The Van Gogh Mystery

I saw something about this on TV the other night, but thought it was probably just speculation. Then I came across this article while waiting for my social psych class to start: Van Gogh Did Not Kill Himself, Authors Claim. According to these authors who spent 10 years studying documents, they believe Van Gogh might have been accidentally died by being shot by friends, not committing suidice.

Though this can't be proved 100%, this is... REALLY fascinating to me. I mean, Van Gogh is my favorite artist. How can you not love a guy who painted this?

I LOVE STARRY NIGHT. I can't tell you why. I just do. It's like it takes on some sort of special meaning I can't quite put into words.

Van Gogh is just a fascinating guy all around. He's psychology's go-to man for an example of bipolar disorder (thought it seems the authors want to bring that into questions... Interesting). Everyone knows him as the guy who cut his ear off and sent it to a girl he liked (he did not actually do that; he did cut his ear off but he didn't send it to a girl, and it's unlikely he even did it for a girl. One theory is that he had tinnitus and that, along with whatever personal/emotional/psychological problems he was having caused him to cut it off). And his art... my God, his art...

I saw this in London. LOVE.

I always got the feeling that he was a sort of tormented artist that no one understood until it was too late. And the fact that he supposedly committed suicide made it even sadder. Like I can't even look at the painting he did of the field where ended up dying. And I hated how psychology dealt with him (though I did read a book by Kay Redfield Jamison where she did a really good job of talking about how he might have been bipolar. But then again, Jamison is both actually bipolar and a genius. So she gets it).

But if Van Gogh didn't actually commit suicide... that would some how make me feel better. Like maybe his torment wasn't that extreme. Maybe it would help remind that there's more that just tragedy in his paintings - that there's also a bit of joy, a bit of pleasure. A bit of hope.