Van Gogh is not enough to talk about the soul without experiencing human suffering

Mark Twain had a saying:

There are two most important days in life, one is the day you are born, and the other is the day you know what you are living for.

On the day we were born, we had life.

The day we know why we are alive, our souls have life.

In 1880, at the age of 27, Van Gogh finally knew what he was living for, and he wanted to be a painter and devote all his passion to painting.

This is a career with an uncertain future, Van Gogh in his twenties, although he has achieved nothing, has no career, no money, and no girlfriend, but his parents still do not approve of Van Gogh's painting, in their opinion, it is already very shameful to have no money, and if he does not do his job, it is simply an unforgivable sin.

However, Van Gogh had no hesitation, he had to be a painter.

Instead of doing things you don't like, you should devote yourself to the things you love and live this life steamily, which is the best love for life.

In 1853, the painter Van Gogh was born in an ordinary pastor family, and his father was honest and dutiful, doing his own job, conveying God's will, and supporting his family.

This honest man also has something special about it, he will say to the children, you should treat me as a friend.

The mother is a traditional woman, who abides by the traditional rules, in order to maintain decency, she pays almost all her efforts, she obeys the rules, binds the children to death, and tries to inject her thoughts into the souls of the children.

In the traditional mother's view, if a person lives in poverty, it is a shame on the family, so she taught her children from an early age not to associate with the children of poor families, but to find a way to associate with the children of the upper class.

She also thinks that a good child should also understand ** and art, and decorate life with art, so she let the children learn to Xi and paint.

In such a family full of rules everywhere, Van Gogh lived a very irregular life.

He was a strange child, unlike the children of the family, Van Gogh was extremely quiet, did not like to play with his younger siblings, was silent, and often probed his brain to see the outside world, or walked around the fields.

All in all, the young Van Gogh was challenging his mother's deep-seated worldview.

His face was covered with freckles, and his lower lip was always pouting, as if to convey his disdain for the world, and when he saw a stranger, he drooped his head and shook it a few times from time to time.

He is not big, but he has a big temper and a withdrawn personality, no one can figure out what he is thinking, in the eyes of his younger siblings, this is a strange brother, which is scary.

How weird was Van Gogh?

If he accidentally falls, he will sulk all day long, and without saying a word, he seems to blame the earth for being crooked.

He often lost his temper, once his grandmother came to the house, and happened to meet the angry Van Gogh, no matter what he said, his grandmother gave him a slap, so that Van Gogh did not open his mouth for three days.

Ever since he learned to write, the pen in his hand has never stopped, and he has been writing non-stop, even if he can't write, he is constantly drawing.

But no one knows what he writes or paints, he just enjoys the process of writing and drawing.

He's been on his toes :

It's either a big fight or it's going to die.

Perhaps, he still doesn't understand that life is short, just swayed by certain concepts, but he already knows that life is only once, and it should not be wasted easily.

And the best way to cherish life is to live happily.

Van Gogh fell in love with writing, writing, and drawing.

When he was eight years old, he painted a picture, and when he was done, he showed it to his mother, who saw that the boy was really good, and he painted decently, and she praised her son.

To the mother's surprise, her son was not happy, but silently tore the painting off.

Strange and not only that, once he made a small figure, so vivid that everyone praised it, but Van Gogh turned around and threw the work on the ground and shattered it to the ground.

Perhaps, he felt, these works were just the beginning and should not be praised.

As he said years later

"As long as artistic inspiration does not accumulate and flow, all works are ridiculous. ”

Van Gogh's strange behavior is incomprehensible, and his parents can't understand him, thinking that he is the most difficult child in the family to deal with.

Nature, however, understood Van Gogh.

Nature is always silent and silent, but all human emotions can be accommodated, even the short-tempered Van Gogh will calm down when he walks into nature.

He would spend hours watching the flowers to see how they bloomed, and he would spend hours watching a given insect in production to see how it was changing, and he would quietly watch the nest and observe how the birds built their nests.

