The Tragic Life of Vincent Van Gogh

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Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of "I Heart Radio." (upbeat music) - Hey, and welcome to the podcast, I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Tuesdays here too,

and we all have bandages around our heads. Out of sympathy for a truly great guy from what I can tell. - Oh yeah? - Let's see, good to see.

- Yeah, this is stuff you should know. - Oh, yes, hi, very one. Hi, I'm Chuck. - Oh yeah, I'm Chuck too. - The "Duce."

What is going on? - I thought you were, I thought you were Chuck deportays. - Oh yeah, or the "Ocho?" - Yeah, boy, I'm trying to make ESPN jokes, and it's just not happening.

- It, that worked. - Yeah, the Spanish version of ESPN. - No, no, no, I know. But I'm just saying it's not good. - Oh, well, I can't argue with that.

- Should be started over. (laughing) Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, there's Chuck, just Chuck,

“and Jerry's here too, and this is stuff you should know.”

- That's right, Chuck deportays. Now we have to start over again, you ready? Here we'll give everybody a little beep beep. - Can we talk about Ben Go? - Yeah, that's what I was saying.

We have bandages around our heads because we are in solidarity. - That's what I'm trying to say. - With a really great guy. - Yeah, have you ever seen any of the Ben Go movies?

- I watched one last night, it was a documentary, but it was the documentary, the one where David Bowie plays Andy Warhol. (laughing) Which one did Bowie play Warhol in?

- Basquiat. - Basquiat, right, 'cause he was also played by Crispin Glover in the doors, in the doors, and Van Gogh was played by Willem Dafoe. - That was unwatchable.

I never saw that one. - It was unwatchable. - Loving Vincent? - I think that's what it's called. - Yeah, I'm almost positive.

It's not because of bad, or the dialogue, bad, or anything. Like that, it's just so shaky and rapid cut and shot from weird angles to, I guess, you know, represent his mental illness that I couldn't watch it.

I watched like 10 minutes, so I was like, oh no. I was disappointed.

- Yeah, I never saw that one.

I did see the one from the '90s though, the Robert Altman film. - I didn't know he did one on. Are you talking about Nashville? - Yeah, I'll shoot, that's the one.

- No, Vincent Theo with Tim Roth is Van Gogh.

“- That was a, yeah, a 1990, I think it was a good movie.”

- No idea, I'll have to go back and check that out. - Yeah, I'd like to see it again. I don't think I've seen it since college. - I feel like a total smoke, 'cause I don't remember the name of the documentary,

but essentially, the premise of it is these documentarians went from place to place through, and just followed Van Gogh's life, 'cause he moved around a lot as we'll see. - It was inspired differently by the different places he lived,

and they basically talked about how those places inspired him or how they beat him down or whatever, and then they would show, you know, his paintings

or vice versa. - It was really good, it's documentary, and they talked a lot about his life, and it was good, it was very tranquil.

“I think there was the same 30 seconds of very tranquil string music”

that they used over and over and over again, and it was not a problem. - I think Van Gogh, I mean, you know, I don't know much about art history. We've talked a week, done quite a few shows about this

kind of thing over the years, and my appreciation for art has grown sort of in lockstep.

I've always sort of like Van Gogh's stuff for sure,

but I like him even more now that I kind of understand that he never, well, I mean, most people, if they know anything about Van Gogh, no, he never gained fame in his lifetime, but he certainly never tried to achieve fame as an artist

by like painting what he thought people might wanna see. He always painted what he, you know, his surroundings, and like he said, depending on where he lived that varied, and also it seems like really from the heart and his deep emotions, which I have a lot of respect for.

- Yeah, and that since he was a pioneer, same for me too, by the way, I really came to like him even more. I think we both jumped from the same exact spot and ended up in about the same exact spot too. - Look at us.

One thing I saw that kind of explained him to me, at least, was that he wanted to share the things he saw, the beauty he saw everywhere with the world,

because it was so beautiful,

he wanted to provide that to the world, not in any kind of egotistical way or anything like that, but just like, this is so pretty. I'm gonna try my best to express how this makes me feel and show the world, and then very sadly,

the world was like, that's not very good. We don't want that. - And now, thanks for sharing, but keep it to yourself. - Yeah, that's tough. I mean, in fact, in one letter to his brother Theo,

he said, "Is a laying anxiety? "was how can I be of use in the world?" And his, you know, what he came to was to be an artist and that he really thought that had, and he was right,

“had a lot of value, and that's how he would serve.”

- Right, right, kind of cool. But before he became an artist, he pinged around here there. He was a little aimless for a little while, and he was born in 1853 in the Netherlands,

or Dare Netherlands, say Holland. - Sure. His father was the adores, or I guess it'd be Taylor Dores, Van Gogh, that's the correct way to say it. And I went back and I didn't listen to it,

but I read the transcript from our episode seven, no eight, five mysteries of the art world, where we talked about Van Gogh a lot. And you correctly said his name, I think, here are there, or through that.

