Cypresses and the Mind

Vincent Van Gogh was an artist from the 19th century born on March 30, 1853. Van Gogh’s life ended shortly on July 29, 1890 due to a self-inflicted gunshot. Due to the fact that Van Gogh’s cause of death had been a suicide, it is clear to assume that Van Gogh dealt with many circumstantial and mental torment throughout his life. Van Gogh’s life is known not only through his art but also through the letters that he sent to his younger brother Theo Van Gogh, who was an art dealer. As more information and analyses about the painter and his life are being discovered with the ongoing years, there is a question that has recently been on the rise; at what point in Van Gogh’s life did his mental health start depleting? Although Van Gogh did have certain circumstances in his early life that may have contributed to his psychological troubles, evidence shows that prominent signs are evident during his artistic career in the last ten years of his life. 

Vincent Van Gogh had quite an eerie life from the start. Exactly a year before Vincent Van Gogh’s birth, his mother had given birth to a still born baby, also named Vincent. As a result, the artist grew up near a tombstone with his own name etched upon it. Much of Van Gogh’s childhood is not known, except for the fact that his mother encouraged him to get into art, and as a result he painted and drew regularly as a child. In his growing years, he worked with his uncle for six years as an art dealer. After being released by the art dealing firm due to his “unpleasant attitude”, becoming rather judgmental and verbal towards his customers, he moved onto becoming a teacher. Months later, the school was moved to Isleworth and Vincent believed he had no future in the establishment, moving on to the idea of becoming an evangelist.  At this point, his uncle who had hope for Vincent and had been his favorite uncle, had lost all ambition for his nephew. He well able to sponsor his nephew’s art career, but Vincent seemed to have other ideas. Vincent was not able to become an evangelist due to the fact that at the time he had been too young to do so, but he became very involved with the church in various ways, reading the Bible to young children and undergoing an assistantship in the Methodist church of Richmond. Soon resigning after returning to Etten, he became a bookseller, which was one of the last jobs Van Gogh went through before becoming an artist. After going through countless jobs that he believed to have been his calling, it was safe to say that Van Gogh’s situation wasn’t very great, or in other words: “he wished to give himself to others but was constantly being rejected (“Vincent Van Gogh Biography.” Encyclopedia of World Biography, https://www.notablebiographies.com/Tu-We/van-Gogh-Vincent.html).” Vincent also lived through the disappointment of his father, who lived in constant dismay at his eldest son’s failure to succeed at the various jobs that he went through. Due to these unfortunate occurrences that the author had to deal with throughout his early life, many like to argue that these circumstances may have had a toll on his mental health, but not enough for him to do anything that would allow others to identify that he is experiencing psychological issues rather than just being affected emotionally. Even if those circumstances did affect him, he did not show major signs of mental troubles until he began to enter his art career. 

Van Gogh’s mental status is reflected greatly in his letters to Theo and his artwork themselves. In one of Vincent’s letters to Theo, letter 815, the artist speaks of the great distaste that he seems to have towards his career as an artist, writing “The more my health comes back to normal…the more foolish it seems to me …to be doing this painting which costs us so much and brings in nothing…the trouble is that at my age it is damnably difficult to begin anything else (Van Gogh, Vincent. Letter to Theo Van Gogh. 25 Oct. 1889. From Saint-Remy).” The way that Van Gogh expresses a sort of remorse and sadness due to his situation as an artist shows how his mental health was depleting during his art career and had possibly been caused by his art career as well. Colin Martin expresses in a report how in the midst of Van Gogh’s creativity, his mental state seemed to be suffering perhaps as a result, as implicitly suggested by Martin. “In just 14 months he had completed 200 paintings and 100 works on paper, in a burst of creativity and confidence. But in December he had his first breakdown and severed the lower lobe of his left ear and was admitted to Hôtel-Dieu Hospital (Martin, Colin. “Vincent Van Gogh’s Life and Work through His Letters.” The Lancet, vol. 375, no. 9715, 2010, pp. 629–630., doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(10)60253-x.).”  During the artist’s time in the hospital, he also proceeded to produce 150 paintings and many more drawings in the meantime as well, even during his relatively devastating situation. This shows how Van Gogh’s psychological issues and creativity seem to work on par with one another. 

