Thus had written Theo Van Gogh in a letter to his sister after Vincent's departure from Paris to the southern city of Arles in February 1888.

In fact towards the end of his relatively short lifetime, Vincent van Gogh was well aware he had ample reasons to expect recognition, fame perhaps. So we could read from his Letter to Theo written in September 10, 1889; "I can already see the day coming when I shall enjoy a measure of success and long for the solitude and the sad life I lead here, [. . .]." (Letter 605 F)¹

Theo's doubts about whether at the pace he was making, his brother was able to hold on for "a few more years" proved to be well founded and what happened afterwards is only history now.

In my opinion, at least in his last years, Vincent had on purpose, actually delayed any kind of recognition till he conducts his glorious work to its purpose. No disturbance, no clapping is tolerated before the coda reaches its highest climaxes; the brouhaha could only begin when the work dies away in peace.

The more I look at it, the more I feel convinced that this unparalleled draftsman-colourist, master expressionist couldn't cope with universal recognition and that his humble work of a solitary couldn't match fame's turbulences. The apparently optimistic thought about the inevitable ever-closing recognition ends on a rather sad resignation tone by a: "To have success and lasting prosperity, one must be of a different disposition than I am; I shall never accomplish what I ought to have wanted, ought to have striven for."

(Letter 605)

Perhaps even his suicide is not to be sought far from dispositions. To be viewed having in mind Theo's financial difficulties, the ever-growing needs of the little godson called VINCENT, his was the weakest. Vincent's position in the natural chain of life was the indeed the most fragile of the four. More than ever, this was time for him to give up his place. Thus he had written to his brother: "You have been poor all the time to feed me, but either I will give the money back, or I will give back the soul."

Dying was a way of making the acknowledgment, and consequently the harvest all the more nearer². Likewise his seeds, the sower had to die away leaving all his canvas for the yellow sun to shine all over his wheat fields.

In a less than three years span of Vincent's departure from Paris, Theo had bitterly to address the same sister: "They say it is all for the good that he is at rest, but I hesitate to second it. Rather, I feel it is one of the cruelties in life; he was one of the martyrs who die with a smile on their lips".

The era that marks Van Gogh's discovery by both literature and the public takes roots in between the years 1888 and 1892.

In 1888, three of his works were on exhibition at Les Indépendants, two in 1889, and ten at the salon of 1890. These shows were in a way more than a mere success; this is seen in several reactions of importance, such as the great Monet's; "Your paintings in the show are very successful . . . Monet said your pictures were the best in the whole exhibition. Many other artists have spoken to me about them", read in a Letter from Theo written in March 1890. (Letter T32)

So the art of Van Gogh had begun to attract and stimulates powerful minds of writers and fellow artists and his work emerged from what could look like the typical chiaroscuro of his Dutch period. From shade to light, this was the lesson he learnt from his great ancestor, the master of "The three crosses". The tradition shall be perpetuated; Vincent's art was to be forever bound.

The first article, to my knowledge, written about Vincent was one signed: J. J. Isaacson, in the August 1889 issue of a Dutch periodical, De Portefeuille, where one could read: "Who will interpret for us, in form and colour, this great and mighty life that is achieving more and more self-confidence in our century? I know one man, a man who has gone his own way, a pioneer, struggling on in the darkest night, and posterity will do well to remember his name- Vincent."

"I hope to be able to say more about this remarkable hero, who is a Dutchman at a later date."

Isaacson (1859-1943) was one of many Dutch painters who lived in Paris. He and his friend Meyer De Haan, frequently visited Theo's Paris home (De Haan even lived at the latter's for a while), one of the rare places where one could have seen works by Vincent at that period. Isaacson is mentioned several times in the Van Goghs correspondence, the first time was in October 1888, precisely in letters (Letter 555 F) and (T1).

But Vincent's reaction to the aforementioned article sounds by no means favourable; it was to be read in a letter to Theo in October 1889:

(Letter 611 F)

Besides Theo's apartment, one place where paintings by Van Gogh could have been encountered at that date was "Father" Tanguy's shop. The latter sold brushes and colours to painters, often on credit. But his clients, Vincent amid, were often artists who couldn't afford to pay and who over and over again gave paintings in return. By all means "father" Tanguy was the man, kind enough to lead such a strategy. When he died, Tanguy is believed to have left some twenty paintings by Van Gogh, "the selling of which should hardly have covered the burial costs of their old admirer"³.