- I probably, obviously. - Yeah, I think I was probably making a joke from a Woody Allen movie. - As a matter of fact, you were, that's exactly, you mentioned that.

- Yeah, yeah, that was a funny part, Van Gogh. - But the transcription, the AI, transcribing at Kept saying Van Gogh, so I could tell that you were saying Van Gogh. - Oh, I thought you're gonna say the AI transcription,

canceled what I said about Woody Allen. - No, no, that'd be useful. - It's coming, don't worry. - So yeah, born in 1853, like you said, he had a bunch of siblings, he had five younger siblings,

Theo, the most notable, because as you'll see, that had a very tight relationship and working relationship, which is why Robert Altman made the movie, Vincent, and Theo, Theo was younger by four years.

Vincent was apparently a pretty moody, tough kid, and as we'll see, he certainly suffered from mental illness throughout his life, but his parents didn't know what to do with him, so they sent him to boarding school for about four years

from 12 to 16 at which point, he was like, you know what, I'm gonna get involved in the art world, in the way of being sort of like an apprentice to a dealer, and he learned about the sales side.

- Yeah, I get the impression he kind of fell into the art world because it was almost a family business, selling art was. - The impression, yeah. But that and your pipe and smoke it later, right?

- Yeah, I think you're probably right.

“- So he worked there for, I think, seven years,”

yeah, until about age 23, and this was during this period

that he fell into what I think is viewed as his first true

episode of Depression is about of real depression. And it followed on the heels of a, I didn't see exactly what it was, Olivia helps us with this. She just describes it as a romantic disappointment,

but that seems to be a trend throughout his life where he did not, he was not lucky in love. I think the little river band would have called them to loan some loser in that respect. And that would trigger some of his depressive episodes,

but as a result, his uncle,

was like, "Sorry, you're fired." - Yeah, so we lost that job, but he did learn about the world of art and sort of the business of art, even though he didn't, like I say,

kind of cow-tow to the business side of things. He got interested in religion for a little while after that job and was a, I guess an unordained or a unlicensed preacher for about four years.

He never got at the allergy degree or anything,

but he did this work sort of missionary work in Belgium and sort of the poorest parts of Belgium and coal country at the time. And he wanted to, you know, very admirably, didn't wanna put on airs and he lived as the people

around him lived and was very open and shared what he had with his parishioners, but the church wasn't wild about that idea.

“I think they thought it was sort of beneath the parish.”

So he got fired from that job as a preacher. - Yeah, and I have the impression that he was taking steps to maybe please his father and just trying to throw himself into religion 'cause he wanted something.

He wanted some sort of connection to something bigger than him. And I guess that was just the easiest thing to try, but also his father, remember he was a Dutch minister. So I could see him doing that and then he kind of failed at that.

So that probably didn't sit all that well. - I mean, that kind of the story of a lot of people, like boys trying to please daddy who didn't approve of them. - Yeah. - That's how I became a podcaster.

My dad told me when I was like seven,

he's like, "I will never respect you unless you grow up

to be a podcaster." And I was like, "I can do that." He said, "A good one." And I went, "Good one." - Yeah, right.

I remember my dad at one point suggested I become a male carrier when I was sort of aimless. - Just like Henry Chanaske. - Government job, good benefits. You could do worse.

He was absolutely right. There's nothing wrong with his job. - No, of course not. - I just wasn't so interested in that. - So yeah, so he failed to please his father.

“That's what he was doing, but he kind of...”

- We all did. - Exactly, right. Well put, but he was struck by his time a Belgian coal country, and he hopped out of there for a little while, but he would kind of carry with him, as we'll see,

once he became an artist, you know, this appreciation, or at least kind of this need to shine a spotlight on the toil and the suffering of his fellow humans, because he cared about them, and he thought other people should care about him too.

- Yeah, for sure. - I mean, he definitely cared around socialist ideas. He started to actually study painting because, like I said, he had written that letter to Theo, saying that he wanted to become an artist

to try and serve the world, and bring the beautiful art. So he thought, "I mean, maybe I should study this stuff." Often on, he lived with his parents,

but that never worked out very well,

as that happened sometimes in real life. He found them fairly suffocating. And so he would sort of move around in between the Netherlands and Belgium for a period of years.

That's not to say his family, as a hold in support him, because Theo, as we'll see, was always very supportive. He was working in the art world. He worked for a big dealer, and he was very sort of hip to the art scene, Theo was.

- Right. - And what was moving, and he would end up representing, not only his brother, he was not popular, but other artists who were not popular and critical circles like Monet, and Gauguin,

and Old Lettrek, I'll read to lose Lettrek. - Yeah, like, his brother had that foresight, that was like, these new impressionists, guys, I like what they're doing. - Yeah, I mean, he knew it was up.

- But he also very importantly saw, like, my brother actually has something here. This is a good decision that he became an artist. It was not at all patronizing, even though Theo was his patron, which is kind of confusing.

