Vincent van Gogh: Disaster in Arles (Part 3)

Stories of Art

This episode explores the tumultuous final weeks of Vincent van Gogh's stay in Arles with Paul Gauguin, focusing on the psychological and artistic tensions that culminated

Key takeaways

Gauguin's portrait of Van Gogh is interpreted as a deeply critical and humiliating depiction, highlighting Van Gogh's exhaustion, perceived incompetence, and impotence.

Main topics

Van Gogh and Gauguin's artistic rivalry in Arles
Psychological breakdown and self-harm in Van Gogh

Notable quotes

"My face has lit up after all a lot since, but it was indeed me, extremely tired and charged with electricity as I was then." – Vincent van Gogh to Theo

Conclusion

The episode concludes by reflecting on the profound ambiguity surrounding Van Gogh's ear-cutting incident—its

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:01) Welcome to Stories of Speaker 1 (0:02) Art. I am Alistair Souk. And I'm Speaker 2 (0:05) James Fox. Speaker 2 (0:09) A bearded artist dressed in a distinctive mustard-coloured coat is sitting in a studio while painting a vase of sunflowers. If we're honest, he doesn't really look very happy about it, even though sunflowers, as we discovered in the last episode, are his most famous motif. His face appears strange, ashen, even monkey-like. His eyes are half-closed. And gently, his right hand holding a very dainty brush. seems to reach out and touch a wilting petal of the biggest yellow bloom, the disc of which, in a really peculiar touch, seems to stare straight at the viewer like the eye of a cyclops. So look, James, I wanted to begin this episode ever so slightly differently, not with a painting by Vincent van Gogh, as you might expect, but with a portrait of him by somebody else, the French painter Paul Gauguin, with whom, very notoriously, Vincent lived for nine tense and electrifying weeks in Arles in the south of France towards the end of 1888. And I think it really gets to the heart of much of what we're going to talk about today. Speaker 2 (1:19) I'd love to hear what you make of it. Just before throwing to you, I wanted to preface that by saying what Vincent and indeed Theo both made of this portrait. I think it's Speaker 1 (1:28) a Speaker 2 (1:28) really fascinating picture. So nine months later, this is what Vincent says to Theo, to his brother. He's writing about this portrait by Gauguin. He says, my face has lit up after all a lot since, but it was indeed me, extremely tired. and charged with electricity as I was then. Speaker 1 (1:50) And Speaker 2 (1:50) Theo even describes this as the best portrait of Vincent. And Vincent, there were portraits of him by other really quite well-established artists, including Toulouse-Lautrec, Australian impressionist John Russell. So in a sense, they're saying it's quite good. What do Speaker 1 (2:07) you make of it as a likeness? I'm gripped by this painting. I've always been gripped by this painting. I think it's one of Gauguin's best. It's so complex visually. It's also, in my view, exceptionally cruel. I think this is... are one of the great put-downs in the history of art. I think there's a real criticism of Van Gogh. Let me tell you why. First of all, you've alluded to this. The way he portrays Vincent with this strange pose, these little squinting eyes, this big brow, these big lips. He is, you're right, he's painting like a chimpanzee painting. It's really, really insulting. The other thing that's very insulting about this picture, and isn't mentioned so often, is Vincent's thumb. The little thumb which rises from the palate out of the groin like a little erect penis. Speaker 2 (2:54) Yes. Speaker 1 (2:55) Because, and the reason it's cruel, is that Vincent, whose mental and physical health had been declining in this period, he was struggling with impotence. And Gauguin knew this very well. They were going to brothels all the time. Gauguin knew it really upset Vincent. And here he is, I think, ridiculing Vincent's erectile dysfunction. Speaker 2 (3:12) You Speaker 1 (3:12) know, Gauguin was an alpha male. He was extremely competitive. And there's a real sense of one-upmanship in this picture. First of all, it's the sunflowers themselves. The sunflowers, as we said in the previous episode, this was Vincent's thing. And here is Gauguin painting sunflowers from memory rather than from life, almost as if he's saying, anything you can do, I can do better. Do you think, so do you really see no homage at Speaker 2 (3:37) all in it? And I only say that because I know that a little later, after this infamous episode in Arles that we're going to talk about today. And Gauguin, who had already admired earlier pictures of sunflowers that Vincent had created, not even in Arles, but in Paris, before he'd got to the south of France, he writes to Vincent and asks for some of the sunflowers because he sees them as the essential signature Vincent style, if you like. So he does seem to really admire them. And you could see, quite simply, if you're, you know, this is his admiration. But do you not see that? Speaker 1 (4:10) At all. I don't see it because what he's depicting is Vincent striving painfully, looking at, I mean, this brings us to a much bigger argument they