梵高（Vincent van Gogh）160歲/ 梵谷書簡 The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh/ Van Gogh’s Evolution. Vincent van Gogh: A Life in Letters

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Vincent van Gogh: A Life in Letters

edited by Nienke Bakker, Leo Jansen, and Hans Luijten

Thames and Hudson, 432 pp., $39.95

Vincent’s Books: Van Gogh and the Writers Who Inspired Him

by Mariella Guzzoni

University of Chicago Press, 231 pp., $25.00

Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)

A letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, September 1881

If ever an artist needed a degree of protection against his public, surely it is Vincent van Gogh. Reproductions of his most emblematic paintings, especially the gyrating nightscapes and the blazing series of sunflower studies made in his late years, adorn countless bedrooms, living rooms, and bathrooms all across what used to be known as the developed world. The popularity of the works executed in the great flowering of this last period, which began around the time of his revelatory visit in the autumn of 1885 to the newly completed Rijksmuseum, in Amsterdam, and ended when he died less than five years later at the age of thirty-seven, is unparalleled. Of the great ones among his contemporaries, and there were many, only Degas can come near to rivaling him as a mainstay of interior decoration.

What would the Dutch master make of his posthumous fame among the bourgeoisie and the billionaires alike? We can trace fairly accurately the foundations of the Van Gogh myth to the 1934 novel Lust for Life by Irving Stone and the 1956 movie of the same title based on the book, directed by Vincente Minnelli and starring Kirk Douglas as Van Gogh and Anthony Quinn as Paul Gauguin. Stone made the plot of the novel from his research among Van Gogh’s correspondence, a three-volume edition of which had been published in 1914, edited by the painter’s sister-in-law Jo van Gogh–Bonger. The novel does as blockbusters do, and so does the film, but both make a decent attempt at portraying the life, and of course the lust, of this truly tormented artist. In the movie, Douglas bears a remarkable resemblance to the Van Gogh of the many self-portraits. He overacts wildly, though not so wildly as Quinn—“I’m talkin’ about women, man, women. I like ’em fat and vicious and not too smart”—and out of such caricatures are legends made.

To be fair to the novelist and the filmmakers, the life, and to some extent the paintings, are the stuff of legend. Although he produced thousands of works of art in his pitifully short time on earth, Vincent—as, following his own example, we shall call him—failed to sell a single painting in his lifetime, despite the fact that his brother Theo was a prominent Paris art dealer who, among other business coups, made a reputation for Gauguin and a fortune for Claude Monet. Although he suffered through periods of deepest doubt, Vincent knew that one day his work would be recognized for its true worth. All the same, even in his most exalted transports of optimism, and there were some, he could not have dreamed that his jarringly revolutionary paintings would one day rise so high in popular regard.

There were numerous editions of the Van Gogh letters before the one assembled by Van Gogh–Bonger after the death of her husband, Theo van Gogh.

 The first scholarly edition, by the English critic Douglas Cooper, was published in 1938, while the standard collection was established by the painter’s nephew, Vincent Willem van Gogh, and published between 1952 and 1954. Then, in 1994, the Van Gogh Museum and the Huygens Institute, in the Netherlands, brought together a team of editors and translators to produce a complete edition of the 820 surviving letters, which was published in 2010 in six sumptuous volumes. Vincent van Gogh: A Life in Letters is a representative selection of seventy-six of those letters.

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“Be clearly aware of the stars and infinity on high. Then life seems almost enchanted after all.”—Vincent van Gogh, born on this day in 1853.

Learn more about the Letters of Vincent van Gogh: http://bit.ly/XrTfI8

梵高（Vincent van Gogh）160歲/ 梵谷書簡  The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh/ Van Gogh’s Evolution

Van Gogh’s Evolution, From Neophyte to Master

By TED LOOS

Published: October 26, 2012

There are some artists on whom the sun never sets.

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Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam

“Self-Portrait With Straw Hat,” is in an exhibition at the Denver Art Museum. More Photos »

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An Artist’s Evolution

Van Gogh is certainly one of them, given his status as an artist beloved by the public and revered by curators, a genius with a compelling, sad life story to boot.

“There’s always a van Gogh show on the horizon, just as there’s always Beethoven being played somewhere,” said Joseph J. Rishel, a curator of European paintings at thePhiladelphia Museum of Art, who organized “Van Gogh Up Close” there earlier this year.

The latest major entry is “Becoming van Gogh” at the Denver Art Museum. The exhibition, featuring 70 works by the master and 20 by other artists who inspired him, is scheduled to remain on view until Jan. 20 and does not travel to any other sites.

The show traces van Gogh’s development through the 1880s from a struggling, inhibited neophyte, represented by works like the drawings “Girl Carrying a Loaf of Bread” (1882), to a painter in full flourish who could make the shimmering “Landscape from Saint-Rémy” (1889).

Timothy Standring, the curator who organized the Denver show, has his own version of Mr. Rishel’s Beethoven analogy: “Can there be too many books about Shakespeare?”