The post-impressionist artist didn’t seem to be affected in terms of his artwork production. His artwork itself seemed to be changing very greatly in terms of the visual expression in itself, which can be interpreted as a reflection of his own emotional conditions. “His colors lost the intensity of the Arles period: yellows became coppers; reds verged toward brownish tones. His lines became restless. He applied the paint more violently with thicker impasto, the application of thick layers. Van Gogh was drawn to objects in nature under stress: whirling suns, twisted cypress trees, and surging mountains. In Starry Night (1889) the whole world seems engulfed by circular movements (“Vincent Van Gogh Biography.” Encyclopedia of World Biography, https://www.notablebiographies.com/Tu-We/van-Gogh-Vincent.html).” Van Gogh continues his art career with grave visual changes, including in one of his letters to Theo where he speaks on a slight yellowish hue that has developed in his own sight, which some may have believed to have been from consumption of absinthe, a chemical that Van Gogh was known to have consumed but not consumed enough to be affected in terms of sight, writing “many subjects here are exactly like [those in] Holland in character, the difference is in the color. There is that sulfur-yellow everywhere [that] the sun lights. (Van Gogh, Vincent. Letter to Theo Van Gogh. 15 May. 1888. From Arles).” Vincent had a great attachment to colors and the color yellow especially, seeming to want to make that color his own in a way as he wrote “The more ugly, old, vicious, ill, and poor I get the more I want to take revenge by producing a brilliant color, well arranged, resplendent. (Van Gogh, Vincent. Letter to Wilhemina Van Gogh. 9 September 1888. From Arles).”

In the time period that Van Gogh lived in Arles, his art had been flourishing with vibrant colors and throughout the period that he lived in Saint-Remy and that he had gone through various attacks (seizures, emotional/psychological reactions to certain situations) his colors became more muted and so did his form of expression. After these periods came the Auvers period towards the end of his life, where the blue in his paintings became slightly more vivid; being described as mysterious and flickering, but not compared to the vibrancy that it contained during the beginning of his career. This may be reflecting the idea that around the Auvers period, Vincent’s art career had been gaining leverage which seems to have been a large contributor in his mental state shown by the correlation of his artwork and his expression through his letters to Theo. This strange color arose in his last few works of art before he ended his own life, and with the artist’s expressive ways this can be interpreted as a form of conveying his will in life, for art, or for anything of that matter beginning to burn out like a flickering light and thus leading to the end of his life. 

Vincent seemed to be well aware of his mental state as well and how it connected to the way that he performed as an artist. In another one of his letters to Theo, letter 650, he states “The more I become dissipated, ill, a broken pitcher, the more I too become a creative artist in that great revival of art of which we’re speaking…I say to myself that that doesn’t have to do with art, but with me, that the only way for me to regain self-confidence and tranquillity is by doing better. (Van Gogh, Vincent. Letter to Theo Van Gogh. 29 Jul. 1888. From Arles).” The form that Van Gogh speaks in this letter within his Arles period or what seems to be his period of flourishment seems to show how hopeful and motivated he felt towards his art career that Theo helped him with as an art dealer. Letter 902, Van Gogh’s last letter, his tone changes significantly towards his position. “I’d perhaps like to write to you about many things, but first the desire has passed to such a degree, then I sense the pointlessness of it…As for myself, I’m applying myself to my canvases with all my attention, I’m trying to do as well as certain painters whom I’ve liked and admired a great deal. What seems to me on my return – is that the painters themselves are increasingly at bay. (Van Gogh, Vincent. Letter to Theo Van Gogh. 23 Jul. 1890. From Auvers).” In this final letter, he seems to express how he feels his efforts as an artist are pointless, no matter how hard he tries. He seems to speak about how he has lost his motivation to the fact that he now recognizes the pointlessness in his efforts. In comparison to his earlier letter, his mental health and self reflection has dissipated a great deal, seeming to lose the motivation for the very thing that the last years of his life revolved around-which may have possibly been the reasoning behind him deciding to end his own life. The artist also conveys through these letters the way that his mind and his willingness towards his art cooperate with one another, as his motivation allows him to continue doing art but the lack of success that he is having as an artist is what is causing him to lose confidence in himself as an artist. 

