Vincent and Me
"I generally try to be fairly cheerful," he wrote his brother Theo, "but my life is also threatened at the very root, and my steps are also wavering."
Even then, in the last two months of his life - now north of Paris to be near Theo - he managed to complete 80 canvases. Then night would fall for good. One day he went out for a walk, and shot himself in the chest with a pistol, then managed to stagger home to his bed. Theo was sent for, and he climbed in bed alongside his beloved brother and cradled his head in his arms.
"I wish I could pass away like this," Vincent told his brother, apparently feeling an inner peace he had never known. Minutes later he got his wish. He was 37.
Some have speculated that genius is fired by madness. I do not wish to get into that debate. Sure, it is possible that the manic phase of bipolar disorder (manic-depression) may have provided the power surge he needed to complete an incredible 400 or so paintings in the last three years of his life. But that same madness also brought his work to a complete stop, first temporarily, then permanently.
The painting would stop. There would be no more Van Goghs.
The gallery was now filling up with people, all drawn into "Crows in the Wheatfields," that foreboding testimony of one's tormented brain in the process of giving up hope.
I had no place else to go, no other gallery to duck into to stay ahead of the crowd, no more Van Goghs. The Van Goghs had stopped. One bright summer day in July, he simply stopped making them.
And I still get all sad just thinking about it.
For more about Vincent Van Gogh, see: The Vincent Van Gogh Gallery.
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