Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Vincent Van Gogh


First Steps by Vincent Van Gogh

I have never been a huge fan of Vincent Van Gogh's works but my interest has been peaked by reading about his life. In the past I have always thought of him as the "crazy painter" but I have since learned that his illness was progressive. The most interesting thing that I have learned about him is that, for a period, He sought after Christ:

"His father was a Protestant pastor, and van Gogh first trained for the ministry, but he abandoned his studies in 1878 and went to work as a lay preacher among the impoverished miners of the grim Borinage district in Belgium. In his zeal he gave away his own worldly goods to the poor and was dismissed for his literal interpretation of Christ's teaching. He remained in the Borinage, suffering acute poverty and a spiritual crisis, until 1880, when he found that art was his vocation and the means by which he could bring consolation to humanity. From this time he worked at his new `mission' with single-minded frenzy, and although he often suffered from extreme poverty and undernourishment, his output in the ten remaining years of his life was prodigious: about 800 paintings and a similar number of drawings."
Interesting stuff!

Shoes by Vincent Van Gogh

To read more, click here.