There were many things that attracted Van Gogh to nature, and he could watch water insects crawl across the water, and he could watch them for hours.

Moreover, he had all sorts of ways to catch water bugs, often playing dirty, which made his mother angry, and he caught the bugs and named them.

Sometimes, when the sparrow flew by the door, Van Gogh would run with the sparrow through the field, and he knew the Xi of the birds, and he knew the names of the various birds and where they lived.

Van Gogh's behavior made his younger brother Theo admire, in Theo's eyes, his brother was simply a god, and Theo was Van Gogh's little fan brother.

This worship lasted a lifetime.

Van Gogh loved to go to the wilderness, no matter what the weather, whenever he wanted to go, he went, fearlessly.

Even though it was raining heavily, he wouldn't go home.

One night, in the midst of a torrential rain, Van Gogh disappeared into the wilderness, and his parents were so worried that he would fall into the hunter's trap that he was anxious, Van Gogh came back, soaking wet.

For Van Gogh, it was love.

But in the eyes of others, Van Gogh is a wonderful, different, maverick.

However, a person is not in sync with his companions just because he sees something different.

At home, Van Gogh was a weird child in the eyes of his parents.

At school, Van Gogh was a strange student in the eyes of his teachers and a strange student in the eyes of his classmates, he was unsociable, often fought with his classmates, and did not abide by the school rules.

The teacher said that this was a bad student and difficult to discipline, so he complained to Van Gogh's parents, but the parents had nothing to do with Van Gogh, so they could only educate him, and then kept saying apologies to the teacher.

This kind of thing kept repeating itself, and Van Gogh was dropped out of school.

The parents couldn't stand it anymore and felt that their son was a problem child, and they tried to correct the child's mistakes and his strange and unseemly Xi, so they hired a tutor to teach Van Gogh Xi poetry, Xi to draw, and let him learn Xi religion, hoping that God would give him a new heart.

However, God did not purify Van Gogh's mind, his Xi remained, his parents sent him to boarding school, where he also grew up strangely.

The teacher told Van Gogh about the ideas of Impressionism:

"Drawing an object gives an impression rather than the object itself".

"For example, if a painter paints every plaster of lime on every stone, he is a great departure from the spirit of art: he is a bricklayer at best. ”

Van Gogh graduated from boarding school in 1868.

At this time, Van Gogh, at the age of fifteen, returned home and began to lie flat, spending time in the fields and wasting time in the bedroom.

In the mother's eyes, the child was simply hopeless.

Van Gogh's approach made his mother feel very ashamed, because she hoped that Van Gogh would make money and be a positive person.

So, Van Gogh became an art dealer and started selling paintings.

His Xi ability is very strong, and it didn't take long for him to get acquainted with all the work and clearly remember all the paintings in the shop, the boss said

This young man has a bright future.

After work, Van Gogh had the opportunity to go to the art museum to see the paintings of famous artists of the past dynasties, and in his spare time, he studied at home.

The more you read, the more power you have to be yourself.

However, seeing that many people don't understand beauty and only work for money, Van Gogh is very distressed, he wants to recommend those truly valuable works of art to customers, but those customers, who do not have the ability to appreciate beauty, turn a blind eye to Van Gogh's recommendation, and instead favor those worthless "decorative paintings".

Van Gogh was uncomfortable and difficult to accept, and sometimes he argued with his clients and was complained about.

This is the way things in the world, and it is not that good intentions are rewarded.

The easiest way to live in life is to go with the flow, and the hardest way to persist in life is to become yourself.

In 1873, Van Gogh transferred to London.

Life is very boring, but he grows flowers in a rented house to make life look more beautiful, he keeps reading, he keeps learning Xi, he wrote to Theo

If you want to have a lot of knowledge about painting, you have to do a lot of hard work. You should go to art museums as much as possible to visit and appreciate, you should walk often, and you should love nature, which is the way to further understand art. People who truly love nature can find beauty everywhere.

However, he became more and more lonely, and he felt that the job was becoming more and more meaningless.

