I heard a story about Van Gogh recently that went something like this:
Van Gogh was a homosexual and his lover was Gaugin. He chopped off his ear while in the midst of an Absinthe binge due to an argument with Gaugin. He was leaving him. While in his stupor, Van Gogh gave his chopped ear to a random girl. And the story of his giving his ear to an unrequited love stemmed from this.
Anyone know if there is any truth to this story?
Here is a nice biography of Van Gogh. His relationship with Gaugin was stormy but they were not lovers. They were friends and associates. Van Gogh suffered from mental illness and cut off part of his ear during a psychotic episode. He then took it to a woman at a local brothal. Absinth didn’t play into it at all.
Haj
Hadn’t heard that one, but I had heard the one that it was they had gotten into a scrap and it was actually PG who cut VvG’'s ear off in the scuffle-- they freaked out and PG left town the next morning and VvG told the authorities that he’d done it himself. Circumstantial evidence might allow for this version, but nothing suggests that they were lovers, that I know of.
The Knitting Circle has nothing on Van Gogh. The Knitting Circle’s a list of historical figures, artists, and celebrities who are known to be LGBTQ.
Sounds like a mixture of the VanGogh ear story, the VanGogh/Gauguin relationship, and the Verlaine/Rimbaud story (Total Eclipse for you non-French literature scholars with a taste for strange movies:)), with events from one superimposed on the general plotline of another.
I heard a story from a person of questionable credibility, that Van Gogh had chronic tinnitus (ringing in the ear), went nuts. Cut his own ear off. Killed himself when he realized that you can’t stop tinnitus that way. I am not so sure this is true, but I really know nothing about van gogh.
How about Van Gogh’s weird colorings? It is claimed by some that he used a lot of garish reds , yellws, and oranges in his work, because his vision was distorted (he drank a lot of absinth). Nobody questions the fact that he (Van Gogh) was seriously mentally ill, near the end of his life. But does this theory that his vision was distorted hold up?
He wasn’t the first to use distorted colors, wasn’t the last, and hung around a bunch of people who painted like that, Gauguin among them (lets add Cezanne and Munch to round out the example with some better known painters). Either it was an epidemic of vision trouble through the late 19th and 20th century, or it was a stylistic choice that developed out of impressionist color theory.
I happen to study a lot of art history, especially around this time period and I am a Van Gogh buff on top of all this. Van Gogh was probably not a homosexual, at least not openly which would have been well noted at the time. He was, however, reportedly insane. More specifically, many modern-day medical professionals believe that Van Gogh had bipolarism or manic-depressive tendancies. Some also think he had a mild case of porphyria (the disease thought to be the cause of vampire myth, in which heme absorbing parts of the blood do not work correctly, which can cause insanity). I would presume that he had bipolarism, because he had so called “attacks” which he would right about to his brother, and he painted EXTREMELY profusely between these attacks of insanity.
Didn’t Gauginlater move to Tahiti or some other tropic isle and father several children by local women? This wouldn’t rule out him being bisexual, of course, but it would certainly eliminate the possibility of him being homosexual.
Yes, but apparently they don’t want to be reminded of it.
HIJACK:
LGBT, I know. What’s the Q? Queer? If so, how is Queer differentiated from the others? I’ve always been under the impression it was more of a catchall for LGB.
NPR reported a couple months back a story close to what capybara said. That Gauguin cut off Van Gogh’s ear in a sword fight and Van Gogh immediately went into a seizure. When Van Gogh came too later he couldn’t remember what had happened. He only had Gauguin’s word that it was self-mutilation and that is what he reported to everyone.
I forgot to mention: It wasn’t proven that this is what happened, but the circumstances were reported as fitting this scenario better than any other that has come up in the past. There were also some recently translated letters from Van Gogh that show that he didn’t have any personal memory of what had happened on that fateful night.
Incidentally… the anecdote I was told included the fact that Van Gogh was epileptic and his absinthe abuse lead to his insanity by inducing seizures. Since the thujone in absinthe is a convulsant. Also, he had a special type of epilepsy which allows one to sort of “sleep walk” as opposed to seizing on the floor or such.
IIRC the master has written a column on absinthe. The levels of thujone in it are nothing as far as goofy effects on behavior when compared to the levels of alcohol in the drink, which is very, very high.
The theory mentioned in the OP is a variation on Albert J. Lubin’s claim that Van Gogh experienced a latent homosexual attraction towards Gauguin and that this caused him to cut off his ear. Obviously, such a claim is impossible either to prove or disprove.
This article discusses this as one of the thirteen different psychological explanations that have been proposed over the years. Take your pick.
I’m not really interested in this topic, but I vaguely remember having read a reference to the OP’s theory. If I remember correctly, it actually recently appeared in a book or thesis written by some scholar.
I’ll concur with that. My bottle is 75% Alcohol. It’ll screw you up pretty damn fast… and hard.
With the resurgence of Absinthe in the EU (and hopefully out from the Grey market, here in the States) there has been a spate of scientific articles written about thujone.
The gist? Modern Absinthe is no more harmfull thank drinking other Highly HIGHLY alcoholic beverages. Absinthe will not cause hallucinations. Certain brands, with high Thujone content, will cause a “Marijuana-like High”.
Absinthe’s and Pernod’s from the 1910-1920’s often contained other chemicals and such that would lead to hallucinations, sickness, convulsions, etc.
I will see if I can dig up a link…