The friendship and artistic vision of Gauguin and Van Gogh

Art Interview

An Interview with Two Artists

Two Post-Impressionists, Paul Gauguin and Vincent Van Gogh became friends in the late 19th century in Paris, France. They lived together for a time in Arles in the famous "Yellow House," until Van Gogh fell ill and was hospitalized and Gauguin left for other parts of the world to pursue his vocation as an artist. An interview with these two painters reveals the dynamic of their relationship at this time and the essence of their craft and what they were trying to achieve through their unique approaches to painting. Both have left behind some brilliant pieces of work. This paper will discuss with them how they approached their art and how their friendship affected their painting.

Q: You both spent time in Paris. What did you gain from the art scene there?

Gaugin: "I was born in Paris, of course, and returned there after parting ways with my family. I was very much interested in the Impressionistic style all around me. I was looking for something real in life -- something that transcended the insipid reality that everyone was busy manufacturing for himself. Paris offered a glimpse -- but only a glimpse. I had to keep going further and further -- beyond the reach of urban life."

Van Gogh: "I was embracing Impressionism and using it to reflect the world in a real way. But whether I was painting Fritillaries for a love interest or for my own does not take away from the fact that my spirit was now alive with an intensity that was as bright and fervent as my religious soul had been a decade earlier. However, my heart was not content to stay in the city: thus I traveled to Arles to study and paint the scenes and images that had inspired my early works like the Potato Eaters -- only now the same scenes and settings would be bright, alive, and soulful. I was becoming overwhelmed by the beauty and grace in nature and in people." (Johnson 607)

Q: What was your relationship like in Arles?

Gaugin: "I would say that Vincent definitely needed me more than I needed him. Vincent was always looking for a friend, you know -- a kindred spirit. His brother Theo was sympathetic but separate from him. In me he found someone who shared his passion for art and who understood what he was trying to accomplish. But Vincent was unstable and our relationship was often frustrated by his inability to reconcile himself to the artist's lonely lot. I, certainly, was more comfortable being a loner."

Van Gogh: "My sojourn in Arles in a rented yellow house, which I depicted on canvas in my typically thickly-applied, brightly colored 1888 painting, would end in a kind of portentous delirium. Gauguin's stay and my increasing reliance upon the Frenchman proved a misstep. Gauguin's insufferable pride and my instability and need of friendship and acceptance were dangerous combinations, and I paid a price. Why did I cut off my ear? It had something to do with wanting to cut away that part of myself that kept others from wishing to befriend me. Perhaps it also had something to do with my acquaintance with St. Peter's cutting off the ear of the soldier who had come to arrest Christ. Oftentimes I felt like I was betraying Christ."

Q: Indeed, the incident of the cutting off the ear has become something people often wonder at. Could you tell us your perceptions of this incident?

Gaugin: "As I said back then when I visited him in the hospital: 'His state is worse, he wants to sleep with the patients, chases the nurses, and washes himself in the coal bucket. That is to say, he continues the Biblical mortifications' (Gayford 284). There was no reasoning with Vincent. He knew exactly how things stood for him in relation to God. He was something of an ascetic. He wanted to suffer. He thought there was holiness in suffering. Perhaps he was right. I found holiness in simplicity, in the natives I found in the tropics. Vincent found it by cutting off his ear.

Van Gogh: My madness was of a nature that Plato had divined many centuries back -- and for which he had expressed the following prescription: 'If head and body are to be well, you must begin by curing the soul' (Kyziridis 43). I wanted to cure my soul, heal myself through suffering, through art. You can see in my 1889 Self-Portrait that here I now see myself clearly, wholly, and directly -- and the portrait that I produced is both cold and warm, negative and positive, troubled and content. The bandage over my ear represents my spiritual defect, while the hat and coat figure as symbols of the protection against the world that my disfigurement has won me.