Vincent Van Gogh's Ear

If Gallup Media received a request to perform a poll in order to find out what do people know about Vincent van Gogh, what results would they get back? I guess, something like "he was Dutch, he drew flowers, he cut his ear off". What the artist had had lost had eventually given him a worldwide fame, or rather notoriety. But how did it happen?

Everything started in Arles. Van Gogh arrived to this town at the south of France in February, 1888 and checked into Hotel Restaurant Carrel. However disappointed and even discouraged by the city, its inhabitants and the high prices charged by the hotel, he liked local landscapes. In May of the same year he found his more famous place of residence - rooms at the eastern wing of the Yellow house. But at the time rooms were not furnished, so till the middle of September he had to stay in another hotel - Cafe de la Gare owned by the Ginoux family who had eventually become his friends.

He planned to build up an art colony down there in Arles - a kind of artistic Utopia. He settled there with Danish painter Christian Mourier-Petersen, got acquainted with American artist Dodge Macknight and Belgian artist Eugene Boch both living in nearby town of Fontvielle. Another part of this project was an intention to get Paul Gauguin in Arles to work side by side with him: starting from summer of 1888 van Gogh had been constantly requesting Gauguin to visit him. Arles period proved to be incredibly fruitful for van Gogh himself: during his stay in the town he created such famous pictures as "Still Life: Vase with Twelve Sunflowers", "Bedroom in Arles", "The Yellow House", "The Red Vineyard", "The Night Cafe", "Starry Night Over the Rhone", "Van Gogh's chair". But during his stay in town he was not only into painting - he proceeded drinking absinthe, smoking and visiting brothels having earned himself nickname of "foux roux" (French for "red-headed madman") among the townspeople.

After long period of constant invitations Gauguin finally arrived to Arles in October of 1888. The two worked together throughout the end of October, the whole November and the part of December. Gauguin painted "The Painter of Sunflowers: The Portrait of Van Gogh", Van Gogh painted "Van Gogh's chair" and "Gauguin's chair", they exercised collective painting and discussed art. Or more correctly, the argued and fighted fiercely about art - Christmas and New Year were coming and bringing the end of two troubled geniuses' relationship along with them. The crisis peaked on 23rd of December, 1888.

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By that time van Gogh's mental health - due to his lifestyle - had already been deteriorating: he was subject to frequent bouts of depression and melancholy caused by some metabolic disease. At that night he suffered from one of these strengthened by fear that Gauguin was going to leave him for good. According to official version, at that night van Gogh either experienced a tremendous mental breakdown or was heavily poisoned by evaporations from leaden paints. The information of the events followed was gathered from one exclusive source - Gauguin.

According to one version, related by the first modern primitivist in his memoirs "Before and After" written in Tahiti at the end of the century, he was making his way through place Victor-Hugo when he heard familiar quick and nervous steps behind him. He turned around and saw van Gogh running on him with a razor blade in his hand. He looked at van Gogh, and the latter suddenly turned and ran away, because Gauguin's look "must have been very powerful".

After that van Gogh got back to the Yellow house and cut off his whole left ear (according to one part of testimonies), or the lower part of his left earlobe (according to another part of testimonies). Having washed his ear, wrapped the severed tissue into a newspaper and covered his head with tall beret (or some other headgear) he went to the brothel №1 (as was stated the local newspaper "Le Forum Republicain"), requested a prostitute named Rachel and passed her his parcel with words "Keep this object carefully" (these words are reproduced in every account concerning the episode), went back to the Yellow house and went to a blood-drenched bed. Later van Gogh was put in the hospital, was discharged in January but due to his constant delusions and hallucinations was under the permanent supervision of Dr. Rey of the Arles hospital. In June of 1889 he committed himself to the psychiatric asylym situated in the town of Saint-Remy-de-Provence, 32 km from Arles. Paul Gauguin went to Paris and had never seen van Gogh in his life - despite van Gogh's request to visit him in the hospital.

Paul Gauguin's account doesn't seem very reliable. Actually there were at least two of them, first being told to painter Emile Bernard immediately after return from Paris, the one that reveals some details of the decline of their relationship, dreadful description of the aftermath of van Gogh's self-harm and slightly different description of the central episode of the night. Van Gogh ran after Gauguin (he had walked out of the house) and told him: "You're silent, but I shall be so too". Gauguin went to the hotel and van Gogh returned to the Yellow house.