But while van Gogh’s reputation virtually guarantees that people will flock to the show, “It’s the hardest kind of exhibition to put together,” Mr. Standring said.

The trick for curators is twofold. First, they must come up with a fresh angle on an artist who lived to be only 37 and consequently did not produce as many works, as, say, Picasso. Second, they have to secure loans of incredibly valuable artworks from museums that might be reluctant to share.

Mr. Standring called the exhibition “the most ambitious show we’ve done, as ambitious as the Libeskind building,” referring to the architect Daniel Libeskind’s striking, angular design for the addition to the museum that was completed in 2006.

He added, “We don’t even have a van Gogh in our collection.”

Mr. Standring’s first step was to make a call to Amsterdam. “When you plan a van Gogh exhibit, you need to get blessing of the Van Gogh Museum,” he said, because of its ability to lend works and share its expertise.

In discussions with Louis van Tilborgh, a senior researcher there, Mr. Standring laid out an idea for one exhibition — a focus on van Gogh’s work from 1888 — but it was deemed logistically too difficult to mount.

But his second idea, a look at van Gogh’s crucial years in Paris, became the seed of the current show, which expanded to cover a whole decade.

Mr. Standring said he wanted to give nuance to the popular perception of the artist as sui generis. “People are generally unfamiliar with anything pre-“Sunflowers” or pre-“Wheatfields,” he said, referring to two of van Gogh’s iconic later series. “We’re doing corrective art history.”

Van Gogh’s struggles with illness and the artistic flourishing of his last two years may have warped the public’s perception of his learning curve, Mr. Van Tilborgh said.

“We all think he’s a genius, but he placed a lot of value on craftsmanship. When he started, he had no talent for drawing. If you look at his early drawings, they’re horrible. So how did he develop?”

The answer, Mr. Van Tilborgh said, was persistence. “If he couldn’t do it, he tried it 50 more times. He was one of those rare artists who had the energy to work through the fear of failure.”

“Becoming van Gogh” gives particular attention to the period the artist spent in Paris, staying with his brother Theo and studying color theory.

“He was hovering in Paris for two years,” Mr. Standring said. “Maybe we’re fortunate he didn’t land. He might have turned into a second-rate Impressionist.”

Works from that period in the exhibition include “People Strolling in a Park” (1886) and “View of a Park in Paris” (1886), neither of which resembles the late-career masterpieces that made him famous after his death.

Also featured is a Paris work with a strange past: “The Blute-fin Mill” (1886). The painting — an unusual depiction of a group of people, rarely tried by Van Gogh — was bought from a dealer in Paris by the controversial Dutch curator Dirk Hannema in 1975.

Mr. Hannema, who died in 1984, believed it was van Gogh’s work, but the art world doubted him because of previous missteps — in particular, his attributions of several works to the 17th-century Dutch master Vermeer, which were later discredited.

“His reputation was so bad in the 1970s after the Vermeers,” Mr. Van Tilborgh said. “But when we investigated, we came to the conclusion that he was right about the van Gogh.” The painting was authenticated in 2010, and it was lent to Denver by the Foundation Museum in Heino, the Netherlands.

Mr. Van Tilborgh’s enthusiasm led the Van Gogh Museum to lend seven works to the show, including “Self-Portrait With Straw Hat” (1887). He also edited the catalog with Mr. Standring.

“That gave us our imprimatur,” Mr. Standring said of his attempts to pry other van Goghs out of other institutions.

One major Midwestern museum proved the hardest sell. “It took eight asks, including in-person trips, to get them to agree,” Mr. Standring said, declining to name the institution.

“You have to be prosecutor, defense attorney, psychologist, sociologist and diplomat to do this kind of show,” he added. “They don’t teach you all that in art history graduate school.”

Usually, the Van Gogh Museum tries to stagger major shows of the artist’s work at other museums, so that loans are easier to get and its own resources are not taxed.

So what Mr. Standring called “the beautiful confluence of two big van Gogh shows in a year” — his own and Mr. Rishel’s — could have caused problems all around.

But the curators played nice, which was easier given that their points of focus were different. Mr. Rishel was primarily exploring van Gogh’s perspective on nature, so the Philadelphia museum was more willing to lend an important portrait, “Portrait of Madame Augustine Roulin and Baby Marcelle” (1888), to Denver.

“I shared my checklist early on with Joe, and he was very generous and very cordial,” Mr. Standring said. “And I helped arrange for one picture to go to his exhibit.”

Mr. Standring added that he hoped both shows — with their highly specific, nonblockbuster approaches — would deepen an understanding of the artist.

“Maybe this represents a maturity of van Gogh exhibitions,” he said. “Thematic, instead of just a collection of great objects.”

Vincent van Gogh - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_van_Gogh - Cached

Vincent Willem van Gogh was a Dutch post-Impressionist painter whose work, notable for its rough beauty, emotional honesty and bold color, had a far-reaching ...

