Lust for Life

Pain did curious things to him. It made him sensitive to the pain of others. It made him intolerant of everything that was cheap and blatantly successful in the world about him. He was no longer of any value at the gallery. (Location 339)

“You can never be sure about anything for all time, Vincent,” said Mendes. “You can only have the courage and strength to do what you think is right. It may turn out to be wrong, but you will at least have done it, and that is the important thing. We must act according to the best dictates of our reason, and then (Location 662)

Mendes did not wish to say anything about Vincent’s specific problem; he wanted only to discuss its more general phases and let the boy come to his own decision. (Location 669)

He did not write home to tell them what he was doing because he knew they would say, and rightly, “Oh, Vincent is at one of his fads again. When will he settle down and do something useful?” (Location 1520)

The “Exercises au Fusain” arrived from The Hague and Vincent spent the next two weeks copying the sixty studies, working from early morning to night. Tersteeg also sent the “Cours de Dessin” by Bargue; Vincent tackled this with tremendous vitality. (Location 1643)

When for eleven days he had not one centime in his pocket and had to live off the few loaves he could borrow from Madame Denis, he did not once complain—even to himself—of his hunger. What did the hunger of his belly matter, when his spirit was being so well fed? (Location 1646)

Every morning for a week he went to the gate of Marcasse at two-thirty and made a large drawing of the miners: men and women going to the shaft, through the snow by a path along a hedge of thorns; shadows that passed, dimly visible in the crepuscule. In the background he drew the large constructions of the mine, with the heaps of clinkers standing out vaguely against the sky. He made a copy of the sketch when it was finished and sent it in a letter to Theo. (Location 1649)

“Our inward thoughts, do they ever show outwardly? There may be a great fire in our soul and no one comes to warm himself by it. The passers-by see only a bit of smoke coming through the chimney and continue on their way. Now look here, what must be done? Mustn’t one tend that inward fire, have faith in oneself, wait patiently for the hour when somebody will come and sit near it?” (Location 1776)

“You mean you have to make your drawing right so the portraits will be good enough to sell?” “No,” replied Vincent, sketching rapidly with his pencil, “I have to make my drawing right so that my drawing will be right.” (Location 1875)

“Nature always begins by resisting the artist, Father,” he said, without putting down his pencil, “but if I really take my work seriously, I won’t allow myself to be led astray by that resistance. On the contrary, it will be a stimulus the more to fight for victory.” (Location 1922)

Theo sent Ingres paper, pictures from a veterinary school of the anatomy of a horse, a cow, and a sheep, some Holbeins in “The Models from the Artists,” drawing pencils, quill pens, the reproduction of a human skeleton, sepia, as many francs as he could spare, and the admonition to work hard and not become a mediocre artist. To this advice Vincent replied, “I shall do what I can, but mediocre in its simple signification I do not despise at all. And one certainly does not rise above that mark by despising what is mediocre. But what you say about hard work is entirely right. ‘Not a day without a line!’ as Gavarni warns us.” (Location 1941)

In order to paint life one must understand not only anatomy, but what people feel and think about the world they live in. The painter who knows his own craft and nothing else will turn out to be a very superficial artist.” (Location 1962)

Vincent left, not altogether discouraged. Tersteeg had seen some progress, and his was the most critical eye in all Holland. At least he was not standing still, He knew that his sketches from life were not all that they should have been, but he was confident that if he worked hard and long they would come right in the end. (Location 2118)

Mauve had been avoiding other painters assiduously for some time (he always maintained that a man could either paint or talk about painting, but he could not do both) (Location 2143)

“I don’t ask for a great deal,” said Vincent. “Just let me work with you here sometimes and watch you build up a canvas. Talk to me about your work as you did this afternoon, so I’ll see how a whole project is completed. And occasionally, when you are resting, you might look over my drawings and point out my mistakes. That’s all I ask.” “You think you are asking only a little. But believe me, it is a serious matter, to take an apprentice.” “I wouldn’t be a burden to you, I can promise that.” Mauve considered for a long time. He had never wanted an apprentice; he disliked having people about when he worked. He did not often feel communicative about his own creations, and he had never received anything but abuse for the advice he offered beginners. Still, Vincent was his cousin, Uncle Vincent Van Gogh and Goupils bought his canvases, and there was something about the crude, intense passion of the boy—the same crude, intense passion he had felt in the drawings—that appealed to him. (Location 2177)

“From out of pain, beauty.” (Location 2212)

Mauve and his wife Jet had thought it extremely doubtful that Vincent would ever come to The Hague; they knew that nearly everyone has a vague prompting to become an artist at some time or other during his life. (Location 2565)

“That’s so,” agreed Mauve. “The figure is the hardest to get, but once you have it, trees and cows and sunsets are simple. Men who neglect the figure do so because they find it too hard.” (Location 2590)

For him the rules of the game were far more important than the victory. (Location 2769)