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This evident incompleteness and unreliablilty of Gauguin's account together with the fact that Vincent made some odd references in his letters to Theo to some "pact of silence" between van Gogh and Gauguin have spawned a number of versions concerning van Gogh's self-inflicted harm. According to one of them, proposed in 2001 by German art historians Hans Kaufmann and Rita Wildegans this harm was not self-inflicted. It was Paul Gauguin who cut the piece of van Gogh's ear. Or just an earlobe.

In their book called "Van Gogh's Ear: Paul Gauguin and the Pact of Silence" the German scholars claimed that the two artists had a quarrel near the aforementioned brothel - even perhaps because of the aforementioned prostitute Rachel. Van Gogh might have attacked Gauguin - the latter naturally wanted to defend himself and reached van Gogh with his sword. This movement ended in cutting off the van Gogh's left ear. After the episode the two decided to hide the truth. Kaufmann and Wildegans couldn't tell definitively whether it was an aimed hit or the ear become the target purely by accident.

The scholars back their theory by several points. First being the known fact that Gauguin was an accomplished fencer and that he had taken his fencing gear with him to Arles. The latter was mentioned in correspondence between Gauguin and van Gogh - Gauguin was requesting to send it to him to Paris.

The other point of Kaufmann and Wildegans is also connected to van Gogh's letters - at this time his letters to his brother Theo, where a following phrase can be found: "Luckily Gauguin ... is not yet armed with machine guns and other dangerous war weapons". And another point is one of van Gogh's sketches of his ear - the one with zigzags above the ear and the word "ictus" written on it. "Ictus" is a fencing term meaning a hit, therefore, believe German scholars, the zigzags denote the stroke of Gauguin's sword.

But this extraordinary version was rejected by the most authoritative van Gogh institution - The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. Hamburg-based historians haven't convinced another van Gogh specialist, Martin Bailey, either, who created his own version of the reason lying behind the notorious episode. Rather detective one, actually.

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The scholar doesn't doubt that it was van Gogh himself who cut his ear – or just an earlobe - off. He agrees with other biographers' statement that by the end of December, 1888 van Gogh had already shown signs of mental instability. But his own original claim is that the final blow that led to a complete deterioration of the artist's mental health ended in the self-harm came from the least expected side - his brother Theo.

Bailey scrupulously studied the van Gogh's painting "Still Life: Drawing-Board with Onions" finished at the beginning of 1889, a month after the ear-cutting episode. He found there a letter envelope painted with number 67 and a mark with words "New Year's Eve" written on it - all signs showing that this letter had been sent after the middle of December ("New Year's eve" mark was put on letters of that period) to the post office in Place des Abbesses (encircled number 67 was an official mark of this post office). Theo van Gogh's place of residence - apartment in Montmartre - was not far from that post office.

It is known that Theo used to send money to Vincent about the 23rd of each month - and in one letter dated the end of January, 1889 Vincent wrote to Theo he had received money on the 23rd of December. Moreover, on the 21st of December Theo wrote letter to his mother seeking permission to marry his girlfriend Johanna Bonger. Therefore, concludes Bailey, it is logical to presume that Theo after having written to his mother would write to his dear brother imparting him information about his oncoming marriage.

Bailey supposes that it is not an exaggeration to suppose that such a news would become a real blow to van Gogh's mind: he was afraid of losing his only support - both material and spiritual - in his life.

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However appealing or - at contrary — controversial, far-fetched and inconsistent any of these theories might be, the only source of positive information is lost for good. Vincent van Gogh wrote nothing about the real reasons behind this episode of self-harm that has been stirring up people's minds up to our nowadays. Van Gogh's ear is everywhere: in the names of musical bands and blogging awards, in the centre of various gadgets and on T-shirts (of course), in movies and the names of fashionable night clubs and cafes. But who cares about van Gogh himself or his paintings - other - more worthy - products of his deranged mentality? His ear - or just the earlobe - was a minor part of van Gogh's body and became a major part of van Gogh's myth. A myth about a mad, absinthe-drinking, syphilitic, more-than-eight-million-dollars-worth genius artist... Actually, it is the last two words that really matter.