The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh (Penguin Classics)

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He and his brother Theo, who financed Vincent, made a poor decision when they asked Gauguin to join Vincent. His letters are very revealing and much more enlightening than the usual 'life of the artist' offering. Van Gogh then began to alternate between fits of madness and lucidity and was sent to the asylum in Saint-Remy for treatment. The colour of the tree, the colour of his table, the colour of the grass, the colour of the sun, the colour of someone's coat… He does not discuss compositions or arrangements or drawing. In our modern world, still full of Romanticism, we are apt to see these factors as integral to his artistic vision, the source of his inspiration and style.

I'm not sure why it was such a shock, but I didn't expect the language to be descriptive, imaginative, piercing. The letters in this superb selection help account for this massive and lasting outpouring of affection. The brothers had agreed that in exchange for providing Vincent with a monthly allowance, Theo would receive all of his artworks. But the letters selected (mostly to Van Gogh's brother Theo) tell a fairly complete story of Van Gogh's inner life.I may not have had much more access to his artistic thoughts, but I'm able to process his work in a much wider context than I was before. I enjoyed reading Van Gogh's description of his images and later looking at images of the painting in another book. If I could travel back in time, I would do so only to hold Vincent’s hands in my own to say, “I see you. Not just as an artist, but then, no great artist is just a "great artist," if that was all he was he would be a fraud and acute viewers, listeners, readers etc. Still, it was Jo’s desire for the world to see the beauty of Vincent’s art that has resulted in his works hanging in museums right around the world.

The only two periods when the public is relatively uninformed are the Parisian period, during which they shared an apartment and had no need to correspond, and a one-year gap in the correspondence from 1879 to 1880, when they had temporarily fallen out over Vincent's career choice. Not only do they throw light on Van Gogh's own complex and intriguing character, they enlighten the whole creative process as seen through his eyes. By contrast, Vincent infrequently kept letters sent to him and just 84 have survived, of which 39 were from Theo. His gorgeous use of colors, stunning textures and haunting self-portraits have captured my heart for most of my life, and, after seeing endless quotes from his letters written to his brother on Tumblr, I decided to pick up this collection, and this has quickly become some of my favorite pieces of writing that I have ever had the pleasure of reading.

And I think that this book shows you one man's struggle to develop and remain true to the inner joy that art brought to him and to have that joy be useful, of service to others.

In general I am not in favor of publicizing personal and private letters of people who have left us behind, but in this case the world of words and thoughts would be as infinitely poorer without these surviving letters as the world of images would be without his peerless paintings. Mình luôn nghĩ khi là một nghệ sĩ, đặc biệt là hoạ sĩ, người ta phải luôn có sự rung cảm, nhạy cảm khi nhìn thấy sự vật sự việc. Vincent van Gogh was born to upper middle class parents and spent his early adulthood working for a firm of art dealers before travelling to The Hague, London and Paris, after which he taught in England at Isleworth and Ramsgate. Many of us know Vincent the artist, but there are more facets to his life than the works that hang in many of the galleries around the world. Not only do they throw light on Van Gogh’s own complex and intriguing character, they enlighten the whole creative process as seen through his eyes.For instance, he came up with the Starry Night and pondered painting it for two years before actually doing it. there is something of Rembrandt in Shakespeare, something of Correggio in Michelet and something of Delacroix in V.

Stopniowo, prośby i problemy finansowe przewijające się przez całą, ponad 10-letnią korespondencję między braćmi, zaczynają ustępować miejsca spowiedzi bezpośredniej, nagiej, reanimującej dozgonne (dosłownie) zaufanie, jakie van Gogh pokładał w malarstwie. Edited by Leo Jansen, Hans Luijten and Nienke Bakker The letters are the window to Van Gogh's universe.Vincent often wrote the colours on his black-and-white sketches, to give an idea of the colour of the painting. He was deeply religious as a younger man and aspired to be a pastor and from 1879 worked as a missionary in a mining region in Belgium where he sketched people from the local community. Make no mistake, he was indeed a tortured individual, but he was highly read and hyper-aware of the world of art.