In the windows of his modest boutique, Tanguy showed works by titanic artists such as Cézanne, Monet, Renoir and Pissarro. Today, only great museums could house canvases by artists of this rank, but these artists were almost unknown by then. Unfortunately for him, Julien-Francois Tanguy was to pass away before any of his friend artists has reached a respectable quotation, as it were to be soon after his death in 1994. "Van Gogh was the most regular host of his boutique; it was like if he lived there" wrote Emile Bernard, the artist who will play a major role in the acknowledgement of Vincent's legacy.

And it was probably there, at Tanguy's that Vincent really first sold one of his paintings. The fact is mentioned in a letter to Theo: "the portrait of their friend (it is true that I was paid 20 francs for the latter)" (Letter 506 F). And later when Theo couldn't store any more paintings at home, it was at Tanguy's Rue Clauzel that he rent a room to keep the works.

In January 1890, Vincent had six pictures hung in the seventh exhibition of Les Vingt, a Belgian version of the Indépendants.

It appears though, that a painter of the name of Henry De Groux withdrew his own work at the sight of "the revolting pot of Sunflower by Monsieur Vincent", yet appeared at the opening banquet and eventually provoked Toulouse Lautrec who even challenged him to a duel. De Groux ridiculed and excluded from the membership in les Vingt, had finally nothing but to offer his apologies⁴.

Vincent Probably knew nothing about the quarrel, but indeed he was told that he finally sold in Brussels. The painting was the red Vineyard, (F 493, JH 1662), and it went to Anna Boch whose brother Eugéne, a poet and a painter was acquainted with the Van Goghs and of whom Vincent once did the beautiful portrait (F 462, JH 1574).

The canvas was sold for 400 francs, while the asking price for the Van Goghs exhibited in 1890 varied between 200 and 500 francs.

Other places where fewer works could have been on display were the shops of Thomas, an ex wine merchant, and at Martin's, an ex bricklayer whose activity interested Theo, Vincent and Gauguin.

Perhaps the idea of the next article was Bernard's but it was Albert Aurier, the law student and literary critic to write the second important article to be published, in Mercure de France in January 1890. The article Aurier never admitted to be Bernard's idea is often referred to today, as it is believed to have influenced most of the Van Gogh critics to come. His exalted visions are revelatory to our understanding of how ideas melt in that age of our modern story, of how they poured and overleapt. Aurier wrote:

Vincent van Gogh is at once too simple and too subtle for the bourgeois spirit of our contemporaries. He will only be ever fully understood by his brothers, by those who are true artists and by those happy few among the lower and lowest of people who have chanced to escape the dogmas of the Latin School!"

But perhaps it was too late to shake his Weltschmerz. Vincent's response to Aurier's piece of writing was not much different than it was the case in the direction of Issacson's⁵:

"You may possibly realise that your article would have been more just and to my way of thinking more persuasive if in your discussion of the future of painting and colour you had dealt with Gauguin and Monticelli before referring to myself. For I assure you that the share I have or may have will remain negligible in future too." (Letter 626a)

And later wrote to his mother: "When I heard that my work was something of a success, and read the article in question, I was instantly afraid that I would have to pay; in a painter's life it is generally the case that success is the worst thing of all." (Letter 629a)

Following on the Vingtistes in Brussels, an arrangement held shortly after Vincent's death, in 1890, was organized by Emile Bernard in Theo's Paris home, at the latter's request and after Durand Ruel had "absolutely refused to expose". The poor Theo in whose indoor, paintings to be exposed hung not chronologically but according to colour, was by then a man disarmed by illness.

Then followed the show of ten works in the "Pavillon de la Ville de Paris" with Les Independants in the spring of 1891, the group of eight canvases and seven drawings to commemorate the artist at the XX, in Brussels, in February 1891. And finally the exhibition organized by Emile Bernard and Theo's widow at "Le Barc de Boutteville", accomplishing a dying wish of the last Theo Van Gogh. Well, Bernard did mount the exhibition, and that despite advices and devices by Gauguin, whom we could read in a letter addressed to him saying:

"What clumsiness! You know if I do like the art of Vincent. But given the stupidity of the public, it is absolutely out of reason to remind of Vincent and his madness at a moment when his brother is in the same case [. . .]. It is to do us harm without doing Vincent any good. Well, do it. But this is IDIOT⁶."

Of course Vincent had before failed to expose or sell at several occasions; he couldn't convince his uncles of his work, so he couldn't count on Theo showing his work at the family's Montmartre Goupil galleries. Besides that, Theo was bound with Goupil & Cie. by an arrangement that forbid him from doing any subordinate activities without having their prior consent; Vincent was well aware of that.