He genuinely believed in his brother's ability, and he very happily was like, I'm going to give you a monthly allowance. That I saw was about equal to a minimum wage, what somebody would earn minimum wage,

and it kept Vincent in the art supplies. I think he spent 80% of it on art supplies and the other 20% on just living, but he was able to live like that

“and just produce art, and that's what Theo wanted.”

- Yeah, and Vincent said, "Don't patronize me," and he said, "Well, that's tricky, "because technically I am." - Exactly. - And that was about 20% of Theo's income.

So it was not, you know, chicken scratch. I wasn't making a ton of money himself. His cousin was also very supportive of him, in the way of teaching him. His name was Anton Mov, and he literally quite literally taught him

like how to paint with oil, how to paint with watercolors. And I guess it was that same uncle who he worked for, would commission works and pay him occasionally to like, you know, paint stuff for him. - Yeah, it's like, in art circles,

only having sold one painting during his life. - Yeah, that's not correct. - Not exactly.

“- But if you, you know, if you want to get technical,”

he sold several paintings, but they were like family and friends and stuff like that. - Right. - And did sell one painting to one person, he wasn't an acquaintance of, that's true.

- Yeah, for sure. We're gonna be mithbusting a little bit along the way, 'cause Van Gogh seems like more so than other artists had a lot of kind of falsehoods bandied about over the years.

Is that fair to say? - I get to wear the beret this time. - Okay.

So like you said, he never had a whole lot of luck

with the ladies, had a sort of a series of disappointments there, but eventually he would have about a year and a half relationship with a woman named Sien Hornick. This was in 1882, she was pregnant at the time, and also had a five year old daughter

who was a former sex worker, which his family didn't like any of this, and his father tried to get him, I guess committed to an asylum, but Van Gogh was having none of it. He was in love. - No, but it would get easier and easier

to have him committed as time went on. I guess this is just the first attempt and it didn't take. So like I said, he was kind of taken with the idea of peasants, people toiling,

people growing their own food, or making their own living from the land, which he was infatuated with the land, in nature in general, he's almost a transcendentalist, I guess, without what's quite knowing it.

And he, when he moved back with his parents and then was bouncing back and forth between Belgium and the Netherlands for a little while, he was mostly doing studies and paintings of peasants. And one of his most famous paintings

came out of this time, when it was first masterpieces,

called the potato eaters, was a study of,

“I think, five peasants sitting around a table,”

eating potatoes, drinking coffee. And it's like, in the use of browns, essentially, he said in the letter to Theo that he wanted it to basically be the color of a potato, yeah, unpeeled, of course, as how we put it.

And he nailed it. It's also, it's bleak and grim in a way, but at the same time, the people almost appear noble, but they're blocky and cartoonish almost, as far as their forms go, and that was all intentional,

but everybody was like, this is terrible. - Yeah, people didn't love it. He was sending these paintings to Theo to, like, hey, man, Selbi is, and I'm hopefully that can kind of help pay you back,

but he couldn't sell any of 'em at the time. And he took him to the art market and Paris there, but no one was into that, you know, his sort of, I don't wanna say, dower, but I guess it was fairly gloomy,

just his color palette at least. This would all change though, in 1885, his father died, and he painted, you know, very much in tribute to his father, something called Still Life with Bible, which shows sort of the contrast between himself

and his father and their ideals, because obviously the open Bible on the table was representing his father, but there was also another novel, "Lajra de Veeve," and it was a socialist book by a socialist writer named,

Emil, I guess, Zola, and it was like, here's a contrast between my father and I, I paint this in tribute, but I got to get out of here now,

“like he needed a change in his life, I think,”

because of his father's passing. He wanted to move. - Yeah, and he definitely did, he moved a Paris, and he moved, I don't know if he moved him with Theo, but that would be my great guess.

Either way, Theo was living and working there, and he moved to be close to Theo, but Theo introduced him to those artists he was rapping in a circle, like he said, Monet and Pizarro, and to loosely track, like Van Gogh was hanging out

with all of these guys and like learning from them, but at the same time, he was also impressing them too. And when he moved to Paris, something changed, and he dropped those really gloomy colors and favor for like an increasingly bright, colorful palette.

That Paris somehow triggered that in him.

- Yeah, you can never, or it's easy, I guess,

rather than to go back after someone has passed and sort of judged their work compared to where they were in their life and think, like you can kind of figure out things, but I guess my armchair psychology degree

would point me in the direction of like, almost being freed up a little bit by his father's passing, as well, and I know it upset him, but I think it also freed him up, so maybe that in the move to Paris, even though,

as we'll see, he wasn't very much a city guy. I don't think it was a coincidence that all of a sudden things kind of brightened in his life a little bit.

of his fragile mental state. - Yeah, it could be either, but that's, I think you dug up an equally compelling idea. - Where did you get your armchair psychology degree? - I'll just write here, on my armchair.