Tersteeg was a good and honourable man; he expected everyone else to be equally good and honourable. He admitted no circumstancs which could change evil into good or sin into salvation. (Location 2769)

No artist ever lets go of anything he thinks is good, Van Gogh. He only sells his garbage to the public.” (Location 2858)

Once the canvas was delivered, he collapsed in a heap. He was weak, ill, delirious. It took Jet many days to nurse him back to health and sanity. His exhaustion was so complete that the very sight or smell of paint made him nauseated. Slowly, very slowly, his strength would return. In its wake would come his interest. He would begin to potter about the studio cleaning up things. He would walk in the fields, at first seeing nothing. In the end some scene would strike his eye. And so the cycle began all over again. (Location 2885)

“Plug on, Vincent, plug on; that is how great pictures are produced,” and was gone. (Location 2963)

“So they can sell, eh? No, my boy, if you see things as pen drawings, you must put them down as pen drawings. And above all, never listen to anybody—not even me. Go your own way.” (Location 3066)

He posed Christine naked on a jow block of wood near the stove. He turned the block of wood into a tree stump, put in a little vegetation, and transposed the scene to the out-of-doors. Then he drew Christine, gnarled hands on her knees, the face buried in the scraggy arms, the thin hair covering the spine a short way down, the bulbous breasts drooping to meet the lean shanks, the flat feet insecurely on the ground. He called it Sorrow. (Location 3107)

“How much would it cost, doctor?” said Vincent. “Not more than fifty francs.” “And if she doesn’t have the operation?” “There’s not a chance in the world of her pulling through.” Vincent thought for a moment. The twelve water-colours for his Uncle Cor were almost done; that would be thirty francs. He would take the other twenty francs off Theo’s April allowance. “I’ll take care of the money, doctor,” he said. “Good. Bring her back on Saturday morning and I’ll operate myself. Now just one thing more; I don’t know what the relationship is between you two and I don’t care to be told. That’s not part of the doctor’s business. But I think you ought to be informed that if this little lady ever goes back to walking the streets, she (Location 3300)

There was nothing in the workshop to distract the man; no books, no magazines, no sofa or comfortable chair, no sketches on the walls, no window to look out of, nothing but the bare implements of his trade. There was not even an extra stool for a guest to sit down; that kept people away. (Location 3378)

“Because it will make a real artist of you. The more you suffer, the more grateful you ought to be. That’s the stuff out of which first-rate painters are made. An empty stomach is better than a full one, Van Gogh, and a broken heart is better than happiness, never forget that!” (Location 3392)

“The man who has never been miserable has nothing to paint about, Van Gogh. Happiness is bovine; it’s only good for cows and tradesmen. Artists thrive on pain; if you’re hungry, discouraged and wretched, be grateful. God is being good to you!” (Location 3395)

As his pocketbook emptied his portfolio filled. (Location 3747)

He quickly learned that a colourist is one who, seeing a colour in nature, knows at once how to analyse it and say. “That grey-green is yellow with black, and hardly any blue.” (Location 3748)

She thought his hunger to paint things a sort of costly obsession. She knew it was the rock upon which his life was built, however, and made no attempt to oppose him; the purpose, the slow progress and painful expression of his work were completely lost upon her. She was a good companion for ordinary domestic purposes, but only a very small part of Vincent’s life was domestic. (Location 3783)

What had struck him most about the old Dutch pictures was that they had been painted quickly, that the great masters dashed off a thing from the first stroke and did not retouch it. They had painted in a grand rush to keep intact the purity of their first impression, of the mood in which the motif had been conceived. (Location 4085)

Vincent was trying to say on his canvas what a simple thing death was, just as simple as the falling of an autumn leaf, just a bit of earth dug up, a wooden cross. The fields around, where the grass of the churchyard ended beyond the little wall, made a last line against the sky, like the horizon of the sea. (Location 4146)

Vincent knew that Dien van den Beek merely voiced the opinion of the village, and that to the provincial mind the words artist and worker were mutually exclusive. He gave up caring what the people thought, and ceased to see them when he passed them on the street. When their distrust of him had come to a positive climax, an accident happened that put him back in favour. (Location 4266)

He had learned that the essential note in figure drawing was action, and that the great fault with the figures in the pictures of the old masters was that they did not work. (Location 4573)

Vincent wanted to make it clear how these people, eating their potatoes under the lamplight, had dug the earth with those very hands they put in the dish; he wanted it to speak of manual labour, and how they had honestly earned their food. (Location 4640)

The more he failed, the higher his excitement rose. (Location 4653)

He studied the technique closely, and saw that Manet put elemental colours next to each other without gradation, that many details were barely suggested, that colours, lines, lights and shades did not end with definite precision, but wavered into each other. (Location 4766)

I’ll tell you. You are to learn about light and colour from the Impressionists. That much you must borrow from them. But nothing more. You must not imitate. You must not get swamped. Don’t let Paris submerge you.” (Location 4801)