Paul Durand Ruel who exposed for the impressionists estimated Vincent's work to be "not worth much", even the rather favourably disposed opinion of Portier "he discerned a personality" wasn't enough to push the latter to show Vincents at his gallery. Even the works he exposed at the "Tambourin" café were liquidated with the furniture and tied up in tens parcels and then auctioned "at 50 centimes to a franc the parcel⁷".

Back to the aforementioned exhibition, Jo (Johanna van Gogh-Bonger) had put 600 francs (old currency) at Bernard's disposal. "But galleries were only a few then, and very expensive. This sum didn't permit me anything. I determined to make an exhibition, without any cost, at Le Barc de Boutteville, who precisely was my friend".

The least that could be said is that first Van Gogh exhibition was no success:

"I withdrew the canvases, the month having elapsed, without any other satisfaction than the one of having fulfilled the duty of a friend". And it seems that Gauguin had his share this time also, for he forwarded to Paris the painter de Haan, "his student and his servant", charging him to incite to silence the rare critics who could have thought of signalling this exhibition to the public⁸".

Gauguin seemed afraid, and his fear appears like something beneath the snow, like one of his coloured witchcraft dreams of dark powers, he represents in his deeply expressive, most honest acts of living, I meant his paintings.

As for her, Jo was later to be responsible for saving nearly half the paintings we know, perhaps the whole legacy of the today Amsterdam "Vincent van Gogh museum". In the facts, we know that, six months after Vincent died, the ailing Theo himself departed this life following four months of suffering. Paintings and drawings in Theo's Custody went to his widow, who on her part determined to expedite the ensemble of the work to Holland. Despite the friendly advices to get rid of "these crust", Jo's determination was to prove victorious. More exactly, half victorious, for she succeeded in saving nearly three hundred works, selected by her brother André, who sold the rest for 200 francs. Assuredly we aught to find a better description for this act of SELLING, but it is in this way that some three hundred of original Van Goghs ended on the streets, purchased by bric-a-brac traders, to be resold later as repainting canvases or even to serve to less conventional means⁹.

It is acknowledged today that it was Jo who orchestrated the Dutch discovery of Van Gogh. In this context was published the first essay written about Van Gogh in the Netherlands, by the author-physician and psychiatrist Fredrick Van Eeden.

In expressive coincidence, Vincent had known, read and highly estimated at least one of Van Eeden's books, which he even linked with his own Berceuse series.

In the facts, Theo's wife to examine her mentally disturbed ailing husband had called Van Eeden for a consultation. It was there and then, in autumn 1890, that Fredrick Van Eeden was confronted for the first time with Vincent's work, which appeared to him as " . . . a tremendous expression of the uttermost despair", and its author to be of a sort "which the lower classes call mad, but which people of our kind call holy"¹⁰.

So fundamentally contested may this declaration appear to us; the image of the holy and mad has been perpetuated through time, disarming our literary and pseudo scientific escapism, so to prove our understanding of the mighty and the sublime to be sketchy and embryonic.

Another Dutchman, who was to play a role in introducing Vincent's work to the public, was Johan de Meester. The latter wrote articles in Nederland, March 1891, the Nederlandse Spectator, 1892,two in the Nieuwe Rotterdamse Courant of March 5^th and 13^th 1892 and De Gids of May 1^st 1911 [p. 285].

Signalling Van Gogh to a wider public was still in its first phase, three names were to be the most recurring in critical history; Aurier, Bernard and Octave Mirbeau.

Besides his primordial role in organizing the first exhibitions, Emile Bernard Later published the letters to him by Vincent and wrote many articles about the latter, a paragraph on Vincent artistry written in1893 in Mercure de France announces:

"He is a painter and a painter he remains; should he put, still young, Holland in the darkness, should he paint, a little older, as pointillist (divisionniste), Montmartre and its gardens or finally should he represent the south or Auvers-sur-Oise by a thick layer of furious colour, should he draw or should he not, should he be lost in patches of colours or in the deformation, he remains always a painter".

Bernard, after Theo was the second to invest in the martyrdom theme. In a letter to Aurier, after Vincent's suicide; The wounded Vincent is held to have fallen three times on his way home, three times he struggled to his feet again, to fulfil his mission and die at the inn. Three times, in reminiscence of Christ's suffering on his way to his cross.

Uttering such claims shouldn't sound really strange, for Bernard himself was "permeated of all manner of vague religious ideas"¹¹, and it should also be read having in mind that Vincent's bedside book for years was besides the bible, none but "The imitation of Christ" by Thomas à kempen.

