Kaslov reviewed Van Gogh by Steven Naifeh
Review of 'Van Gogh' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
During this summer I had the chance to visit Van Goghs museum in Amsterdam and after my return home I just had to find out more. Before my trip I looked up interesting locations to visit up on TripAdvisor and of course this museum was in top 5. Seeing this my thoughts were:
1) Oh yeah, he was Dutch, wasn't he... and
2) I really don't know more about him other then the ear incident, Sunflowers and Starry Night
This gap in knowledge had to be fixed!
Vincent was an incredibly tragic and passionate figure, battered by his own manias his entire life and always dreaming of fame and redemption he never got. It was hard reading about all of his personal, interpersonal or financial failures. The blow by blow accounts of all of his friendship meltdowns struck me quite deep and made me feel quite sorry for him, long …
During this summer I had the chance to visit Van Goghs museum in Amsterdam and after my return home I just had to find out more. Before my trip I looked up interesting locations to visit up on TripAdvisor and of course this museum was in top 5. Seeing this my thoughts were:
1) Oh yeah, he was Dutch, wasn't he... and
2) I really don't know more about him other then the ear incident, Sunflowers and Starry Night
This gap in knowledge had to be fixed!
Vincent was an incredibly tragic and passionate figure, battered by his own manias his entire life and always dreaming of fame and redemption he never got. It was hard reading about all of his personal, interpersonal or financial failures. The blow by blow accounts of all of his friendship meltdowns struck me quite deep and made me feel quite sorry for him, long before the ear incident. Which undoubtedly helped in making himself into a legend that he is today, and one of the best representatives of struggling artists everywhere.
This book is overwhelmingly thorough, it feels as if the only way to find out more would be to read all of his letters myself. Thankfully for every painting mentioned I could recall it from the museum or use the internet to look them up (this was especially useful for the mentioned paintings that were made by his contemporaries). I personally loved this book, but I see a lot of other reviewers say that the author portrayed Vincent in overly negative light in this book, looking at everything through the lens of mental illness. To some extent I can see why people might have a problem with this, but I would have to read more biographies and probably the "My Dear Theo" collection of his letters to see if they are right...
I might start looking into this in a few years (it was a 900 page book, I need a break from this topic).
