Van Gogh - A Life

Using material from the last two decades, from art historians, Van Gogh scholars, and psychoanalysts, this biography sets the artist's life in its historical context and examines the political and economic climate against which his ideas developed. Vincent's life is full of paradoxes, a life of crushing failures ending in suicide that was to lead to a huge posthumous success. It produced an art which can be hauntingly sad, a crying out against fate, a demand for reality that is in essence religious, and life the early religions demonically sensual. We now see Van Gogh's life and work in terms of tumult, of a legend. We see him breaking out of the triumph and confusion of 19th century culture while representing it uniquely. Yet his entire artistic production covers a mere decade. It is perhaps the story of a saint, certainly a hero of art....