdm.to/loving-vincent/
It was much better than I thought it would be...

[Cordelia]

Thanks for that, Cordelia. I've just read Van Gogh: A Power Seething*, a very short, very sympathetic biographical study by the painter Julian Bell. There are only a few illustrations, but they're well chosen. It's astounding to look at VvG's earliest drawings and to realise how far he came so fast. He did it all in only eight years, as you say, and not so much by an act of will as by an act of desperate self-surrender out of an impulse one might call religious. His time as a priest among the poor was not wasted time.

His ending makes one of the saddest stories in art history, at least as sad as the short life of Keats, another writer of unforgettable letters.

*The subtitle comes from one of his letters to Theo: "Sometimes I feel a power seething within me..."

on edit: Bell dismisses the suggestion that Vincent was murdered. I don't have the book to hand right now so I can't quote it, but his reasoning convinced me, fwiw.

As conveyed by the Dr. Gatchet character, the film's story also explores Theo's support of Vincent & how guilt over his brother's many sacrifices could have led to Vincent's suicide. Theo's death (leaving a wife and baby) just 6 months after his brother's adds another depth of poignancy to the family tragedy.

Thank you Mac for the book recommendation--found an inexpensive copy online & looking forward to reading it.

I dreamt of pinks and yellows and the new van Gogh that MOMA got and the “Irises” that sold for 53.9 million and, wishing a van Gogh was mine, I looked at my English hand-lasted shoes and thought of van Gogh’s tragic shoes. I remembered me as I was. A painter losing a painting.

Flan Kittredge
Six Degrees of Separation

I've always loved V.G.'s painting of these shoes; just found this article, but haven't yet read it, so fwiw...

Philosophers Rumble Over Van Gogh’s Shoes

By Scott Horton

Cologne’s Wallraf Richartz Museum has launched an impressive new exhibition entitled “Vincent van Gogh: Shoes,” built around a celebrated painting by the Dutch master from 1886. Some might wonder how an exhibition can be framed around a single work with such a modest subject matter, but the curators provide us an impressive model. The exhibition focuses on the extraordinary role this painting has played in modern philosophy surrounding art, its reception, and its relationship to the history of ideas. A half dozen philosophers and art historians have written about van Gogh’s painting of shoes, including Martin Heidegger, Meyer Schapiro, and Jacques Derrida. The exhibition takes us on a trip through their writings—sometimes comic, occasionally downright rude, and often exhilarating. These thinkers certainly bar no holds in their clamber to be exceedingly profound.



https://harpers.org/blog/2009/10/philos ... ghs-shoes/

Even though V.G. was uncompromising w/himself in revealing his torment through numerous self-portraits, I can't help but think painting himself w/his bandaged ear, smoking, a pipe also reveals his sense of humor.