There has been a great concern from researchers that Vincent may have also felt himself to be a burden to his brother. Theo had been the provider to Vincent for all his art materials, sustaining him in terms of everything that he needed to create . Though, with all this production of art came nothing in return. Vincent must have felt it to be pointless for his brother to be spending money on paintings that are unwanted. In Van Gogh’s final letter, a draft of the last letter actually received by Theo found on his body on the day he shot himself in the stomach, he had written “At a moment when things are very strained between dealers in paintings by dead artists, and living artists. Well, my work to me, I risk my life on it, and my reason has half foundered – all right – but you are not one of those dealers in men, as far as I know, and you can take sides, I find, truly acting with humanity, but what is the use? (Van Gogh, Vincent.  Draft of Letter to Theo Van Gogh. 29 Jul. 1890. From Auvers).” Through these words, Vincent seems to be expressing this idea that art dealers like his brother are wasting their work trying to sell the art of artists both dead and alive, and he does not see his brother as the same as other art dealers and should instead resolve to only focusing on one side of the two. Seeing as he wrote this letter before committing suicide, he may have believed that his brother should be focusing on selling the art of living artists, ending his life so that he, in the artist’s mind, would no longer be a burden to his younger brother. This section in the draft was not actually written in the letter that Theo had actually received, possibly not wanting to express the reason why he actually decided to end his life and make his brother feel guilty.

There has been a great amount of analyses of different elements of Vincent Van Gogh’s art such as the different compositions of the same item, the brush strokes, etc. In both starry 

 

night (1889) and Cypresses (1889), Van Gogh paints Cypress trees in very different ways, though he painted both within the same month while he had been in the psychiatric ward. In a video analysis by Corin Tschoepe, she analyzes both of these paintings, stating “…in Starry Night you know it’s dark, it’s kind of reaching into the sky almost like a claw versus in Cypresses it’s beautiful and lush and green and it doesn’t have the same pointiness and peaks. We also have in Cypresses you’re directly on top of the scene you’re very close to it, it’s almost a tactile relationship to nature…we also have overall differences in color 

schemes. Though Cypresses is muchbrighter, you have this like daytime versus night time…the Starry night tends to reinforce the artists sense of isolation whereas Cypresses is about living life in the moment. The Starry Night seems to say that for the artist life is elsewhere (Tschoepe, Corin. “Modern Art and Mental Health 3: Vincent Van Gogh” Youtube. 22 Nov. 2016. 19 minutes, 9 seconds. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nF7Glus5SRg). ” Tschoepe is expressing the different emotions conveyed through the different depictions of Cypress trees shown in each painting and how they differ from one another, also mentioning how people would relate these differences to the artist having bipolar disorder or anxiety and depression disorders. Tschoepe also analyzes Van Gogh’s The Church at Auvers(1890), which he had created within the last few months of his life. She states “…the use of acidic tones that are slightly greenish and slightly yellow as well as the darkness of the church also alludes to the impending mental disquiet that would eventually erupt within Van Gogh and lead to his suicide.” In these words Tschoepe is expressing how Van Gogh’s mental turmoil is shown in this painting by the colors and shadows. 

Van Gogh’s mental illness was declared to be epilepsy within his lifetime, though the artist was never treated for it. The idea of epilepsy came from the idea that the illness runs in the family from his mother’s side. Van Gogh seemed to greatly trust the diagnosis, writing “Our neurosis….(is)…a fatal inheritance (Van Gogh, Vincent. To Theo Van Gogh. 4 May. 1888. From Arles).”  A more modern hypothesis of Van Gogh’s possible illness is temporal lobe epilepsy. Temporal lobe epilepsy would explain his episodes, hallucinations, and the periods in between of stability, though Vincent’s periods of stability does not match the amount of time that a person with Temporal lobe epilepsy would usually have, and this epilepsy would not explain his gastrointestinal complaints, though his alcohol abuse may account for that. 