have over observation versus memory. And here is Vincent like this kind of, you know, subhuman imbecile squinting as he's trying to copy the sunflowers, whereas Gauguin's just summoning it. from his memory. Yeah, Speaker 2 (4:31) I think there's a sort of like detail of the picture that really gets the heart of that, aside from the features of Vincent, the way he's portrayed. But if you look at his brush, which is very thin, which is the type of brush that Gauguin would have used, not the type of brush that Vincent would have used, is kind of connecting with the canvas in the background of the picture and his fingertips and the sunflowers petal, as if to say that the way he makes art is almost chimp-like reproducing reality. That's what he's doing. Whereas he, Gauguin, as you say, is able in December to paint. paint the sunflowers from the imagination, from the memory. The whole palette of the picture is much closer to Gauguin's signature colours, really, rather than Vincent's. So I suppose I find it, I mean, I find it really persuasive, this idea that there's quite not even veiled critique in there. But I do also find it interesting that Vincent and Theo seem to quite like it after the event retrospectively. Speaker 1 (5:25) Yeah, but not at the time. In fact, the... Very evening after Vincent sees this picture, he goes to the bar with Gauguin and he chucks a glass of absinthe at his face. Speaker 2 (5:36) Yes, but we may be jumping ahead there. We will come Speaker 1 (5:39) to Speaker 2 (5:39) that. But there's Speaker 1 (5:40) one final little tantalising detail that I've noticed on this picture. I don't think anyone has noticed this before. Oh, exciting. Look at the pot that is holding those flowers. Yeah, OK, Speaker 2 (5:50) so blue, glazed. There is a Speaker 1 (5:52) little decorative motif on the front of that pot. Speaker 2 (5:55) Hang on, I want to see if I can get where you're... So there are these red swirls which look like they are a pattern on the glazed blue side of the pot, which could be an Egyptian eye Speaker 1 (6:10) or what is it? I think it's an ear. You... Wow! You heard it here first, folks. I think it's an ear. Now, listen, that is... Brilliant. Thank you very much. Because Speaker 2 (6:22) they say that the sunflower itself up at the top is very eye-like, and it really is. If you look in the centre of the sunflower, it does look like a human eye. So he is anthropomorphising the flowers in the pot. But this Speaker 1 (6:35) is painted pre-ear incident, and you're claiming that he... Do you think... No, my theory is that, yes, he paints this in December 1888. a couple of weeks, maybe even just a couple of days before Vincent famously lops off his ear. But could he have added the ear motif afterwards as an homage to that event? Yes. I think it's fascinating. I think this whole subject that we're going to be discussing in this episode is fascinating. This is the most extraordinary, one of the most extraordinary episodes from the history of art, isn't it? Speaker 2 (7:10) I Speaker 1 (7:11) mean, this is like Speaker 2 (7:12) it's... Next level. It's beyond. It's such a great story. It's very, very well known. But I don't think that should stop us telling it again. It's not going to stop me. It's tremendously exciting. I'm just still kind of thinking about the ear because when you see Vincent in this picture, that is the ear on the left side of his head that is the one he eventually does mutilate. He does. And so you can sort of see very, very, very interesting. Speaker 1 (7:37) Although, on the other Speaker 2 (7:38) hand, on the other hand, you've got Vincent on the right, and we're sort of making an argument that you have this figure-like... bunch of flowers on the left balancing him with an eye and an ear and of course maybe that's more Gauguin like with it's the flowers from imagination Speaker 1 (7:54) but oh god I don't know I think that's a dazzling theory I'm amazed Speaker 2 (7:58) it hasn't been suggested I Speaker 1 (8:00) know I know well look this yellow house story is for me so compelling because the story we're going to tell today you've got this two giants of modern art Both of them at their very peak. Both of them producing masterpiece after masterpiece and yet living together in this tiny little house. It's the pressure cooker. Speaker 2 (8:20) And arguing Speaker 1 (8:20) over who's doing the cooking and who's doing the cleaning. You can understand why this is a story that has been told so many times. And we are going to explore the remarkable art that came out of that period. But we're also going to try to get to the bottom of what actually happened on that fateful night when Vincent lost his ear. But first, just to remind... listeners where we got to. In the last episode Alistair we got him down to Arles in the south of France where he has this extraordinary explosion of creativity, paints so many famous pictures including of course the sunflowers which we discussed in some detail. But things are all about to go wrong. So this is episode three in our four-part series on the life and work of Vincent van Gogh. Speaker 2 (9:12) So we have slightly been teasing this for quite some time, but the big antagonist, the great character