- Oh, okay, well, you're right to your armchair. - Yeah, the right arm, is it a lazy boy? Is it Ethan Allen? - Oh, you know, it's a lazy boy, buddy. - Okay, getcha.

- So yeah, one of the first paintings

that people were like, look, he came out of this gloom and doom stuff, and now he likes color, the hill of Maumart with stone quarry. Love is not part of the title, that was just me. But that was painted in 1886.

“And here's the thing that you should know about Van Gogh.”

He started painting in 27, he died at 37. In between that time, he painted almost 900 paintings, many, many, many of the masterpieces. So in a 10-year period, everything you know about Van Gogh happened.

And really, you can kind of narrow it down to essentially the last three years of his life that were the most productive where he really came into his own. - Yeah, that website you sent

kind of broke down his productivity by location. And his five years in the Netherlands, he painted about four paintings a month. So it's 245. A couple of years in Paris painted 227, so 10 paintings per month.

His 14 months, as we'll see in, what would that be, areless, is that how you pronounce that? - Arl? - Arl, okay. I'd just sound like you're choking on a hardboiled egg.

(laughs) - About 14 paintings a month, over 14 months, and then salt, Rime, is that right? 18 per month, and then finally, man,

“he was up to a painting per day by the time”

he ended up in that last place in France. - Yeah, like just a stunning number of painting, and a complete oil painting, it's not like he had started wine or something like that. These were completed paintings.

Like, that usually takes a day and a half, not a day. - Right. (laughs) - Yeah, I can't paint anything. I can paint a wall. - Yeah, I could probably paint a wall in a day.

- Yeah, you don't have artistic talent like that either, dear.

- No, and it's always bothered me.

I wanted to draw for so long. - Same, and I just can't do it. - Yeah, I can't, but we can both write, so. - Sure, yeah, and we could both sing. - Right.

- We just need an extra 1,000 words for each picture. - We can't both sing, wait a minute, now hold on. - Oh, it's a little bit of the compliment. - I can't sing, I'm not taking it on. - All right, well, we'll get you some

and singing lessons, and we'll be back right after this. - Okay. (upbeat music) - Hey, it's us, the Jonas Brothers, and guess what, we have some big news.

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- Pretty, yeah, pretty wide range of podcasts. - Starting the trend. - But, this one's extra special. - So, how do we, how do we actually come up with a name, "Hey, Jonas," guys?

- I honestly don't remember.

“- I think it was on a call about what we should call it.”

And, oh, we were thinking, I'm originally calling it, one of the early names of our band, before Jonas Brothers. - Well, this is how you guys remember it going down. - Yes.

- I have a very different memory of this. - We were talking about a thing, a bit for the podcast, we could call in and say, "Hey, Jonas." And then, "I," broke down on my little note pad. "Hey, Jonas," and offered it up as a potential title.

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- So despite moving to Paris, Chuck, we're back by the way.

“He was still very much drawn to rural areas.”

That's where he found his most inspiration. He liked the light and the color out there. Although he did paint a lot of city stuff, like a cafe terrace at night, that's one of my favorites. There was plenty of city paintings,

but far and away he did like landscapes, some seascapes, that kind of stuff. - Yeah. - And there was no different and when he was in Paris.

So he really started to kind of pick up painting the land around that time too. And then he was also inspired by Japanese art during this time. - Yeah, for sure. Those woodblock prints, which I didn't even know

what woodblocks was until probably 10 years ago. And I just loved this stuff.

It's really pretty incredible, especially in the process.

But he was inspired not to do woodblock, but to kind of recreate that just using paint. Very contrasting colors and bold outlines. And he started, I don't know how common this is. You know, no people are inspired,

but you kind of straight up copied some other people at times in his career. And I don't think like suffered in posthumously for that unless I'm wrong. - No, okay, that was the case here.

He recreated Japanese woodblock, sudden shower over Shinohashi Bridge and Atakei in 1887. But again, using brush strokes. - Right, yeah. And I mean, both of them are pretty impressive,

but yeah, the idea that the original by Udagawa, here of Shigei, is like carved out of wood, inked and then stamped is just how, you know? - Yeah, it's incredible. So also in Paris, we talked about how he suffered

his first real depressive episode in his early 20s.

Paris was the point where his full blown recurring mental illness really started to take hold. It seems like the more he pushed himself, the more exhausted he got, the more his mental illness was triggered.

And he could push himself. That guy, I mean, like you said, he was painting a, a painting a day after day after day for a while. - Yeah, it's worth the end too.

- Yeah, he was very capable of working until he was exhausted. So he really started doing that around this time, 1887, the eight, that kind of thing. And I guess he lived in Paris for two years

and then moved to Aril, which I know is not exactly how you say it, but it's in Provence. And I mean, dude, if you wanna be like inspired by nature, just moved to Provence. - Never been there.