The diagnosis of manic-depression is the most accurate diagnosis in terms of the systems that pertain to the illness and Van Gogh’s actions. The letters of Van Gogh depict bursts of activity where he painted furiously, did not eat properly and barely took care of himself, and he only found relaxation with “a lot of drinking and heavy smoking (Van Gogh, Vincent. To Theo Van Gogh. 29 Jun. 1888. From Arles.).” Vincent has referred to moods that can be interpreted as depressive episodes. “My brain is still feeling tired and dried up, but this week I am feeling better than during the previous fortnight (Van Gogh, Vincent. To Theo Van Gogh. 28 Oct. 1888. From Arles.).” He also suffered from prolonged periods of exhaustion after painting, and seemed aware of the idea that his substance abuse may have contributed to the complications that had been occurring, writing in a letter that his second attack, in contrast to the first, seems to have been caused by an outside factor rather than from inside himself. Bipolar affective disorder, which serves some connection to manic-depressive disorder, has been proven to be linked with creativity and may be an indicator as to why Van Gogh’s emotions worked so closely in terms with his art. He dealt with suicidal thoughts during his period in Arles, writing in a letter that if he were to not have the friendship and connection that he did with Theo, he would have resorted to committing suicide. It has been said that Van Gogh’s attacks had not been due to his illness, but they had actually been caused by thujone, a chemical prominent in absinthe. 

Vincent Van Gogh is known for being the artist who cut off his ear, or more accurately cut off a piece of his ear. In Arles, Vincent cut off a piece of his ear and took it to a woman in a brothel, or in other words, a prostitute. There has been speculation that the woman might have possibly been an ex-girlfriend of some sorts. It was Van Gogh’s first crisis in Arles and the event received great attention and accusations of madness towards the artist. Van Gogh stated in various letters that he actually had no recollection of the event, as well as no recollection of another attempt at self-mutilation in Amsterdam during 1882 after keeping his hand in a flame – “Let me see her for as long as I can keep my hand in the flame.(Van Gogh, Vincent. To Theo Van Gogh. 14 May. 1882. From The Hague.).”-occasioned by an attempt to win the heart of his widowed cousin. Van Gogh had been told by one of his psychologists, Dr. Rey, that self-mutilation is normal in epileptics and that the psychologist even had a patient who mutilated his own ear as well. Medical records show no evidence of sorts, so one can only say that Dr. Rey told Van Gogh to console him and to quite possibly erase any doubt that Van Gogh may have had of his diagnosis of him having epilepsy. Seeing that in the artist’s self portraits around the time of the incident he seems to have a clean shaven beard, it has been hypothesized that when he cut off his ear, he may have suffered a seizure or hallucination while shaving, thus cutting off his ear. 

On July 27, 1890 Vincent Van Gogh shot himself in the stomach with a borrowed revolver and returned to his room, dying two days later on July 29. Van Gogh expressed in various moments to Dr. Gachet and through his letters that he does not mind the idea of it, describing death in a rather symbolic way. “Perhaps death is not the hardest thing in a painter’s life. For my own part I declare that I know nothing whatever about it, but looking at the stars always makes me dream, as simply as I dream over the black dots representing towns and villages on a map. Why, I ask myself, shouldn’t the shining dots of the sky be as accessible as the black dots on the map of France? Just as we take the train to get to Tarascon or Rouen we take death to reach a star. One thing undoubtedly true in this reasoning is that we cannot get to a star while we are alive any more than we can take a train when we are dead. So to me it seems possible that cholera, gravel, tuberculosis and cancer are the celestial means of locomotion, just as steamboats, buses, and railways are the terrestrial means. To die of old age would be to get there on foot(Van Gogh, Vincent. To Theo Van Gogh. 9 Jul. 1888. From Arles.).” Van Gogh’s art gave a colorful scripture of the emotions that went on inside of the artist’s brain, and his letters allowed his life and his mind to be discovered. Together, they allow for people to give Van Gogh and his mind the recognition he thought he would never receive.