other than Vincent in this episode is the artist Paul Gauguin. And Vincent's met Gauguin in Paris already, hasn't he? Yeah. He has this idea, Vincent, that he, after leaving Paris, where he's been immersed in the avant-garde and made some of these connections and friendships, including with Gauguin. He has this idea that he wants to collaborate and have a community of artists in the south of France. So we sometimes think of him as this loner eccentric, but he heads down there. He's still in touch with people like Gauguin, Theo, Bernard. He's hearing news from Paris. In fact, I think he even gets some pictures into a very important exhibition in Paris, although he doesn't seem to talk too much about that in the letters. So he's still connected. Speaker 1 (10:04) And Speaker 2 (10:05) he has this vision. that he's going to create what he calls a studio in, or studio of the South. And the setting for this is going to be this place which has become very famous. It no longer exists. I've been to Arles. And if you go to Arles to the spot where the famous Yellow House stood, it's gone. It was, I think, destroyed in the Second World War. It's been replaced with a building. And over the road, there's a roundabout. There's a massive supermarket. It doesn't quite have Speaker 1 (10:30) the atmosphere. I spent half Speaker 2 (10:31) an hour on Google Speaker 1 (10:32) Street View last night looking for it. Speaker 2 (10:33) Did you? Okay. Yeah, it's definitely no longer there. But initially, he doesn't stay. in the Yellow House. And I think it's in the spring of 1888 that he starts to rent it. And first of all, he's not using the Yellow House as a place to live. He's using it as a studio. But as time goes on and his plan to create the Studio of the South is beginning to coalesce, he's writing to Theo the whole time. And they're trying to, between them, persuade Gauguin to come and join Vincent in this place, the Yellow House, in Arles, to have this artist community where they're going to further progressive avant-garde art. point, Vincent himself, he's writing also to Emile Bernard, that young friend that he met in Paris, who's also linked with Gauguin, and he's... inviting them to send, they want to swap self-portraits. So this is why I was saying before in that previous episode, keep in mind the self-portrait where Vincent has shaved himself, the one that you've now slightly destroyed in my mind as being politically very incorrect with the slanty eyes. We can gloss over that, it's a bit awkward. But yeah, where he is presenting himself as a Buddhist monk, partly his infatuation with all things Japanese, but that's what he sends to Gauguin. And the idea is almost as though he himself is going to be like, what, an acolyte, a disciple, a sort of religious follower of the leader of the avant-garde who is... Paul Gauguin, we need to describe who he is in a moment. But eventually, over that summer, as it becomes clear that Gauguin, having staved things off for a long time, is thinking he might finally come, he's being persuaded by Theo, and maybe in a moment we can discuss why he might want to come, Vincent gets wind of this and he needs to start decorating the yellow house really quickly because he decides to live there, right? Can Speaker 1 (12:08) we just say a little bit about the Yellow House beforehand? It's a really grotty place. OK. It's on the north of Arles, on the Place Lamartine, right by the train station. It's pretty small. It's got four rooms in total. There's a sitting room downstairs, a little kitchen at the back. And upstairs, there are two tiny adjoining bedrooms. There's no electricity. There's no gas. There's no heating. There are no toilets. It's really grotty. The bedrooms are very key because, Speaker 2 (12:32) we'll come to it later, but... you can't get into them separately. You Speaker 1 (12:35) can't. Speaker 2 (12:36) So Vincent famously paints his bedroom and those are gorgeous pictures. I mean, stunning pictures. Gorgeous, maybe not quite the right word. But that's his bedroom. Whoever stays in the guest bedroom eventually, and I think it's quite clear now that eventually it's going to be Gauguin, has to get through Vincent's bedroom to get there. So that gives you Speaker 1 (12:52) a Speaker 2 (12:52) sense of how cramped it all is. Speaker 1 (12:53) Yeah, it's very cramped. It's in a bad part of town. I mean, still a bad part of town. Very noisy. The trains, the brothels, bars, the whole thing's going on. It's very cheap. So it's 15 francs a month. And no one wants it except for Vincent. And after he takes it on in the spring, April, May 1888, he goes under this, he embarks on this sort of grand designs project where he fixes the windows and the doors. He renovates the interior. He gets gas put in and he repaints the exterior even brighter yellow. It goes back to the idea of the sunflowers, actually, from the previous episode. And you're completely right. He has this idea that he wants to share this two bedroom place with another artist. He tries lots of people, doesn't he? I mean, he tries to get Theo down first. Theo says, no, thanks. Speaker 2 (13:38) Yeah. Then Speaker 1 (13:39) he tries Emil Bernard. Emil Bernard says, no, thanks. Speaker 2 (13:42)