This is not the life he wants.

But at this time, he fell in love with a girl, and for this girl, he worked harder and dressed himself carefully, so when he looked in the mirror, he found that he was a little ugly.

He gave the girl the most beautiful work he painted, and confessed violently:

I love you with all my heart, and I will only be happy if you are my wife.

He originally planned to be a good man and work hard for the sake of the girl, but he has already received two raises a year, and he is willing to grieve his soul for love.

Now, love is gone, and his motivation to work hard is gone.

He sadly found that most people in the world, in order to earn money, do boring work, the more they live, the more numb they become, but his work has to deal with such people.

The more he hates people, the more he likes nature, he walks aimlessly, paints as he pleases, and feels the bondage and freedom of life.

I've found loneliness because I'm in a crowd.

I felt free because I was gone

Loneliness is sometimes a strength, and gregariousness is sometimes cowardice.

For work, although Van Gogh has tried his best to endure it, there are still too many things that he can't bear, and he is hopelessly lonely, but the world is still noisy.

Van Gogh tried again to sell valuable paintings, but the customer not only did not listen, but felt that Van Gogh's recommendation was just a piece of.

The customer was furious, Van Gogh was complained again, and the boss said earnestly, as long as you can get money, do you care if it is valuable?Money is God!

Van Gogh retorted, but only refuted to himself, he said: How can we ** worthless things for usury?

He thought of the phrase:

A person who can give up his desires can be clean and honest. To live, people must not only be an honest and happy person, but also do some noble things, and not be bound by vulgar life.

Van Gogh went to sell books, neither very hard nor derelict in his duties.

However, his soul once again told him that life shouldn't be like this, that it wasn't what he liked.

But what to do?

He felt that in this world, there was a lot of suffering, so he should be a pastor and spread the gospel of God.

He went to the hardest places, worked with those who were suffering, and when he came back, he was covered in dirt and sat and preached.

However, he found that the suffering in this world was more profound than he had imagined, and when he came home in the evening, he still had delicious bread, while the others might not even have anything to eat.

Van Gogh felt that God was **.

So, he felt that he was also **, he gave up his good place to live with the most miserable people, however, everything did not get better, he couldn't help these people, and God couldn't help these people.

It wasn't what he wanted, and he left again.

The hardest thing to find in life is ourselves, we go around and around, and in the end we are all trying to return to ourselves, but many people walk and forget the way back.

Going around and around, nothing can be accomplished.

Van Gogh became a loser in the eyes of the world, he had no money, no love, he fought hard, only to keep his fragile soul.

He became a vagrant, and even his family looked down on him, and his mother even said that living like this was an affront to all noble social traditions.

Life is chaotic, he lives on the help of his family, he can't even eat, he can't eat the last meal, he can't eat the next meal, and he can only be half full every day.

However, he didn't want to go out to work, he felt, boring.

Theo advised him:

"Brother, you have to change your lifestyle. ”

He said:

I want to make my life better, don't you think I've been working it?It is human nature to pursue a better life than the current one, but if you change yourself in order to pursue this goal, wouldn't you belittle yourself?

His soul longed to paint, and he decided to heed his soul's call to become a painter with an uncertain future.

At this time, Van Gogh was twenty-seven years old.

In 1880, Van Gogh knew why he was alive and wanted to paint.

But he didn't learn systematically, everything had to start from scratch, fortunately, interest is the best teacher, love is the best teacher, he saved money, bought painting supplies, and began to paint.

He told his father that he was going to strive to become a great painter, that this was his last choice, and that he would never give up painting again.

He announced to his younger brother:

From now on, I will no longer stand in front of nature as before, just staring blankly.

Nature is elusive, but I have to try to catch it. Now, I'm getting into this state.

He fell in love with a widow again, and took people out to sketch every day, which was his happiest time, but when he confessed, he directly scared people away, and the woman shouted while running:

"I'll never love you, I'll live my life alone. ”

Life is originally a play, and excessive performance will only hurt oneself.

