Robert Hughes writes in one of his essays on Van Gogh that the myth's around Van Gogh run exactly opposite to the truth. He recommends delving into Van Gogh's letters as a way to get beyond the myths and better understand both the artist and his work. Van Gogh is often given an aura of a mad genius, whose hallucinations and fits gave rise to the intense colors and patterning of his paintings and drawings. In fact, his fits (most likely due to epilepsy) were debilitating, and often kept him out o More...

Non lo conoscevo, Vincent Van Gogh. Conoscevo solo i suoi quadri, che forse non è la stessa cosa. Ma ora quante cose ho appreso su di lui, leggendo le sue lettere al fratello Theo. E quante sorprese, su pagine che pensavo solo di autocommiserazione e follia più o meno manifesta.

Quasi mi sembra di averlo incontrato nella vita, questo solitario alla perenne ricerca di amore e amicizia. La sua aria assorta, grave, segnata da pensieri come schegge appuntite.

E quasi mi semba di aver discusso con lui: More...

Such visions of beauty always impress me thus: as indecipherable equations whose symbolic properties have grown so absurd, so abstract and unreal their significance has transcended all human comprehension. They leave me cold, lonely, scornful, an inhuman taste like lead in my mouth. All too often it seems we are eager to digest the popular ideals of the day – ideals such as Sex, Peace, God, Love, Money, Race, Country, Etc. It’s as if our human evolution has reached a state of advancement so far More...

Quite pleasant.
I read the few lines concerning himself, and his most favored brother, Theo, but I couldn't muster the courage to read between the lines of his personal letters.
His letters weren't just conventional, but they were meant for his brother. Clearly if he had preferred for the entirety of the World to honorably view/read the letters, then he would have granted the dispensation.
I didn't like how his letters were just published. This is a man of secrecy. One with true talent, not just y More...

Reading Van Gogh's letters is rewarding to any artist who's interested in the creative process. As a musician, I found these letters inspiring in parts. Be warned, most of what you'll read is about money, painting supplies, and what he happened to be working on at the moment and when he expected to finish, but he will occasionally talk about his philosophies on art and his personal thoughts and troubles. Make no mistake, he was indeed a tortured individual, but he was highly read and hyper-aware More...

After more than 1,500 pages of Vincent van Gogh's letters, most of them addressed to his younger brother, Theo, a reader is exhausted by the struggles, arguments, and ultimate suicide of the creator of some of the most coveted paintings on earth, and yet elated by the triumph of art and family devotion over constant sorrow.

However depressing the life of Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890), his struggle is continually redeemed by lucid, analytical observations on art and artists as disparate as his blac More...

While reading van Gogh’s letters is a fascinating journey into the mind of the artist, it is also poignantly heartbreaking. This is an abridged version of van Gogh’s letters, almost all written to his brother Theo from the various places he had stayed from 1872-1890, Holland, Belgium, England and France.

A few decades separate his life from Hemingway’s, but I think he too had his “moveable feast”. To the painter, it’s not Paris, but the open country of southern France, in particular, Arles and St More...

Van Gogh's letters are clearly the best way to know the artist, to understand his life, but not to get into his mind and understand his work. Throughout his life, van Gogh depended a lot on his brother Theo for financial support, and their letters are most of the time about lack of money. It's very interesting to read about the artists that he admired, and understand how he was influenced at first by Millet when he started painting peasants, potatoes, peasants and potatoes, and then by the frenc More...

a treasure. a brilliant mind. a brilliant heartfelt man. big big hero. any weird pop cultural idea you have of this man will be dispelled when you pick up the first volume of his letters. he is smarter and more sensitive than you. and more Calvanistically driven to achieve his vision. his sister politely called him tedious.

half way through volume one i had to put it down, as his small shifts towards mental illness was too close to the hardship of my own brother to read on with. too hard to see More...

Next to An American Master: De kooning, this is my favorite book about(by) an artist. There are so few actual written documents left from any artist, and van Gogh was as good a writer as he was a painter. His relationship and love for his brother Theo is amazing. He is one of the few master's we can really understand because of his beautiful correspondence with Theo. I have read these letters over and over.

