The Failure
It may be very daring to give a gifted painter like Vincent van Gogh a place in the Institute for Brilliant Failures…During his lifetime, the impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh was misunderstood and shunned. He only sold one painting and died poor. After his death, however, he became world famous. But do you speak of a failure in this context?? Not if you assume that – at least in part – there was self-imposed poverty. Van Gogh was known as a sensitive person with a stubborn perseverance who did not like concessions and took great satisfaction from his painting.
Yet he has known many failures in his life where he himself would have liked to have achieved a different result.
The approach
A selection from the life of Vincent van Gogh:
1. In his adolescence he falls madly in love with his landlady's daughter....
2. The van Gogh family did not have it wide. To relieve the family, a job was sought and found for sixteen-year-old Vincent, at the art dealership Goupil & Cie in The Hague where his uncle is in charge…
3. Van Gogh seriously considers becoming a magazine illustrator for some time…
4. Van Gogh tries to get started as a teacher, works in a bookstore and then plans to become an evangelist in Borinage, Belgium…
5. If Van Gogh in the back of the 20 he falls in love with one of his models 'Sien'...
6. Van Gogh was constantly looking for places where he could feel at home.
7. At the age of 37, Vincent van Gogh no longer sees life and wants to shoot himself in the heart…
The result
1. The landlady's daughter's love is not reciprocated. Turns out she's already engaged to someone else. Van Gogh is going through a period of depression.
2. The art dealers were not very pleased with Vincent's social skills. Feeling this very well he became depressed again. May 1875 he was transferred to Paris. He developed an increasing aversion to the art trade, in particular of direct contact with the public.
3. Initially he was still very attracted by the image to draw for magazines and thus earn his money, and it takes a long time for him to let go of this ideal.
4. While he was working as an evangelist, he was appreciated for his great dedication to the care of the sick, but people stumbled, also here, about his poor communication skills. He would fail in the proclamation of the word and was not appointed.
5. His attempt to live with his model (and prostitute 'Sien') stranded. She also turned out to be pregnant by another man: “a pregnant woman, abandoned by the man whose child she is carrying.”
6. Van Gogh lived in various places in the Netherlands, Belgium and France looking for a feeling of home but he went on countless times in vain.
7. In his suicide attempt, he makes a classic mistake of thinking that the heart is at the level of the left nipple. He misses his heart because of this and dies 29 July 1869 from internal bleeding.
The lessons
Vincent van Gogh tried out all kinds of professions, as well as life partners and locations to build a life. That often led to disappointments, conflicts and moving on to a new place of residence. But it also led to an emotional world, a passion for his painting and an unprecedented amount of works of art of astonishing beauty. Vincent van Gogh continued to look for environments, people and a way of life that matched his emotional world. The failures have given him new ideas time and again and carried him further along inspiring environments.
Further:
In life he was largely misunderstood by his environment and his art was misunderstood. Soon after his death in 1890 however, a real 'hype' arose around Vincent van Gogh. From the moment the French critic Albert Aurier paid attention to the painter, misery ensued, poverty and misjudgment turned into riches and fame. It all came too late for Van Gogh himself, but not for heirs and other stakeholders. Two years later he was already proclaimed a genius and in 1905 was Van Gogh a legend.
The poverty that Van Gogh experienced during his life, is in stark contrast to the amounts paid for his work today. The most expensive painting is in his name: Portrait of Doctor Gachet, 82,5 million dollars and Van Gogh has his own museum.
The fact that an artist's work is misunderstood during his life but then turns into a hype within a very short time after his death also shows how relative and subjective the opinion of 'the public’ is. And how important it is to follow one's own feelings and learn from failures and adversity.
Author: Editorial Institute of Brilliant Failures
Sources, o.a.: Royal Library, Cover