Learning to paint is difficult, emotions are difficult, and life is also difficult.

Van Gogh learned to paint, but still hopelessly lonely, he met a woman in her thirties, fell in love with this woman, and the two lived together as husband and wife, in exchange for a blank eye around him.

However, in order to paint, it is impossible for him to live an ordinary and stable life.

He left the woman to find the difficult way to paint, and he told Theo

I expect that in the future, I will have six to ten years to paint, and it will not be a great thing for me to live a long life or die young.

He fell in love with a girl, but the girl's parents felt that they would never be happy with Van Gogh, and forbade the girl to meet Van Gogh.

At this time, Van Gogh's feelings were in a mess, and his life was a mess.

However, the more difficult life became, the more energy his art could gain, he painted better and better, and artistic inspiration erupted.

Still life of straw hat and pipe, still life of casserole and clogs, the most representative paintings of the first half of his life, were created.

In two years, he painted more than 200 paintings, however, none of them could be sold for money, and none of them were satisfactory to him.

So, after painting "The Potato Eater", Van Gogh went to Paris, the capital of art.

For the sake of art, he traveled again, and the road of life was long, but the road of truth was further joyful.

In 1886, Van Gogh was in his thirties and had not yet made a dime from painting.

If it weren't for Theo's support, he would have starved to death.

This year, he took the money given to him by his brother and went to Paris to attend an art school.

Van Gogh is not a normal person, he is dressed strangely at school, coupled with a haggard face, he looks poor and sour, and most importantly, he is extremely stubborn, and he is a student who gives teachers a headache.

In Paris, Van Gogh visited exhibitions whenever he had the chance, which allowed him to see the works of Gauguin, Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, among others.

At this look, Van Gogh was struck, and he felt that he was worthless.

He began to wonder if he could become a painter, and he complained to his brother, who encouraged him

Your work is very good, unique in the world, and you are your own.

You've got a keen eye and a hand that is good at drawing, and now all you need to do is brighten up your color palette.

Van Gogh visited Gauguin's studio, Van Gogh saw the works, impacting his outlook on life, Gauguin proudly said that except for George Seurat, he looked down on everyone, however, George Seurat's works, no one cared.

The quality of a work cannot be measured by the degree of popularity.

The acquaintance with Gauguin and others was the beginning of a revolution for Van Gogh, and since then, the colors on his drawing board have become brighter and more intense, and the sunlight in his pen has begun to become as dazzling as fire.

Views of Paris

The Mill of Bruetfen in Montmartre

Vases with poppies, hygamas and peonies

Vases with gladiolus and aster

During his year in Paris, Van Gogh's self-transformation was completely realized, and his paintings, becoming brighter and brighter, got rid of the dark colors of the past.

But Van Gogh was disappointed in Paris, a city full of desires, where people did anything to make money.

"Paris is such a quirky city. Here, people have to do their best to survive, and they can't do anything until they're tired and half dead.

Life is made up of leaving again and again, and all leaving is for the sake of meeting yourself.

Snow Scene" Field, in the endless fields of the south of France, the sun is shining, the scenery is beautiful, and a man is running to the sun like crazy, his eyes are full of tears.

In front of him, the fields formed one beautiful picture after another, and he was shocked by the beauty in front of him.

He decided to stay here and paint.

Every morning, he gets up earlier than the chickens, and before the sun comes out, he runs to the fields with his backpack on his back, his eyes are sparkling and hot, and a few sparse hairs on his head can't block the sun, he doesn't talk to anyone, he just does his own thing.

It seems that in his eyes, there are only fields, only paintings.

In the evening, he went home with the painting that had not yet dried, and the light in his eyes had fallen into the painting, so that his eyes became hollow, his scalp was reddened by the sun, and everyone who saw him said that he was crazy.

This madman was Van Gogh.

Since deciding to paint in Arles, his inspiration could no longer be stopped, as if God was communicating his will through his hands and eyes.