“They are authentic and penetrating commentaries on life. That is the very highest kind of beauty, don’t you think? (Location 4888)

“I’m not after gaiety itself. I’m after the essence of gaiety. Are you acquainted with Plato, my friend?” “Yes.” “Very well, what painters must learn to portray is not a thing, but the essence of a thing. When the artist paints a horse, it should not be one particular horse that you can recognize in the street. (Location 5108)

The camera can take photographs; we must go beyond that. What we must capture when we paint a horse, Monsieur Van Gogh, is Plato’s horsiness, the external spirit of a horse. And when we paint a man, it should not be the concierge, with a wart on the end of his nose, but manness, the spirit and essence of all men. Do you follow me, my friend?” (Location 5111)

Art is amoral; so is life. For me there are no obscene pictures or books; there are only poorly conceived and poorly executed ones. A whore by Toulouse-Lautrec is moral because he brings out the beauty that lies beneath her external appearance; a pure country girl by Bouguereau is immoral because she is sentimentalized and so cloyingly sweet that just to look at her is enough to make you vomit!” (Location 5484)

“The ordinary human brain thinks in terms of duality; light and shade, sweet and sour, good and evil. That duality does not exist in nature. There is neither good nor evil in the world, but only being and doing. When we describe an action, we describe life; when we call that action names—like depravity or obscenity—we go into the realm of subjective prejudice.” (Location 5489)

“Let’s formulate our manifesto, gentlemen,” said Zola. “First, we think all truth beautiful, no matter how hideous its face may seem. We accept all of nature, without any repudiation. We believe there is more beauty in a harsh truth than in a pretty lie, more poetry in earthiness than in all the salons of Paris. We think pain good, because it is the most profound of all human feelings. We think sex beautiful, even when portrayed by a harlot and a pimp. We put character above ugliness, pain above prettiness, and hard, crude reality above all the wealth in France. We accept life in its entirety, without making moral judgements. We think the prostitute as good as the countess, the concierge as good as the general, the peasant as good as the cabinet minister, for they all fit into the pattern of nature, and are woven into the design of life!” (Location 5525)

Theo, I wonder if I can make you understand . . . But of course I can. When I was alone in the Brabant and The Hague, I thought of myself as an important person. I was one lone man, battling the whole world. I was an artist, the only artist living. Everything I painted was valuable. I knew that I had great ability, and that eventually the world would say, ‘He is a splendid painter.’” (Location 5931)

“Alas, now I am just one of many. There are hundreds of painters all about me. I see myself caricatured on every side. Think of all the wretched canvases in our apartment, sent by painters who want to join the colony. They, too, think they are going to be great painters. Well, maybe I’m just like them. How do I know? What have I to bolster up my courage now? Before I came to Paris I didn’t know there were hopeless fools who deluded themselves all their lives. Now I know. That hurts.” (Location 5935)

“At this, Gauguin. The fields that push up the corn, and the water that rushes down the ravine, the juice of the grape, and the life of a man as it flows past him, are all one and the same thing. The sole unity in life is the unity of rhythm. A rhythm to which we all dance; men, apples, ravines, ploughed fields, carts among the corn, houses, horses, and the sun. The stuff that is in you, Gauguin, will pound through a grape tomorrow, because you and a grape are one. When I paint a peasant labouring in the field, I want people to feel the peasant flowing down into the soil, just as the corn does, and the soil flowing up into the peasant. I want them to feel the sun pouring into the peasant, into the field, into corn, the plough, and the horses, just as they all pour back into the sun. When you begin to feel the universal rhythm in which everything on earth moves, you begin to understand life. That alone is God.” (Location 6720)

He painted from four in the morning until night stole the scene from him. He created two, and sometimes even three complete pictures a day. He was spilling out a year of his life blood with every convulsive painting that he tore from his vitals. It was not the length of his stay on earth that mattered to him; it was what he did with the days of his life. For him time would have to be measured by the paintings he poured out, not by the fluttering leaves of a calendar. (Location 6799)

“You never have been normal. But then, no artist is normal; if he were, he wouldn’t be an artist. Normal men don’t create works of art. They eat, sleep, hold down routine jobs, and die. You are hypersensitive to life and nature; that’s why you are able to interpret for the rest of us. But if you are not careful, that very hypersensitiveness will lead you to your destruction. The strain of it breaks every artist in time.” (Location 6991)

Vincent was glad that he had come. By seeing the truth about the life of madmen he slowly lost the vague dread, the fear of insanity. Bit by bit he came to consider madness as a disease like any other. By the third week he found his comates no more frightening than if they had been stricken by consumption or cancer. (Location 7242)

There came a time in every man’s life when it was necessary to fling off suffering as though it were a filthy cloak. (Location 7362)

‘No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness!’ Do you know who said that? Aristotle, that’s who.” (Location 7625)