- I have an either, but just from pictures I've seen on the TV, yeah, I'm telling you, it's inspiring. - Yeah, he wanted a more chill life for sure. So in 1888, that's when he split. He was painting a little more intensely at this point

and the color's got even more bold and his, his brushwork, like I think that's one of the things he was got inspired by from the impressionists was really kind of showing the brushwork. And all of a sudden, you're getting those farm fields

and the wheat, a lot of wheat, orchard, stuff like that. And then eventually he would paint a lot of the yellow house is what he called it where he lived, he lived there and he would end up renting out rooms as we'll see to different painters.

And that's where the sunflowers started to, very famous for his sunflower paintings. - Yeah, there's one that I saw was, called the still-life version of the Mona Lisa,

“that's how good it is, another thing I didn't realize,”

I've seen much of his work, but from researching this, I kept zooming into paintings that we were talking about. And he was really good, like when you zoom in

it's a whole different painting.

I mean, it's impressionism for you, but it looks so much more childish. And I know his work was described

“like that during his lifetime from zoomed out,”

like normally how you would look at a painting, but when you go into it, it's like such genius that it almost seems like it would be difficult to make it look childish. It's that good, you know what I mean?

- Yeah, when I go to museums, I make sure I'm not obnoxious about it and like block people and stuff. But when I get a chance, I will get in there as close as, you know, allowable to really kind of look

at what's going on on a close level and not for any kind of obviously study for myself 'cause I don't paint, but there's something about it that makes it a little more real like you can actually see like what somebody was doing rather than,

you know, just looking at the whole from afar. - Yeah, it definitely connects you more to the painter for sure. - Yeah. - 'Cause it sinks in, like somebody was standing in front of this canvas, like 150 years ago,

putting their brush to it, like that happened at one point, you know? - Yeah, for sure, I love that stuff. - Do you get really close and put your finger right over and go, "I'm not touching it, I'm not touching it to the security guard?"

- Yeah, well, sometimes if they're not looking at, like the chip a little piece of the paint off and just take it as a souvenir. (laughs)

“- Do you like stick it inside your cheek to smuggle it up?”

- Yeah, yeah. - So yeah, Sunflowers, that was the one

that I first really looked at and was like,

"Oh my god, this is way better than I thought it was." - Yeah. - He started, he's also obviously very well known for Starry Knights, and his first one was Starry Knight over the Roan River in 1888, and his Starry Knights

would be kind of like a gift and a curse. Like they became his most beloved works essentially, but he kind of beat himself up about him 'cause he's like, "This isn't quite right." But I almost get the impression that to him,

they were right, but he was kind of adjusting his interpretation of them based on the feedback he was getting from everybody else. Like he was subsuming his feelings about it to everybody else's dislike of it. Like, "Yeah, you're right, it's not very good kind of thing."

It seemed to be specific to the Starry Knight. - Yeah, and just how tough was that? As someone who obviously was extremely talented

and producing what would be some of the most beloved works

of art after his death, to constantly be getting that feedback from art critics, and although he wasn't even on the radar really art critics, but people who he would show to you, and then his own brother, who was such a supporter, but had to constantly break the news

of like nobody wants to buy this stuff. - Right.

“In Vincent was like, "But do you have to tell me”

like verbatim how much they said they hated it every time?" He just told me you didn't sell any of this week. - This guy said it looked like not on campus. - I don't know what you're telling him. - Yeah, and also again, if you take into account,

Chuck, that he's not just like trying to do a still-life photo realistically and not quite getting it. So it's like your expertise isn't that good. He's like putting himself on the canvas and people are rejecting it.

So they're rejecting him as a human being as far as he's concerned. - Yeah, for sure. So he's in the yellow house. I said he would rent it out to other artists.

One of those thanks to Theo ended up being go-gah because Theo was like, "Hey, listen, "can I pay your expenses?" And you go move in with my brother because I really think it will,

I think the quote was, it'll make a big change in your life. And he was hoping that one would inspire the other 'cause obviously he was wrapping them both, but he wanted good things for Vincent. And that sort of worked and it didn't.

Like they were both very productive. They painted each other's portrait. It's very famously. But they also fought a lot. It was just a very volatile relationship

to the point where on Christmas Eve, 1888. Go-gon was already planning on leaving. This wasn't the impetus for him to leave. But Van Gogh threw a glass of absent in his face, which I imagine, I mean, no liquor in your face is great.

I imagine absence is probably one of the worst ones to get thrown in your face. - Yeah, it's dangerous, shirt. - Yeah, and probably stings. I would imagine, I don't know.

So Go-gon was like, I'm out of here. And he left, and Van Gogh was like, hey, you can't leave, I'm leaving. And he threatened him with a razor. Apparently as far as the standard story goes,

Go-gon kept going, and Van Gogh returned to the house. Use the razor to cut his ear off. Raps it up and took it to a sex worker at a local brothel and was rejected by her. It's from this gift was rejected by her.

That is, there's some problems with that.

But there's another school thought

that Go-gon actually cut it off. And Van Gogh covered for him, because Go-gon was apparently a master sword fighter, carried a sword around with him. And it's quite possible he took Vincent's ear off

for being threatened with a razor. Right. Also, another version of the story, they believe they found that the woman was actually a maid at the brothel, and not a sex worker.

