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painted in Brittany surrounded by disciples, the Dutchman bombarded him with letters begging him to come to the South of France where they would work side by side. Van Gogh rented a small house, painted it bright yellow, and decorated a room with sunflower paintings for Gauguin. When the idolized Gauguin arrived in 1888, van Gogh was ecstatic. They pointed, debated art passionately, drank, and caroused at brothels together. Gauguin brought routine to van Gogh’s life, cleaning the house from top to bottom and cooking all their meals. “He seemed to catch a glimpse of all that was in him and from this sprang that whole series of sun after sun in full sunlight,” Gauguin later wrote about van Gogh’s masterful work during their two months together.

But bliss was not eternal. When van Gogh saw the portrait Gauguin pointed of him, he said, “Yes, it’s me all right, but me mad.” The words proved prophetic. Later, they argued at a café and van Gogh threatened Gauguin with a straight razor. Gauguin stared him down, until van Gogh slunk away. That night, van Gogh sliced off his left ear lobe, wrapped it in a handkerchief, and presented it to a prostitute. Gauguin took the first train north. Van Gogh was thoroughly ashamed of himself. They continued to communicate by letter, and shortly before committing suicide, van Gogh referred to Gauguin as his “dear master.” For his part, Gauguin later wrote, “When Gauguin says ‘Vincent,’ his voice is soft.”

Gauguin sensed something special about their brief sojourn together. “Though the public had no idea of it,” he wrote, “two men were doing a tremendous job there, useful to both. Perhaps to others too? Some things bear fruit.”

VAN GOGH: PORTRAIT OF THE SUFFERING ARTIST. “Love what you love,” was Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh’s (1853-90) artistic credo. During a brief, ten-year career, van Gogh produced sun-scorched landscapes and brooding self-portraits.

Born in Holland, van Gogh was obsessed with religion and social service. A misfit who failed at one vocation after another, at age 27 he asked himself, “There is something inside me that could be useful, but what is it?” He determined to fulfill his “mission” to humanity through art, consoling the unfortunate through realistic portrayals of working-class life.

In 1886, when van Gogh discovered Impressionism in Paris, his work underwent a total metamorphosis. He switched from dark to bright colors and from social realist themes to light-drenched, outdoor scenes. He was still a humanitarian — at one point he proposed selling his sunflower paintings for 40each to brighten the walls of workers’ homes — but he changed from, as he said, trying “to express the poetry hidden in [peasants]” to portraying the healing power of nature. “These canvases will tell you what I cannot say in words,” he wrote, “the health and fortifying power that I see in the country.”

Even though van Gogh adopted the broken brushstroke and bright complementary colors of the Impressionists, his art was always original. He had a horror of academic technique, claiming he wanted “to paint incorrectly so that my untruth becomes more truthful than the literal truth.” Van Gogh soon based his whole practice on the unorthodox use of color “to suggest any emotion of an ardent temperament.” Like his hero Gauguin, van Gogh disdained realism.

Many have interpreted the distorted forms and violent, contrasting colors of van Gogh’s canvases as evidence of mental imbalance. The shy, awkward painter (self-described as a “shaggy dog”) was subject to overwhelming spells of loneliness, pain, and emotional collapse. Alternately depressed and hyperactive, he threw himself into painting with a therapeutic frenzy, producing 800 paintings and as many drawings in ten years. He painted all day — without stopping to eat — at white-hot speed and then continued painting into the night with candles stuck to his hat brim. He considered his work “the lightning rod for my sanity,” his tenuous hold on a productive life.

Van Gogh has come to be the prototype of the suffering genius who gives himself totally