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 我有一版本 The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh , Penguin Classics, 1996

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經過一世紀多的整理: 

 Van Gogh Letters – The complete letters of Van Gogh, translated into English and annotated. Published by the Van Gogh Museum.

 

Version: June 2012

Edited by Leo Jansen, Hans Luijten and Nienke Bakker

The letters are the window to Van Gogh's universe.

This edition, the product of 15 years of research at the Van Gogh Museum and Huygens ING, contains all Van Gogh's letters to his brother Theo, his artist friends Paul Gauguin and Emile Bernard, and many others.

Here you will find the letters in the latest edition (2009), richly annotated and illustrated, with new transcriptions and authorized English translations.

Quick Guide

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名譯家雨云的作品
 翻譯的底本是 I. Stone夫婦的選本 出版社誇說全集是井底之蛙

梵谷書簡全集

• 作者：梵谷/著
• 譯者：雨云
• 出版社：藝術家
• 出版日期：1990年
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•  梵谷是偉大的畫家；也是世上最孤的靈魂之一。他活著的泰半日子裡，身旁幾乎沒有一個可以信託，可以敘述快樂、苦難的人。他在世的最後十年，也就是他沈迷征 服了繪畫藝術的期間，他渴求對一個人傾述他那澎湃的生命，和徐緩成熟的技藝之所思所感的一切事物。然而卻難找到一位願意了解他想說什麼的人。於是一部自傳 誕生了。文生、梵谷用筆向他的弟弟－西奧傾吐心聲，如此，他寫下了感人的生命故事。 
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•  昨天是荷蘭後印象派畫家梵高（Vincent van Gogh）160歲冥壽，他生前繪畫了多幅《向日葵》，分散在全球不同的博物館展出。為慶祝一項10年的「梵高研究計劃」踏入高潮，阿姆斯特丹梵高博物館及倫敦英國國家美術館將輪流展出兩幅「向日葵」，使兩地遊客有機會看見兩幅「向日葵」並列的奇景。
  

  《向日葵》（Sunflowers，1888年）。

  

  【本報國際組報道】昨天是荷蘭後印象派畫家梵高（Vincent van Gogh）160歲冥壽，他生前繪畫了多幅《向日葵》，分散在全球不同的博物館展出。為慶祝一項10年的「梵高研究計劃」踏入高潮，阿姆斯特丹梵高博物館 及倫敦英國國家美術館將輪流展出兩幅「向日葵」，使兩地遊客有機會看見兩幅「向日葵」並列的奇景。
  　　準備輪流展出的兩幅畫，同樣畫了15朵向日葵，其中倫敦收藏的初版於1888年末期完成，翌年初他又畫了阿姆斯特丹收藏的新版本，顏色更明亮， 而且多了藍色的種子。梵高博物館館長魯格（Axel Ruger）表示，這兩輻畫將向遊客展示梵高並非傳言中的瘋子。他說：「梵高的藝術創作富條理，這與一般理解指他在畫布上瘋狂亂潑顏料的形象很不同。研究 顯示梵高是很認真地仔細繪畫，他有研究其他藝術家的作品，並學習色彩理論。」
  　　梵高在全心作畫前，曾做過藝術品買賣及傳教士，也關心低下層農民的生活苦況，早期如《吃馬鈴薯的人》、《一雙鞋子》等油畫，靈感正是來自貧民， 惟盡是陰沉暗黑色彩，表現憂鬱。畢生只售出一幅《紅色葡萄園》的梵高，一直靠弟弟西奧接濟，兩人感情要好，來往的上千封書信，助後世窺探梵高創作的心路歷 程。
  　　2個版本難得輪流展出
  　　梵高正式學畫畫後，33歲時到法國巴黎居住，並結識了高更（Paul Gauguin）等同時期的畫家；至遷往南部城鎮亞爾後，油畫用色由一向陰沉轉趨明亮，特別愛用大量鮮黃色。亞爾時期的名作，包括住處《黃屋》、用來迎接 畫家朋友高更的《向日葵》等。梵高後期光明亮麗的畫風，以及大膽的粗筆觸，成為作品的標記。
  　　梵高與高更本是好友，但有說法指高更出於嫉妒，曾經買通妓女，向梵高佯言想要他的耳朵作聖誕禮物，喝醉的梵高竟「照單全收」割下左耳。不過，有說法稱，兩位畫家吵架後，高更盛怒下用劍割掉梵高左耳。
  　　梵高的愛情生活亦波折重重，初戀是上流富家女，後戀上表親而觸怒擔任神職的爸爸，父子決裂。後來對懷孕妓女一見鍾情，並節衣縮食助養生下的孩子，可惜妓女恩將仇報，偷錢吃喝玩樂。唯一愛過他的瑪戈特因家人干涉，最終與梵高未能開花結果。
  　　梵高晚年傳患上精神病，終在37歲時懷疑開槍自殺，另有指他被小童玩槍時走火誤殺。
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