For every person that thinks that they know "all about" van Gogh...(you know the ones I mean), this should be required reading. He was very aware of his illness, and to read the letters written after he'd been through "a bad patch" are heart breaking. He was brilliant, truly tortured in mind, but most of all, he was incredibly brave and genuinely hopeful. He had goals and plans, and he was always trying to "get somewhere", just like us. His many notations about expenses and trying to budget his More...

Beautiful writing: vivid, idealized, with flourish here and there. Taught me more about the disciplined artist than the moody one; there was a real sense of a trajectory from the "idle," restless man to the focused, starving (money spent more on models, paints, and canvasses than bread) artist. Intriguing elisions. I became more and more interested by the silence and possibilities of Theo's letters--what rejoinders, mental (beyond the pecuniary) support, hopes, sadnesses, etc. Theo might have fe More...

I am reading Van Gogh's letters for the first time and I find that although this paperback version of a coffee table book seems voluminous, it is actually very readable and digestible.

Van Gogh wrote more than 700 letters to his brother and friends so going through them all may be a bit difficult for a beginner like me. This volume extracts the more important and interesting letters and organises them according to major phases of his creative output including:

1) the earlier years (his 20s) when More...

"Rarely are readers welcomed as wholeheartedly and intimately into the process of creation of truly great art as they are through Van Gogh's letters", writes Ronald de Leeuw in his Introduction to this magnificent new edition.Anyone familiar with the drawings and paintings Van Gogh produced during his short, intense life will discover in the letters facets of his personality suggested by his art. They will also discover a man very different from the familiar image of Van Gogh as a madman who die More...

I have never been drawn to van Gogh’s paintings, but I am drawn to van Gogh. The bits of information that I had picked up here and there over the years about this man, engendered a kind of affinity that has grown with time. I approached his letters with a sort of reverence due to their intimate nature. They offer a glimpse of a deeply spiritual soul: a man of tremendous passion and yearning who saw things with such eloquent clarity. A contemplative man given to bouts of fanaticism due to the dep More...

so great. such a rare and impassioned human being, van gogh. he was one of the last virtuous men. i listened to don mclean's song "vincent" after i read this and cried undignified blubbery tears; "the world was never meant for one as beautiful as you! why vincent, why!"

Just slap anything on when you see a blank canvas staring you in the face like some imbecile. You don't know how paralyzing that is, that stare of a blank canvas is, which says to the painter, ‘You can't do a thing’. The canvas ha More...

This is literally the best book describing the experience of being an artist that I have ever read. Not only was Van Gogh a profound and deeply symbolic painter, he was also an excellent writer who understood how to use words in the same fashion that he used paint in order to express his profound pathos and admiration of the natural world. A true artist is someone who not only observes the beauty of nature but also lives it within their experience. Van Gogh was an example of the artist as experi More...

What an amazing way to explore the creative process and artistic growth of one of art's great masters. Luckily, Vincent Van Gogh's brother, Theo, saved almost every letter he ever received from his brother and after Vincent and Theo's deaths (less than 6 months apart), Theo's wife saw that they were preserved and later published. For the approximately ten years in which Vincent was painting, he wrote to his brother almost daily and his letters provide a window into his growth as an artist and as More...

Although there are only a very few letters included, considering how many he wrote that survive, still it is a good compilation. I liked the book very much mostly because of its subject. When I went to Arles a few years ago, it was the avenue and its trees in the Alyscamps that I photographed. I wasn't so much interested in the ancient tombs. But that avenue in the fall (I was there in October) with some yellow leaves on the trees, the rest having fallen, was so beautiful. It was later, when I s More...

I wasn't aware that Gauguin was at Vincent's bedside when he passed and when I read the letter G wrote describing what happened I began to cry so hard. Not out of sadness but out of love for his dignity, passions and unwavering commitment, both artistic, social and in hindsight, political, to the infinite possibilities of art of which he humble only considered himself a forbearer paving the way for more important artists to come who would truly be able to paint the essence of all people, not pos More...

this isn't my usual type of reading, but i happened upon this when i was back visiting S&S recently and snatched it off the free book shelf.
for anyone interested in art or art history, this is definitely worth a read. van gogh was a really intelligent, contemplative, and at times cranky guy; he was definitely not crazy, just someone who, sadly, was incredibly talented but got hit with an extremely severe mental illness. it's actually pretty heartbreaking to read the story of his life at the More...

