and were motivated by other artists to imagine a just world.
Anybody like that today would be bloodtested for crack.
That's not to say that they were not averse
to using the food budget on some hookers.
let's see how they perceived their world,
through an absynthe glass
checkit: The Guardian
Van
Gogh and Gauguin letter tells of artistic hopes that turned sour
'Electrifying'
missive written by artists on pages of French exercise books goes on sale in
Paris next month
Kim Willsher in Paris
, Friday 23 November 2012 18.12
GMT
The
handwritten letter, penned jointly by Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin on
cheap paper torn out of a school exercise book, speaks of friendship and hope.
Written at a critical point in the careers of both men, it refers to dreams of founding a utopian community of
brother artists, of a new artistic renaissance, and of paintings now
recognised as masterpieces.
The
reality was to be less idyllic. Shortly after the missive was sent, the pair quarrelled violently and in one of history's
most notorious acts of self-mutilation, Van Gogh sliced off his right ear.
It was an act that marked the Dutchman's final decline into madness and
suicide.
Now,
the four-page letter signed by both artists has emerged from a private
collection before its auction in Paris next month, where it is expected to
fetch up to €500,000 (£405,000).
Thomas
Venning, an expert with the auction house Christie's, said the document offered
an insight into the "most famous artistic menage in history".
"I
spend my life dealing with letters and this is one of the greatest, most
electrifying I have ever seen," he said. "It takes you into their
house, into their lives at this particular moment.
"You
can imagine Van Gogh sitting down to write the letter on cheap paper because
they didn't have much money, then saying to Gauguin: 'You finish it off'."
The
letter is written on the square-ruled paper of French exercise books and addressed to Emile Bernard, a young avant
garde artist who inspired both men. It was composed in November 1888 at
Arles in Provence, where Van Gogh had rented two floors of a private house, 2
Place Lamartine, the subject of the painting La Maison Jaune.
The
previous week, after months of procrastination, Gauguin had arrived to live and
paint with Van Gogh for one or two years. At the time, the French art world was
moving from impressionism to modernism and surrealism, but Van Gogh and Gauguin
had yet to be widely recognised.
Van
Gogh, mentally fragile and prone to violent mood swings, was fired up with
childlike excitement. In the letter, he gives his first impressions of the
French painter.
"Gauguin
interests me much as a man – very much – I have long thought that in our dirty
profession as painters we have the greatest need of people with the hands and
stomachs of a labourer – and more natural tastes – more amorous and benevolent
temperaments – than the decadent and exhausted Parisian boulevardier.
"Now
here without the slightest doubt we are in the presence of a virgin creature
with the instincts of a wild animal. In Gauguin, blood and sex prevail over
ambition."
He
adds: "We have made several excursions to the brothels and it's likely
that we will end up working there often. Gauguin has at the moment a painting
under way of same night café that I also painted, but with figures seen in the
brothels. It promises to become a beautiful thing.
"I've
made two studies of falling leaves in an avenue of poplars and a third study of
this whole avenue, entirely yellow." [Les Alyscamps.]"
Van
Gogh writes that he and Gauguin are discussing "the terrific subject of an
association of certain painters" and of his "presentiment of a new
world … and a great artistic renaissance" that will find its home in the
tropics.
On
the final page, Gauguin adds: "Don't listen to Vincent, as you know he's
prone to admiration and ditto indulgence. His idea about the future of a new
generation in the tropics seems absolutely right to me as a painter, and I
still intend to return there when I have the means to do so. Who knows, with a
bit of luck …?"
Eight
weeks later, on 23 December, the partnership came to a violent end when the
pair quarrelled violently over, it is
believed, Van Gogh spending the meagre household budget on prostitutes, and
his refusal to stop drinking absinthe.
Van
Gogh threatened his "friend" with a razor before slicing off his own
ear. Shortly afterwards he entered the first of a series of asylums and died in
1890 aged 37 after shooting himself.
