I have been looking forward to the film that has been released in mainland China for a year and a half. I planned to read two more related books before that, but maybe it was because I was busy or because I remembered that Van Gogh’s life was too heavy, so I didn’t open it for a long time. page. The movie with the heavy oil painting tone was slowly hitting my heart. When the ending song sounded, the theater was silent in the middle of the night, and only a tacit lament flowed in the air.
In the movie Margaret says "You want to know so much about his death, but what do you know of his life?"
The part of Van Gogh's life revealed in the film is also sad. The only happy moment is when he was too lonely to be driven away when he was painting.
Recalling that before watching the movie, Xian Xiaoyu, who is currently a graduate student in Hong Kong, asked a group of girlfriends, "I want to ask you a question after watching the movie. Are you willing to trade everything else for a Van Gogh-like genius?" Without hesitation, I replied, "No, I would rather have mediocre happiness."
However, when I read "The Life of Van Gogh" edited by Feng Zikai and "Van Gogh Manuscripts", which selected Van Gogh's letters, paintings, and precious manuscripts, I suddenly realized that if I thought that Van Gogh was unfortunate, it would be too misunderstood. .
After clarifying Van Gogh's intentions, let's take a look at the more realistic and three-dimensional life of Van Gogh by drawing on Mr. Feng Zikai's division of several eras of Van Gogh's life.
[Preparation Era & Dutch Era] Talent is bumpy
I remember in the film that Van Gogh's painting career started at the age of 28, but behind his late bloomer is the talent revealed at a young age.
"When he was eight years old, one day he asked an artist's assistant for a piece of clay and used it to shape a baby elephant. The technique was very delicate, as if he had studied sculpture. Another day, he saw a tabby cat jumping into the courtyard. The apple tree of the apple tree, just traced its lively gesture on the paper, and the pen is very flexible. However, his achievements are not the product of technology, but the product of passion. He has never been accustomed to sculpture and painting; out."
In 1885, the 32-year-old Vincent van Gogh left his troubled family and went to Antwerp to become a student at a famous art school at the time after he successively worked for a gallery company and failed as a missionary. However, just after the new year, his loving father suddenly suffered from a heart attack in February, and he sent a letter to urge him to return home. Van Gogh just rushed to the hospital bed after learning about it, and his father's end was approaching. As he was dying, he called his son by name and said these last words to him: "I think death is easier than life. Death is hard, but life is harder than death."
After the funeral, Van Gogh stayed at home for a month, then left his hometown and went to his second hometown, Paris.
[Paris Times] Precipitation and Friendship
As a middle-aged, foreigner, and idiot, a group of young Parisian painting students behind him often snickered at Van Gogh. Only his classmate Bernard could understand him and respect him in the morning.
Later, Bernard said to the people: "When I was with M. Colmont's studio in his studio, every afternoon, after the students had left, the empty studio was like his monastery. With the patience of an angel, he described beautiful shapes. He worked hard to study its outlines, faces, and shadows. He corrected himself many times, revised and erased with enthusiasm. Often many holes were broken in the drawing paper."
He studied in this second hometown for less than two years, and three-quarters of the modern French paintings have been condensed into him. Among his masterpieces, there are two portraits, "Portrait of Daddy Tangji" is not only his representative work, but also a souvenir of his contacts at that time.
【The Age of the Southern Kingdom and the Last】Fall
After the two changes between the cold and summer, the cold Paris finally couldn't keep Van Gogh who came here in pursuit of "light and art". He longed for the land of the sun, the southern country.
In February 1888, Van Gogh arrived in Arles on the Mediterranean Sea. Ar's scorching sunshine greeted him, but Ar's inhabitants treated him coldly. His career has gradually improved, but his life is still lonely. In his letters to friends, Van Gogh often talked about the idea of "co-living" and "co-production" that he embraced as a painter early in the morning. He longed to realize this project together with Gauguin and Bernard, whom he loved most in art and character.
The three of them exchanged self-portraits, exchanged ideas, and were momentarily dazzled by happiness.
One day, when Vincent van Gogh was describing the poplars in the autumn wind in the suburbs, Jingzhen looked forward to Gauguin and realized his dream of "living together".
However, the differences in artistic perspectives and the differences in the details of daily life make the grievances between the two people who get along day and night deepen. "One is a radical, fanatical, southerner-like Dutchman, and the other is a calm, strict, willful, northerner-like Frenchman. All destruction is due to the stubbornness and conflict of the two opposite personalities."
The imbalance of spirit and body, the shattering of beautiful dreams, and the breakup of friends caused Van Gogh's madness to strike again and again. Coinciding with the birth of Christ, the mad Van Gogh took a razor and danced in the court, wanting to kill Gauguin. I don't know if it was a mistake or intentional, he cut off one of his ears, and ran into the street with blood dripping, and handed it to a man who did not know how to kill Gauguin. An acquaintance of a woman (sometimes called a prostitute) caused an uproar in public opinion.
After the treatment and discharge from the hospital, Van Gogh's Eddie Theo found him a quiet town of Auvers, about seven miles north of Paris, to recuperate.
During this period, his style was relatively gentle, the tragic and solemn epic poems of Arr's era and Saint-Rémy's era disappeared one after another, and gradually returned to the graceful lyric poetry of the past.
"The works of this era are full of gentle human feelings, not like the anxiety of the Paris era, nor the nightmare of the Algiers-Saint-Rémy era. The former excitement has now turned into a continuous sadness. Sorrow starts from the deepest part of the heart."
"Seduced by the charms of nature, he devoted his whole body to the desire to make things, completely ignoring the onslaught of fatigue and exhaustion. His too weak body gradually could not support his too strong will. It was what he was worried about, but he wished to keep his body and mind stable and spent his time in vain, which was a great pain for him! As a result of the contest, he was willing to obey his heartfelt desires and devote himself to endless creation.”
No matter what, when he couldn't support himself and resolve the conflict, he suddenly committed suicide on a sunny morning in late July, two months after arriving in Aufu Village.
Will he suddenly remember his father's last words before committing suicide?
"Death is easier than life, and life is harder than death."
【Looking Back · Letter】
In the "Van Gogh Manuscripts", his words are equally moving. The most shocking thing for me is the love that penetrates the back of the paper. I remember seeing someone studying "A Dream of Red Mansions" using word frequency, and reading Van Gogh's manuscripts. You don't need to count them to know that what he mentioned most frequently, and what he was thinking about, was "painting".
Anna Sue of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York carefully selected more than 150 letters from nearly a thousand letters, "Here, Van Gogh belongs only to painting, to art, to the golden wheat field and the sky where crows fly. "
Below is a small selection in chronological order.
【postscript】
Van Gogh's life was like a fiery flame that burned in the world for thirty-seven years and then went out. What is left are many paintings made continuously, like the negatives of a moving movie, which record the passing of his passionate flames.
Dr. Gachet and his beloved brother sent for his funeral, planting sunflowers on his grave. These flowers bloom toward the sun every year, paying tribute to the painter who is longing for the sun, who sleeps forever in the ground.
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