Van Gogh was in fact, the man who a decade earlier had cudgelled his back, moved about with only a shirt to protect him from the freezing cold, slept on the stone floor while his bed was left untouched, all by imitation of Christ and his apostles.

Only a man of his stature could pretend to such a destiny. But, claimed without being besought, his fortune, was like the one of his first master, heavily paid, and perhaps against his own will. For his aims, at many an occasion, were interrupted by the fearful "Lama Chabaktany".

Octave Mirbeau had seen Vincent's painting at Tanguy's from as far as 1888.

He was an authoritative writer, so his pieces must have been of the most effective on those days' readers' opinions. Reviewing Van Gogh's exhibition at Bernheim's in the Figaro, Mirbeau sounds as though strident: "There is no mind more balanced than his". [. . .]. "His was a restless tormented mind, full of inspired ideas, vague and ardent, drawn perpetually towards the summits where mysteries of human life reveal themselves. One never knew what force was active inside him-whether it was the apostle or the artist; he did not even know himself. . ."

Jo was publishing the letters to Theo in "Mercure de France" and then in the Flemish "Van Nu en Straks"in 1992. It was Jo who motivated exhibitions of the works at Antwerp and Brussels. She is also assumed to have been the one to convert many Dutch writers to the Van Gogh cause, and even was undertaking an English translation of the letters herself.

Publishing the complete letters was a major step towards a better understanding of the artist's creative forces. Theo's and Bernard's were being published, but also those addressed to Van Rappard, a fellow artist who met Vincent first in Belgium when the latter was in the Borinage mining district. Their interesting and sober discussions about art took on an end when Rappard showed his indignation about Vincent's "Potato Eaters".

After 1900, attention towards Van Gogh's oeuvre began to lessen in France, Belgium and the Netherlands and apparently shifted to Germany, where young German expressionists found a spiritual father in Van Gogh. German translation of his letters published there by Cassirer were being printed in their tenth edition in 1923, only 17 years after of their first publication in 1906, while in the 1923 Netherlands, the second edition was just enough.

The Austrian symbolist writer Hugo Van Hofmanstahl made his own contribution to the evolving discussion about Van Gogh in a book published in Berlin in 1917. Van Hofmansthal declared that in 1901 he had been "as though struck by lighting" especially by Van Gogh's use of colour.

In 1921, Julius Meyer-Graefe published a novel¹² about "Vincent", which is said to have contributed in increasing the latter's popularity. The former continued to write about the latter, and it was Meyer-Graefe himself who first associated Vincent with Dostoyevski.

And furthermore Ernst Blass¹³ writes: "Van Gogh: That was for us the courage to express oneself; Nietzsche: the courage to be oneself and have one's experiences; Freud: the depth, the problems and the explosion."

Books and articles poured forth as though stirred by stimuli and reached many an apogee. Often when it is the case with good writers, when communication with the soul of a work of art or an artist is the target of writing, literature becomes similar to a variation in the order of creation of the work itself, as Vincent used to do with the unchanged theme or motif. It is the case with the arresting Van Gogh a suicide by society, a book by Antonin Artaud published in 1947, where the writer runs over all our little wits of writing about the other, especially when the other is of a nature that could only be described by the use of superlatives. Writing about an exhibition he had seen at the Palais de l'Orangerie, Artaud declares that "an exhibition of pictures by Van Gogh is always a date in history, not in the history of painted objects, but in the historic history ", and elsewhere: "There is no famine, epidemic, earthquake, war, that sweep the monad of the air, [. . .],

Tapping on superlatives Vincent would have abhorred, Artaud says: "for emerging from hell, I prefer the landscapes of this quiet convulsionary to the seething compositions of Breughel the elder or Jerome Bosch who, confronted with him, are nothing but artists where Van Gogh is simply a poor dunce endeavouring not to go wrong". And furthermore "Van Gogh shall have been the most really painter of all painters, the only who didn't want to go beyond painting and the only one who did go beyond painting¹⁵".

Comparing Van Gogh with Nietzsche Artaud adds: "The eye of Van Gogh is the one of a great genius, [. . .]. No Socrates didn't have such an eye, before him perhaps only the poor Nietzsche had this look to undress the soul, to deliver the body of the soul, to strip the body of the man, outside the ploys of the mind¹⁶."

