Modern Art Section: Watch the TV movie: The Yellow House (2007) For 2 points, pr
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Question
Modern Art Section: Watch the TV movie: The Yellow House (2007) For 2 points, provide brief answers for the following questions from the above movie about Vincent Van Gogh (an artist discussed in Chapter 1 regarding the monetary value of art): 1) The film portrays Van Gogh as physically violent. List four instances in the film that depict his violence. 2) Van Gogh playfully explored the arbitrary relationship between "signifier" and "signified" in the semiotic sign. Describe one instance where he did this / how he did it. Hint: The word "carrot" appears in the scene.Explanation / Answer
Question-1
Answer:
Vincent van Gogh felt lonely in Arles and with Theo's help persuaded Gauguin to join him in the fall of 1888 to establish together a "Studio of the South." The relationship of the two artists became increasingly quarrelsome, and Vincent wrote, "Our dispute is at times excessively animated like with electricity, at times we end up with tired and empty heads, like an electric battery after discharge". Gauguin's visit lasted only 2 months and ended in catastrophe. On Christmas Eve 1888, after Gauguin already had announced he would leave, van Gogh suddenly threw a glass of absinthe in Gauguin's face, then was brought home and put to bed by his companion. A bizarre sequence of events ensued. When Gauguin left their house, van Gogh followed and approached him with an open razor, was repelled, went home, and cut off part of his left earlobe, which he then presented to Rachel, his favorite prostitute.
The police were alerted; he was found unconscious at his home and was hospitalized. There he lapsed into an acute psychotic state with agitation, hallucinations, and delusions that required 3 days of solitary confinement. He retained no memory of his attacks on Gauguin, the self-mutilation, or the early part of his stay at the hospital.
His murderous gesture directed against Gauguin was reported by the intended victim in his memoirs. The scandalous event in the house of prostitution and van Gogh's subsequent hospitalization were recorded in the local press. Some plausible explanations later were offered for the strange happenings. Already psychotic, van Gogh may have carried out the attack on Gauguin driven by hallucinatory command voices and may have cut off part of his own ear in self-punishment for his offensive voices.
This psychotic logic was perhaps influenced by van Gogh's knowledge of the bullfight ritual, in which the matador presents a cut-off ear of the killed bull to a fair lady of his choice.
At the hospital, Felix Rey, the young physician attending van Gogh, diagnosed epilepsy and prescribed potassium bromide. Within days, van Gogh recovered from the psychotic state. About 3 weeks after admission, he was able to paint Self-Portrait With Bandaged Ear and Pipe, which shows him in serene composure.
At the time of recovery and during the following weeks, he described his own mental state in letters to Theo and his sister Wilhelmina: "The intolerable hallucinations have ceased, in fact have diminished to a simple nightmare, as a result of taking potassium bromide, I believe." "I am rather well just now, except for a certain undercurrent of vague sadness difficult to explain." "While I am absolutely calm at the present moment, I may easily relapse into a state of overexcitement on account of fresh mental emotion." He also noted "three fainting fits without any plausible reason, and without retaining the slightest remembrance of what I felt".
After 2 weeks in the hospital, van Gogh was still followed by Dr. Rey but evidently was not sufficiently warned to abstain from absinthe. He suffered another two psychotic episodes with brief hospitalizations. Following the humiliation of being taunted publicly by juveniles and confined to the hospital for the fourth time upon the demand of concerned citizens, van Gogh voluntarily entered the asylum at Saint- Rémy in May 1889. During the full year he remained there, he experienced three psychotic relapses with prominent amnesia, at least twice upon leaves to Arles with resumption of his use of absinthe in the company of old friends and Rachel.
Dr. Peyron, an old- fashioned physician who had served in the French navy, was the medical director at Saint-Rémy; he maintained Dr. Rey's diagnosis of epilepsy but failed to continue treatment with potassium bromide.
The last psychotic episode was the most protracted, lasting from February to April 1890; van Gogh experienced terrifying hallucinations and severe agitation.
Upon recovery, he complained bitterly of the religious content of his episodes and wished to get away from the nuns who cared for him. While at Saint-Rémy, he produced some 300 works of art, among them several copies of religious scenes by older masters and the transcendental masterpiece Starry Night, which was painted in June 1889.
Auvers: The Suicide
Theo became engaged toward the end of 1888, married 4 months later, and became a father in early 1890. Each event coincided with an exacerbation of van Gogh's condition; he may have been drinking more whenever he felt that his unique bond with Theo was threatened.
Shortly before entering the asylum at Saint-Rémy, Vincent had written to his brother, "And without your friendship I would be driven to suicide without pangs of conscienceand as cowardly as I am, I would finally do it" .
Theo had continued to support his brother without fail. Suicidal gestures by Vincent, reported at the time of his initial hospitalization in Arles and during his stay at the asylum, had consisted of ingesting turpentine, paint, or lamp oil and were carried out in a confusional state.
Such an episode was described by the painter Signac (who had been permitted to take van Gogh from the hospital in Arles to visit his studio).
Signac described van Gogh as being entirely rational until after suffering a minor attack, at which point he put a bottle of turpentine to his mouth and had to be brought back to the hospital.
At discharge from the asylum in May 1890, van Gogh was judged cured by his physician. The artist then moved north of Paris to Auvers- sur-Oise, where he spent the last 10 weeks of his life. Theo had recommended Auvers, where van Gogh could live near Paul Gachet, a physician and friend of the artists.
He abstained from drinking by now and remained free from seizures and confusional episodes. His art was beginning to gain recognition, and a painting had been sold. But further financial support became uncertain as Theo's health began to fail.
There were some bitter words between the brothers, and Vincent felt himself to be a burden. Still, he worked at a furious pace, completing 70 paintings and 30 drawings during his 70 days at Auvers.
The heavenly bodies, so luminous in the past, now were absent from his skies, except for a single peculiar occasion (The White House at Night With Figures and a Star). He painted immense fields of wheat under dark and stormy skies, commenting, "It is not difficult to express here my entire sadness and extreme loneliness".
In one of his last paintings, Wheat Field With Crows, the black birds fly in a starless sky, and three paths lead nowhere. He borrowed a gun from his innkeeper "to scare the crows away" when he was painting. There still was another episode of fury directed at Dr. Gachet, who had failed to frame a painting by Guillaumain as van Gogh had demanded.
Vincent gestured toward the gun in his pocket, but he walked away. In his last letter sent to Theo, he mentioned that he wanted to replenish his stock of paint and asked for help to this end.
Three days later, on a Sunday, Vincent shot himself in the lower chest or upper belly in a field outside Auvers. "I could nnot stick it any longer, so I shot myself," he told a friend. He died 2 days later with Theo next to him.
It has been assumed that his Field With Stacks of Wheat, a bright picture of grain harvested and sheaved, may have been his very lasta symbol of work completed .
Theo died 6 months after his brother, reportedly from a kidney disease with uremia and a prolonged delirious state. His widow made sure the treasure of art Theo had collected from Vincent and kept mostly unframed in their home was passed on to posterity. Within a few years after his death, Vincent van Gogh was acknowledged as one of the famous artists of modern times.
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