The most famous "Sunflowers" was painted here.

Almond branches and books in a glass

The Blossoming Peach Tree

Arles in spring, a hundred flowers blooming, Van Gogh wanted to paint all the beautiful scenes, he told his friends:

"I would reproach myself for not drawing them," and "under the blue sky, the orange, yellow, and red flowers of the sunflowers bloom in stunning costumes, and in the transparent air they look happier and lovelier than in the north." ”

"Everybody thinks I'm drawing too fast," "Don't trust them." If it's not emotion, it's not that sense of reverence for nature, what else can attract us?Sometimes, the emotions come so strong that you can't help but work, and the strokes are as continuous and coherent as a sentence or a letter. ”

"A good painting depends on temptation, but Van Gogh did it. ”

With the help of his younger brother, he rented a house, painted the exterior walls yellow, and painted all the windows green, verdant green.

Looks like a monster.

He invited Gauguin to live with him:

"I'm picking up a studio that I can use with my friends in the future, whether it's a painter or a painter who can come and work or live here. ”

Self-Portrait", alias "Les Miserables" Author: Gauguin).

After Van Gogh saw it, he was so shocked that he drew one himself and gave it to Gauguin.

To Friend Paul".

On October 23, 1888, Gauguin was invited by Van Gogh to finally arrive at the Yellow House.

For some time afterward, they visited brothels together, wandered around, and painted together.

Scene of the Green House "Night Cafe".

Sunset near Montmajour

However, despite being able to understand each other, both of them have a violent temper, and they will fight out when they disagree, and they often quarrel non-stop.

Gauguin really couldn't stand Van Gogh's irritability and agitation, he was so excited that it was frightening.

Gauguin left.

At the end of the year, Van Gogh had a complete breakdown, cutting off his own ear and giving it to a delicate girl as a gift, almost scaring people to death.

Self-portrait with an ear bandaged

Self-portrait with an ear bandaged and smoking a pipe

Since then, Van Gogh has continued to collapse, and he has continued to paint, "Iris", "Starry Night", and "The Reaper in the Yellow Ryefield", which continue to be produced.

Iris, Starry Night

The Reaper in the Yellow Rye

In May 1890, Van Gogh went to the sanatorium to receive **, but he did not put down his brush and continued to create.

He painted a portrait of his doctor, and 100 years later, the painting, titled "Dr. Paul Gachet," sold for more than $80 million.

Stairway to Auvers-sur-Oise

Dr. Paul Gachet

At the end of July 1890, Van Gogh committed suicide.

His physical body could not withstand his powerful soul, so he was going to destroy his physical body, and he was freed and did not have to suffer in the world anymore.

There is a saying:And so he died—almost smiling, leaving the world, a noble painter, full of storms in his heart, but sunny in his head. ”

Yes, his sunflowers, so bright, and his starry night, never dark.

Someone has calculated that Van Gogh painted 864 oil paintings, 1,037 drawings, and 150 watercolors in his lifetime, totaling more than 2,000.

These works were completed in less than ten years.

On average, there are three paintings in two days.

It's just insane.

The sunlight he paints is warm and hot;He paints wheat fields that are struggling towards their final ripening and blooming;He paints the vineyards of Provence with joy, romance and affection;The starry sky he paints is even more colorful than during the day.

"The more I was in my right mind, the more I felt stupid, that we were paying too much for painting and that we didn't get anything. ”

Such a life, from a secular point of view, is a life of failure, because you have come to the world for a trip, but you have not been able to enjoy life well.

However, people live in this world not just for enjoyment.

He followed his love all his life, followed his soul, painted desperately, loved hard, he did not waste his life, he did not live up to his soul.

I like a quote from Van Gogh very much:

Everyone has a fire in their souls, but no one goes there to keep warm, and those who pass by can only see the faint green smoke on the chimney and continue on their way.

People in the world are in a hurry, always passing by their true selves, but Van Gogh did not, he let the flame of his soul burn very strongly, so his life, although short, is very full.