By SAMUEL KILSZTAJN*

Commentary on the Dutch painter

Vincent Willem van Gogh, this passionate, caring and irreverent man, produced more than 900 paintings and 1.110 sketches and drawings, as well as two thousand letters (820 of which have been found). The paintings were made in the last ten years of his life, mainly in the last two. The complete works, paintings, sketches, drawings, etc. are classified in http://www.vggallery.com/. The handwritten letters, typed in the original language and translated into English are available at https://vangoghletters.org/vg/.

Van Gogh's paintings are among the most sought-after and highly valued in the world, with some selling for more than $100 million. Even his letters are sold at high prices. In 2020, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam acquired the letter written in Arles to Émile Bernard on 1–2 November 1888, with an addendum by Paul Gauguin, for over $200.

The price per square meter of a Van Gogh is much higher than the price per square meter of a New York apartment. Many of his paintings were painted on canvases measuring 72 by 90 cm, or 0,65 square meters. The price per square meter of a Van Gogh is therefore worth more than 150 million dollars. A 100 square meter apartment on 5th Avenue, near the Plaza Hotel, can be purchased for a mere two million dollars, a mere 20 thousand dollars per square meter. In other words, the price per square meter of a Van Gogh is 7.500 times larger than the price per square meter on 5th Avenue.

All this economic jargon to talk about culture and the art market and to say that Vincent van Gogh, who sold only one of his more than 900 works, spent his life in misery, being supported emotionally and financially by his brother Theo van Gogh, a trader who supported Impressionism. Vincent painted (and wrote) compulsively and convulsively. He lived to paint, although he did not earn a cent from it; on the contrary, he spent his health and the money of his brother who supported him, on housing, food, paints, brushes and canvases. His anxiety compelled him to paint frantically.

He was stubborn and obsessed to the point of being repelled by the people around him, which also led him to have to face loneliness. A complete madman in life, he became a god of art after death, proving Aristotle right when he began The politics saying that a lonely man is a monster or a deity.

On 23 December 1888, when Gauguin was living with him in Arles, Vincent had his first seizure, which led him to partially cut off his right earlobe. Two days earlier, on 21 December, Theo had asked his mother Anna von Gogh's consent to his engagement to Johanna Bonger. The engagement was celebrated on 9 January 1889 and the wedding on 17 April 1889. Theo and Jo's son, named Vincent Willem after his uncle, was born on 31 January 1890. On 19 February 1890, Vincent wrote to Anna van Gogh, "... I immediately began to make a painting for him, to hang in their room. Large branches of white almond blossom against a blue sky."

In a letter dated March 16, 1889, Theo had written to Vincent, “You have done so much for me that I am sorry to learn that now that I shall probably have happy days with my dear Jo, you will certainly have very bad ones.” In a letter dated July 10, 1889, Vincent wrote to Theo and Jo, “I feared—not entirely—but a little, all the same—that I was a danger to you, living at your expense…” Feeling emotionally destitute and a burden to his brother after recurring crises, Vincent van Gogh died in Auvers-sur-Oise on July 29, 1890, at the age of 37. Theo van Gogh, who was devoted to his brother, just as his brother was devoted to art, and lived in Paris surrounded by a profusion of unsold paintings and immersed in more than 650 long letters from this genius of painting, left six months later, going to meet his brother on January 25, 1891, at the age of 33.

Although officially considered a suicide, the version that the controversial Vincent was the victim of an accidental homicide was raised in 1930 by historian John Rewald and, in 2012, by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White in Van Gogh: life (Companhia das Letras). The murder version is also presented in the films With love, van Gogh, by 2017, and At the gate of eternity, 2018. In a letter to Theo de Saint-Remy on September 10, 1889, after a crisis, Vincent wrote that he was frightened and decided to eat better and decisively invest in his health, “… I try to cure myself in the present as someone who would like to commit suicide, finding the water too cold, tries to reach the shore.”

In addition to testimonies from people in Auvers, there are several indications that disqualify the suicide version. He had gone out to paint, did not have a firearm and the shot to the abdomen at an oblique angle ruled out the possibility of suicide; in addition, none of these materials, canvas, paints, easel and the weapon used were ever found. Before he died, he is said to have stated, in keeping with his spirit of solidarity, that he committed suicide to protect the adolescents who committed the accidental homicide. In any case, the suicide version prevailed and continues to prevail because, in addition to meeting Van Gogh's disposition, it is in keeping with the trajectory of a man who lived misunderstood and revolutionized modern art.

Vincent was always complaining that he urgently needed models, which he unfortunately could not afford. Although he painted 35 self-portraits and more than 50 portraits of friends and acquaintances, he never painted a portrait of Theo van Gogh, even though they lived together in Paris from March 1886 to February 1888 (some argue, however, that the portrait below is of Theo). The portrait of Dr. Félix Rey Bust, who treated Vincent during his first crisis in Arles, was used by the doctor to fill a hole in the chicken coop.

*Samuel Kilsztajn is a full professor of political economy at PUC-SP. Author, among other books, of Departure c'est garder son équilibre [https://amzn.to/48lv9G9]

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