Vincent Van Gogh wrote hundred of letters to his brother Theo; his main theme, money. Van Gogh was a starving artist, no one appreciated the beauty of his paintings and drawing, so he was broke. He constantly asked or thanked his brother for money, his brother was his main supporter. These stories also also talked about his struggling life, but it was made better from the joy of painting and the occasional times with women. We see how Vincent Van Gogh lived his life, the struggles he faced, and More...

GOGH, Vincent van: „Feuer der Seele. Gedanken zum Leben, zur Liebe und zur Kunst“, ausgewählt von Ursula Michels-Wenz, Frankfurt 1990
Der Maler van Gogh war auch ein guter Schreiber, wie man aus den Briefen an seinen Bruder sieht. Diese Briefe sind in einem dreibändigen Werk veröffentlicht. Das vorliegende Taschenbuch gibt einen Auszug daraus wieder. Es ist schön, den Gedankengängen eines so großartigen Malers zu folgen. Briefe sind ja nicht für die Öffentlichkeit bestimmt und geben daher einen u More...

I like everything about this book, only about half way I am reading this at the same time as the: The Mustard Seed and Aquinas Summa some how they all relate in very interesting way. Creativity in understanding or art runs along the same lines as a spiritual quest of life. All three authors display cogent concepts towards understanding and enjoying the hidden joys of life.

I am amazed at Van Gogh's writing eloquence, clarity of thought and ability to describe his art and other artists. However, w More...

I don't know how - or if - to review this book. How does one review a life? And yet these letters are so essential, so needed. Because they tear down the myth of van Gogh, the eccentric, anguished genius and instead show him as he truly is, something infinitely more admirable - a man, a real man, who dreamt.

I have a tattered National Geographic dated October 1997 that features an article on van Gogh's life through his letters. Each time I was down, out of sorts or simply uninspired I turned to t More...

I really loved this book, which is made up of letters that Vincent wrote to his brother Theo. As his brother is an art dealer and also supports Vincent financially, they discuss art in detail (his own and that of others who are contemporary or who have inspired him) as well as literature of the time. It is such a privilege to read a book in someone's own voice, it is like meeting them and talking to them directly through over a century of time! I enjoyed his ruminations on what makes good art, h More...

Art has been one of my passions for as long as I can remember and I had always heard stories about famous painters and the lives they lived having been awfully strange and full of mental illness, so naturally this book intrigued me as a chance to see inside the life of a famous painter.

I enjoyed the beginning of the book which was written from the view point of his sister-in-law and was very informative on the life he lead and I found it interesting the various career paths that he had explored, More...

A more moving account of brotherhood is hard to find.

Vincent's devotion to his art was perhaps a maniacal undertaking. But if Vincent's brother Theo felt overwhelmed or prostrate at times under the burden of Vincent’s need for financial support, affection, and encouragement, we do not see it. And so, Theo fulfills the role of muse--and so brings Vincent to discover his potential as an artist.

This is my second reading, and I believe ten years separate my two experiences. My first experience broug More...

Van Gogh's letters are turbulent, tender, full of will, strife, love and inspiration. His letters with his brother, Theo, follow his short career as an art dealer, his attempt to teach, his short lived obsession with religion, failed romances, his career as an artist and finally his mental breakdown. That one of the greatest artists of all time could be so vulnerable and uncertain of his life allows the reader to see him or herself in van Gogh. The hopeful turn of events at the end of his life, More...

Van Gogh’s painting career was short – 10 years from start to finish. In that time, the gifted amateur became one of the most original painters of all time. But nothing about his ability to draw or paint came naturally. At every stage of its development, his art was consciously crafted, and it was only because those last, astonishing years in Arles ended in self-mutilation and suicide that he is still seen as an inspired madman. These letters reveal a different man: driven, difficult and uncouth More...