But when we do this, we hide what needs redemption-all that we trust Christ to redeem. If you’re anything like me, it’s hard to render an honest self-portrait because we want to conceal what’s unattractive. He painted at least two self-portraits with his bandaged ear, capturing the moment of his greatest shame. Yet even in the hospital, van Gogh did what he always did: he painted.
TRUE STORY PORTRAIT PAINTER HEALS SUFFERERS PROFESSIONAL
So on top of everything else, his bloody-eared public spectacle-which led to his eviction and detention in the asylum-brought with it a mountain of humiliating professional shame. After years of obscurity, his work had begun to catch the artistic community’s attention. To add insult to injury, when van Gogh cut off his ear he was something of a rising star in the art world. His roommate, friend, and fellow artist had left, and van Gogh felt responsible. They took him to the hospital, where he began to count the cost of what he had lost.
Word of this outburst spread quickly, and the next morning police found him asleep in his bed, covered in blood. When he handed her the blood-soaked parcel, he asked her to “guard this object carefully.” Van Gogh took a blade to his ear, cut off the lobe, wrapped it in paper, and took it to a local prostitute named Rachel, who seemed to have been a friend in his community of folks on the fringe. What drove van Gogh to check himself in to the asylum? What made his neighbors think he was mad? Why did they petition the police to remove him from their community? There were many contributing factors, but the most obvious episode came several weeks before, when he and his flatmate-the impressionist painter Paul Gauguin- had a falling out. So much beauty came from that season of life, but so much humiliation and public rejection facilitated it. Van Gogh painted more than 140 paintings during his asylum year, one canvas every three days. He painted his own versions of other artists’ work that he loved.Īnd he painted self-portraits. He painted portraits of his caregivers and fellow patients. He painted the fields he could see beyond the asylum walls and the olive groves he’d walk through when he occasionally left. He painted the asylum’s gardens, grounds, and corridors. In fact, van Gogh’s most celebrated works were created on the grounds of an insane asylum: Irises, Starry Night, and Wheat Field with Cypresses. What did he do with as a patient at Saint-Rémy? He painted. Labeled mad by his own community, the “redheaded madman” checked himself in and remained in Saint-Rémy for a year, from May 1889 to May 1890. Treatment for madness often involved asylum. Bipolar? Paranoia? Acute epilepsy? Madness. Shorty after his eviction notice, van Gogh admitted himself into an asylum for the mentally ill: the Saint-Paul asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. Back in those days, most psychological maladies were simply called “madness.” Debilitating depression? Madness. The police responded by removing him from his rented flat- The Yellow House made famous in his painting The Bedroom. He suffered from depression, paranoia, and public outbursts so disconcerting that in March 1889 (two months after Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear), 30 of his neighbors in his village of Arles, France, petitioned the police to deal with this f ou roux (the redheaded madman). If you know anything about van Gogh outside of his art, perhaps you know he was a tortured soul. It’s called Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear. He painted it in January 1889, the same year he painted Starry Night and the year before he killed himself with a bullet to the heart. But one of his self-portraits stands out as brutally honest. There was one he did when he was fascinated by Japanese art, where he rendered himself with a shaved head and Asian eyes of a Buddhist monk. Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890) painted more than 40 self-portraits. Advertise on TGC Van Gogh the Tortured Soul
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