Van Gogh touches Artaud deep into his innermost, the latter seems as if impeded by satisfaction and dazzled with deep spiritual and sensual fulfilment. His senses seem as if governed by the gay science, almost saturated. On the other hand, incomprehensive knowledge of the works, prejudices about the vocation of art have in my opinion lead the excellent writing-in-German-poet, Rainer Maria Rilke to a quite messy situation. Putting himself in a questioning standpoint regarding the meanings of the letters, the writer of the beautiful "Letters to a young poet¹⁷" risks all his earnestness. All his human experience and adequate findings are in the balance. Unfortunately, and in an obviously uncomfortable attitude, the delicate writer loses all at a go when he harshly states: "That Van Gogh's letters are so readable--that they contain so much--actually tells against him, as it tells against him as a painter (compared with Cézanne) that he wanted, knew, experienced this, that and the other, that blue evoked orange, green red; that he the inquisitive one- eavesdropping on his inner eye, had heard such things uttered within¹⁸".

Another delicate artist who falls pray to similar punishing impulses in none but the French grand artist, Henry Matisse who declares in a letter to Tériade written in 1947 and destined for publishing, that "the letters of Van Gogh do not add anything to his pictures. It is curious and that is all¹⁹". Matisse had better convince himself of the pointlessness of the act of writing in a sounder way. No matter how well had Matisse been insisting on the futility of having a double vocation of a writer-painter, his very writings were assembled by Hermann and published in 1972. Constituting a book of no less than 360 pages these instructive writings are a landmark in their genre.

After having similar problems in accepting Van Gogh's letters, and after attentively reading them, the lucid Paul Klee rushes to the encounter in his diaries noting on in 1911: "I am gaining more and more confidence in him. He was capable of reaching down deep, deep into his heart. Nobody will lightly rush past such a landmark [. . .²⁰]."

Also Comparing Van Gogh to Nietzsche, the famous critic Stefan Zweig comments: "In the garden at Arles and in the Asylum, Van Gogh painted at the same speed, with the same ecstatic obsession with light, and with the same manic creative plenitude. Scarcely had he completed one of his white-hot canvases but his unerring brush was at work on the next without pause or hesitation, without planning or deliberation. Creation had become his overriding principle and demonic clarity and speed of vision, and uninterrupted continuity".

Of course Vincent's act of cutting his ear lobe has also contributed in influencing people's idea of the "Master Van Gogh", shifting it to the "mad Van Gogh" and it certainly had its consequences relating to what is today known by "popularity", in the sense of rising the latter. As a result, bringing this delicate subject about seems to raise the chances of advertising professionals in succeeding marketing records. Consequently, any superficial approaching of this subject enhances our own chances in registering a record in misunderstanding and moron thinking.

To those interested in a valuable psychological analysis of this incident I would advice reference to the opinion of I. F. Walther and R. Metzger²¹. I for one cannot think of a better argument than the aggressive one Artaud begins his book with. Pointing out the incident that shed a lot of ink on paper, Artaud introduces his work by: "We can talk about the good mental health of Van Gogh who, all his life during, didn't burn but his hand and nothing more, for the rest, he only once cut his left ear,

In a world where everyday are eaten; baked vagina with green sauce or the sex of the new born, flagellate and put on rage²², [. . .]".

Many hundreds of books and critical surveys have for more than a century been approaching Van Gogh's work, life and writings. Uncountable arguments about his so called "SICKNESS", some claiming that he was schizophrenic, others epileptic, etc., and many no less informed speak of an extremely sensitive, lucid but vigorous super HUMAN.

I have tried to pick few showcases that could easily be doubled or tripled in number, and yet not to have a complete assessment of the kind of discussions of which the name of Van Gogh has arisen like the smoky distant echo of a battle. Not to mention how deep was the influence of Vincent as a painter on generations of artists who either followed him or used his still untarnished mine of thought, his experiences and discoveries.

I have the honour to be one of his disciples, but this is another story.

It is not in our context to speak about the paintings themselves, nor on the subject of the letters, but it is due to those qualities inherent in these works, to the ardour, the deepness, honesty and generosity of their creator. It is only for these qualities that Vincent van Gogh lives and shall forever live in the minds of those who admire him and those "happy enough" to understand him.

As for the quotation, high prices Van Gogh's paintings have reached today.

The issue simply makes no part in my fields of concern. I can't see why it should be. I think it is a phenomenon to be studied by those who are concerned in the psychology of the masses, and has nothing to do with Van Gogh himself. Unfortunately, we are often confronted with false images we create about the other, a process among others upon which our civilisation has been erected. Unfortunately again!

Therefore I think it is interesting and instructive to leave the word to Vincent himself to speak about fame, about what could he have thought of the high prices his work fetches today. Assuredly among general ignorance of what is the essence of his great legacy.

(Letter W13)