Vincent
I need to tell you
you drew the line.
Although there is no last
of line each line has a beginning
and though your line was broken
its knots now tie it to your torment,
and your eruptive color vision.
It is attached to touchstone at its other end
hurled past generations
breaking dusty windows.
You wove the arcs of rainbow
until your sun rose upside down,
and in your brilliant dark
you fell upon your palette of pain.
Once painting’s born
who cares where goes the brush
that stroked it?
I care now and suffer with you,
kinship outweighing separation.
Upon your desert now rains irony;
you’ve become the poster boy
for investment of great wealth.
Still-born, invisible, impoverished
until your posthumous resurrection
you’re long past solace or reward
and so you will remain.
So, Vincent, I need to tell you
I understand.
Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear -- Vincent Van Gogh
I need to tell you
you drew the line.
Although there is no last
of line each line has a beginning
and though your line was broken
its knots now tie it to your torment,
and your eruptive color vision.
It is attached to touchstone at its other end
hurled past generations
breaking dusty windows.
You wove the arcs of rainbow
until your sun rose upside down,
and in your brilliant dark
you fell upon your palette of pain.
Once painting’s born
who cares where goes the brush
that stroked it?
I care now and suffer with you,
kinship outweighing separation.
Upon your desert now rains irony;
you’ve become the poster boy
for investment of great wealth.
Still-born, invisible, impoverished
until your posthumous resurrection
you’re long past solace or reward
and so you will remain.
So, Vincent, I need to tell you
I understand.
Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear -- Vincent Van Gogh
At 27, Vincent van Gogh abandoned his unsuccessful careers as art dealer and missionary and, though with almost no formal training, turned to art. At first he painted peasants and farmers, and then flowers, landscapes, and himself because he was too poor to for models. He did almost 900 paintings between November 1881 and July 1890, but he only sold one: "The Red Vineyard" brought 400 francs in Belgium 7 months before his death. In 1888 he cut off part of his ear lobe after an argument with his housemate Paul Gauguin, wrapped it in paper, and gave it to a prostitute. A policeman found him unconscious the nexy morning, and he was treated by Félix Rey, a young doctor still in training. In gratitude van Gaugh painted Rey, but the doctor used the portrait to repair a chicke coop. On 27 July 1890, van Gogh shot himself in the chest, either in the wheat field he had been painting or in a barn; there were no witnesses, and the gun was never found. He was able to stagger to the auberge in Auvers where he was staying. Two doctors tended to him, but no surgeon was available to remove the bullet. He died on 29 July from infection. His brother Theo, an art dealer who had been supporting his unfortunate brother, died 6 months later, and his widow Johanna was left with an infant child and a Paris apartment that contained a few items of furniture and about 200 of her brother-in-law's paintings, which she was advised to dispose of. Instead, she began collecting and promoting Vincent's work. When she organized an exhibition in 1892 Richard Roland Holst, a now-forgotten artist, complained that "gushes fanatically on a subject she knows nothing about, and although blinded by sentimentality still thinks she is adopting a strictly critical attitude. It is schoolgirlish twaddle, nothing more.... The work that Mrs Van Gogh would like best is the one that was the most bombastic and sentimental, the one that made her shed the most tears; she forgets that her sorrow is turning Vincent into a god." Her efforts began to attract serious attention to van Gogh's art 11 years after his death. Theo told his sister, “In the last letter which he wrote me and which dates from some four days before his death, it says, ‘I try to do as well as certain painters whom I have greatly loved and admired.’ People should realize that he was a great artist, something which often coincides with being a great human being. In the course of time this will surely be acknowledged, and many will regret his early death."
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