“But those are sort of nitpicky details, I think.”

Certainly cutting off your own ear wouldn't be nitpicky, because that's a true sign of a desperate, sort of upset that you can only feel if you're suffering from severe mental illness. So yeah, self-mutilation is super sad.

And I think there's also some interpretations that it might have been influenced by the bullfighting ritual where you cut off the bulls here to present it to a lady. But I don't know, I'm not so sure about that. Yeah, that seems like something he would have done

on a calm day, then, if that was the purpose of it to present it to a lady that almost seems like it was just some impulsive thing that was tacked onto the end of something that he wasn't planning, you know? Yeah, for sure.

But the cops found him the next day, I think. He was unconscious. They obviously went to the hospital. And he was in a state of psychosis for a few days in the hospital.

And a doctor there said, you think you have epilepsy. So, and I don't think we mentioned, you know, he's suffering from vouts of mental illness

“often on throughout his life to this point.”

But also physical manifestations are happening that in retrospect, people are like, yeah, it wasn't just mental illness coming out physically, like he, it seems like he probably really did have epilepsy. So they gave him potassium bromide, which he said,

Vincent said, curled or would be stopped is intolerable hallucinations, but he was still fainting a lot. And he apparently didn't have any memory of what happened with Gogon or the ear. Yeah, so he was in that hospital for a little while.

This wasn't a psychiatric hospital, this was like a hospital hospital. I also saw a check in that documentary that as a gift to the doctor who cared for him, he presented him with a painting of one of the wards in the hospital and doctors like, no thanks.

It's not very good. So didn't even accept it? Did not even accept it. That boy. So he was released from the hospital.

He pretended he was scratching its temple, but it was with his middle finger as you've seen by with the doctor. That'll move. Yeah. And he started painting again,

“but the hospital visit helped his epilepsy.”

It did not help the bouts of mental illness that he just kept suffering over and over and over again. In between, he would just work at like a breakneck pace and then exhaust himself, have another episode of mental illness and go to the hospital, get out, work until he exhausted himself.

Again and again.

And so finally, the hospitals like, look, man,

we, you're in the wrong place now. Like, you need a different kind of care than we could offer. And so he checked himself into his sanitarium at Saint Remy. And he was there for a year being treated.

And they actually helped him quite a bit being there. I think that's a good place for a break because something very interesting happened while he was there. Is that a good time? I think so.

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And I said something very interesting happened while he was in the sanitarium. And one thing I mentioned earlier was he painted about 18 paintings per month. He produced 143 paintings.

While he was staying in this sanitarium and one of which was not a starry night, but the starry night, or just starry night. - Sure, pretty impressive, huh? - Yeah.

- I said that he wrote in a letter, I guess, that to his sister Willemina about him wanting to make a starry night. And then in like the next breath, he recommends she read Walt Whitman's poetry

and people went and read song to myself and said, there's like two stances in here

that basically describe what starry night looks like.

We think that Walt Whitman essentially inspired this painting and that seems to be the consensus. - Yeah.

“And if you've never seen starry night, you should.”

All you have to do is go to the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and walk around until you see crowds of people. - Yeah, they said it's their most visited painting in their whole collection.

- Yeah, that one, you can't get close anyway, but it's tough to even to get a great view period. It's just a lot of folks around that. - Wow, wow. Yeah, I would love to see that one.

I don't believe I ever haven't done it. - Have you not seen that one? - I don't believe so, I've been to Momma, but that seems like weird that I wouldn't have seen it, but then again, why did I form a memory of seeing it?

- Well, you also don't like crowds of people, so maybe you're like, I don't know what's going on over there, but no thanks. - That is possible. But yes, so I have seen it on the internet

at very least if not in person. It's got swirls in it that represent the wind, like the stars are huge and out of proportion and glowing the moon is all odd. And it's like a landscape at night,

but he just captured all of it so perfectly, and it's all of very, it's, the background's very dark. It's dark blues and stuff like that, but it's a very soothing, like, happy painting. And this was what I was talking about earlier

that even Theo was like, I don't like this man, and I guess Vincent wrote that he was once again allowing myself to do stars to big. - Yeah, he said the search for style takes away the real sentiment of things,

which sounds a little bit like a, not form over fashion, fashion over form, or something, I don't know, like, just trying to make something super stylistic, but it doesn't really mean anything,

which I'm sure cut pretty deeply. So while this is going on, he is continuing to kind of slip up and down on his, as far as his mental illness is concerned. At some point, he started like, eat paint.

Some people thought it might've been a suicidal thing, but it might've also been pica, as part of his mental illness, which is interesting. - There's a legend that it was yellow paint and that he wanted to be happy inside,

which doesn't, I don't think hold up. - Yeah, okay, well, he, because partially because of that, he stayed away from paint altogether for a little while, because he also had a lot of like, many, many drawings throughout his career,

and this is his drawing period.

