07/28/2024
“The sadness will last forever.” Those were the final words of Dutch Post-Impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh when he died at thirty-seven. He suffered through his life not just from mental illness, but poverty, malnutrition, alcoholism, and insomnia. His tortured genius made it onto over two thousand works of art, but he would not see commercial success in his short life.
--On This Day in History S**t Went Down: July 27, 1890--
Van Gogh was born to an upper-middle-class family and was fond of drawing as a child, but would always struggle as an adult. He drifted across Europe as a traveling art dealer, spent time as a Protestant missionary, and eventually moved back in with his parents and was supported by his younger brother after being such a financial failure.
In 1886 he moved to Paris, where he met and became friends and roommates with fellow artist Paul Gauguin, who influenced Vincent’s work. The story of the ear is that he had a fight with Gauguin with a razor, and in a rage severed off part of his own left ear.
There has been both armchair psychiatry and fierce medical debate about Van Gogh’s mental health. He has been posthumously “diagnosed” with everything from bipolar disorder to epilepsy to schizophrenia to syphilis to fu***ng sunstroke. He was subject to psychotic episodes and delusions. He forgot to eat and sleep, he drank heavily—being a big fan of absinthe—and ignored both his physical and mental health.
One indication of the artist having bipolar disorder is that most of Van Gogh’s massive amount of work was done in the final two years of his life; he painted constantly, obsessively focused on his art, possibly due to being in a manic phase. Research has also shown a link between BD and creativity. It is a common disorder that has affected and still affects many artists, including Kurt Cobain, Demi Lovato, Nina Simone, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Russell Brand, Carrie Fisher, Jimi Hendrix, Sting, Kanye, Mariah Carey, and possibly Edgar Allen Poe.
The contribution of bipolar disorder to suicidal behavior is considerable. On July 27, 1890, life became too much for Vincent to endure. Although some claim he was murdered, it is generally accepted that he shot himself in the chest with a revolver and died two days later.
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