Vincent Van Gogh 1853-1890

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Vincent van Gogh was a complete and utter failure in everything that seemed important to his contemporaries. He was neither able to start a family, nor earn his own living, nor even keep his friends. Yet in his paintings he was able to set down his own concept of order, against that ofthe chaos of reality around him. His art was an attemptto regulate a world with which he was obviously unable to come to terms. He countered its unfathomability with the harsh theoretically-based criticism ofthe artist; its anonymity he impressed with his own finally balanced pathos and its run-of-the-mill workings with a solipsistic verve. His aim was notto escape reality, nor indeed to suffer by renouncing it, but instead to make it tangible in a comprehensive sense. In this way his art enabled him to accept the once so hostile world as his own. His artistic talents were only recognized after his death. The bourgeoisie, whose ideas of value had been so repellentto him all of his life, now used the term "genius" to describe him. The once unloved Vincent now became a hero, the more art presented itself as a world of beautiful appearances. Art had been lodged for hundreds of years on the periphery of society and here van Gogh, himself an outsider, became a personality. He became the embodiment of worldly discontent which overcomes us all now and again. The Modern Age loves to toy with the image ofthe lonely misunderstood artist. Van Gogh served as a perfect example and he became one of the first martyrs of the avant-garde. The first son ofthe Protestant vicar Theodorus van Gogh was stillborn. Exactly one year later to the very day, on 30th March 1853, his wife, Anna Cornelia van Gogh, gave birth to another child. Full of fearful misgiving as to whether the child would survive, it received the same name as the first child: Vincent Willem van Gogh. From the moment of his birth, his life was overshadowed with doubts; Vincent's fundamental experience was and remained that of his foundering. His seemingly promising career as an art dealer, which was accompanied in the Netherlands and especially in his own family by a long-standing tradition, ended in his dismissal. His study oftheology, begun after this period, proved too much for him and ended a year later. Following this, he tried his hand at supply teaching and lay preaching, serving in the Belgian coalmining area of the Borinage amongst the most povertystricken of the poor. Yet the penetrating experience of extreme social Vissza