“- Yeah, I like way more drawings than paintings, right?”

- Oh, I think so, yeah. - So Theo and he got married, I think in 1889, maybe. - That sounds right. - To a woman named Joe Bonger, or Bonser,

in Vincent Van Gogh's posthumous life,

and they honored him by naming their son, their only child Vincent, after the kid's uncle. And Van Gogh was very, very touched by this, and he painted one of, I think,

one of the most beautiful paintings he ever did, all in blossom. - I agree, buddy. - It's great, just, yeah, just go look it up. It's very much in the Japanese style, for sure.

- Yeah, and he painted it for the baby, and like, despite, you know, years and decades of Van Gogh paintings being sold by the family, that one did not go up for sale. And it's even in the Van Gogh museum still today.

- Yeah, the baby didn't want it either, though. - Hey, so this is not very good. - Give me my box. - Give me my box. - Let's spit up on it. - Correct, correct.

- Oh, he's hated the term. - It's a pretty bad term, yeah. - So Theo officially said, you know what, I'm gonna start really submitting your paintings,

“like I think you are good and nobody knows it.”

So he started really submitting at a more sort of serious rapid pace in 1888, specifically the annual salon they independent. In 1890, and this is just a few months before Van Gogh would die, he was not still not getting any,

almost any attention, but finally in January that year,

he started to get a little bit of not critical like praise,

but just people like critics looking at his stuff and writing about his stuff. - Yeah. - The first one I think was an art critic name, Albert, Ariair, who published, I think the very first Van Gogh review,

and he said they initially appear strange and tense and feverish, but reflected the continual search for the most essential sign of each thing. So he was kind of getting it, I think. - Yeah, he was digging him.

Yes, and then in 1888, 1889 and 1890, his work thanks to Theo appeared in the salon in Paris. He was also featured in a Belgian salon called Lavent, the 20, and this is where he sold his first, or is one an only painting to somebody he didn't really know, right?

- Yeah, it was a painter, another painter named Anna Bach, and she bought the red vineyard, and that I think maybe, well, I don't know if that was the impetus, but that's when things started to pick up a little bit. And I think later that spring, the salon,

showed 10 of his paintings, which was a big deal. May of that year, May of 1890, and this was after a year

being in the sanitary, and he finally was discharged,

and that's where he moved to a pretty quiet place, not too far from Paris, where he had a good doctor on hand, who was able to kind of keep up with them.

“And that doctor was like, hey, man, you know what you need to do”

is paint, like you seem to be doing best when you're really concentrating on the painting, so you should do that and be dead. - Yeah, through himself into it again, like you were saying that last few months

or the last year he was painting about a painting a day. And I've seen it like, people say that almost as if he knew like his time was running out, and he wanted to get as much out as he could. He focused a lot on wheat fields,

which he said earlier was one of his favorite subjects. - Yeah. - Apparently that represented like the sewing and the reaping of it was like renewal in death and life and birth and all that to him.

And he was, I guess pretty close to Paris in Overe. And he went and traveled once to visit Theo. And he found that Theo was talking about going out, striking out his own setting up his own art dealership, and Vincent was like, man, that is to himself.

He thought this is quite a risky gamble. You know, what's gonna happen to my monthly stipend is that like in jeopardy, but also, that will automatically make me a burden to my brother. Like even if you come successful,

it's not gonna be overnight. And in that time between him taking this big risk and becoming a success, I'm gonna be an even bigger burden than I am. That was something he can clear.

- Yeah, yeah, for sure, that was in July of 1890 and later that month on July 27th, he shot himself in the chest and took his own life. We covered that in more detail in the, what was it, mysteries of the art world?

- Yeah, seven, no, wait, five mysteries of the art world. - 2020, right? - Yeah, so you can, you can go get that full story there,

“but yeah, I think he, he didn't die immediately.”

And Theo made it from Paris to be there with him when he died a couple of days later. - Which is so sweet, I mean, they were so tight. They were actually very next to one another in that town. - Yeah, tight, but also fraught,

but that's brother stuff.

- But that was mostly from Vincent's side, right? - Well, I mean, I just saw it could be a rough relationship, but again, this brothers and also business partners and one had a real tough time with mental illness. So it's none of it is unexpected.

- So again, it's very much bandied about that, that Van Gogh was unknown and unappreciated in this time. And generally that's true, but like when he was showing at the Salon's other painters like Monet, we would say to Theo, like tell your brother

that his was the best work at the Salon, like he's great. He had a claim with people who knew what they were talking about, but generally he didn't. The reason why we know of him today and the reason why his genius, his scene and value

is because of Joe Bonger, his sister-in-law,

“who very shortly, I think six months after Vincent died,”

Theo died, some say of a broken heart, some say of syphilis, some say of both. And she inherited like all of, essentially, all of Vincent Van Gogh's paintings. - Yeah, I mean, this is kind of the in a way,

sort of the hero of the story here because now with Theo gone, and Vincent's still having not achieved great fame, you're left with Joe to do something. And she was like, listen, I don't have a background in this. This was my husband's line.

So she taught herself. She devoted herself to studying art. She devoted herself to studying the business of art. And she really worked tirelessly to after his death, raised his profile and I get the impression

that it wasn't like, oh, I got all these paintings, so I can get a lot of money. It was like to honor someone she thought was really talented. - Yes, absolutely. Yeah, she wanted to make sure that he was appreciated,

“finally, even if it wasn't in his lifetime.”

She had a hard time going at first, like she still couldn't quite convince people, I guess she was just being like, "Look, see, it's good, it's good." And that wasn't taking.

So she went through the letters between Theo and Vincent, that Theo had kept and realized like, he talks Van Gogh, talks a lot about his style as technique, his inspiration, his mental health struggles in these letters. And she was like, this is how you interpret Vincent Van Gogh's work.

You understand his background, his biography, his struggles. And that now is just so common place in ubiquitous. That's just part of learning about art. And this is where it came from. It came from Joe Banger,

trying to get people to understand Vincent Van Gogh.

- Yeah, which is, I'd never knew that.

It's a super cool kind of cherry on the story that when you go and you read about the artists and that just adds so much more to it that came from her idea, which is pretty amazing. She got up initially a critic named Yon Veth

who did not love the paintings, but then after the letters, that's when Yon came around. And was swayed and was like, he really, quote, seeks the raw root of things.

And I think once they knew this story, they were like, oh my gosh, this is this tortured human that put everything into these paintings. And now I'm seeing them in a different light. And that was, that was it.

I think since her death in 1925, you know, his paintings have sold to the tune of about $117 million. The Bang Go Museum, they're an Amsterdam, which I've been to, it's well worth a trip.

Open to 1973, it's a couple of the million visitors every year.

And he's one of the most famous painters of all time now. - Yeah, and one of the reasons why I saw is because he wore his heart on his sleeve, he did the same thing with his painting, and people just connect with that.

And I mean, just from listening to this, Chuck, I imagine a lot of people were like, he really was kind of a neat guy. - Yeah, a tortured artist too. And that's another place where this kind of came from,

the idea of somebody suffering for their art. And there aren't being great because of their struggles with mental illness. That also kind of came from the profile of Ango being raised at the same time, and over time, people had been like,

well, what did he suffer from specifically? We don't really know, but there are some clues here there that kind of point in a couple of directions. - Yeah, for sure.

“I think everyone agrees, like I said earlier,”

that he was epileptic, but probably bipolar disorder is what a lot of people agree on, possibly schizophrenia. You know, he talked about hallucinations and stuff like that. He also drank a lot, which definitely did not help along the way. He did not, and is like, previous family history,

at least as far as anyone knows, have a long documented history of mental illness, but one of his sisters was diagnosed

I think a few years after Vincent died, and he had a brother named Cornelius who died in South Africa while serving in the army, and it is speculated that he may have taken his own life as well. - Right.

You have a 10% chance of having schizophrenia if one of your siblings does, for people in general population, it's just 1%. So that definitely increased the possibility. Before we finished Chuck, I just wanted briefly

mention that anecdote that was in that one article I sent you about that cafe being foreclosed on with all of his paintings trapped inside. - Oh yeah.

“- So he was showing, like I think they said,”

a hundred paintings are something. In this cafe, it was like an exhibit of vango,

like early vango stuff when he first moved to Paris,

and the cafe owner, like wasn't making their payments, so the cafe got foreclosed on locked up, and everything inside, including vango's paintings, which were not owned by the cafe, were auctioned off, and they were so disliked that they were bundled together

in bunches of 10, so that people who bought them could go and scrape the paintings off and sell them at a higher price than they bought the 10 vango's for, as blank canvases, wow. And he still was just like, well, I guess I needed

to just get up and dust myself up. He was like the Joe dirt of the 19th century French and Dutch art world. - I never saw that. - It's the same thing, he was essentially a vango.

- Okay, all right. - Okay, thanks for humoring me with that because that's just a good story. - I love it, good story. - All right, well Chuck said that was a good story,

“so I think we should end this on a high note”

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I'm embedded at Control Software Engineer, not for Boeing, but in another industry, where mistakes could kill people,

for me, Boeing was always an aspirational company.

So watching the news on MCAS was like, meaning a disappointing drunk hero. At the time, my peers and I were following the news and doing our best to read between the lines, we were frankly disgusted to see

that they actually deployed a single point of failure, all the way to production. It was baffling to us because we knew our internal processes would have stopped a program dead with that much risk, surely Boeing held even higher standards.

It was clear that a complete cultural and ethical breakdown occurred to allow the MCAS to exist without redundancy and sensor voting or rationality checks and voting is in quotes. Even worse, they allowed a helper system

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And that is from Travis last name withheld. - Nice, Travis, somebody who knows that they're talking about gave us a 10 out of 10 chuck.

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