Vincent: A Monument Proposal

Vincent Willem van Gogh was a Dutch post-impressionist painter who became one of the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art. In ten years he created about 2,100 artworks, 860 of which were from the last two years of his life. Ranging from landscapes, still lives, portraits and self-portraits, his paintings are characterized by his use of bold colors and his impulsive dramatic brushwork. While during his life he was not commercially successful nor recognized as an artist in the art world at the time, after his death at young age of 37 his paintings and influence reached the edges of the world.

Van Gogh was born into an upper middle-class family where he is described to be a serious, thoughtful, quiet child and in his spare time would draw. His drawing talent when he was a boy was strongly encouraged by his mother, often times Vincent’s younger brother Theo would say that their mother was the reason why Vincent had kept close to the art world. Though it does help when your family is known for producing art dealers. As a boy he was placed in a boarding school at Zevenberg where he felt abandoned by his family and wanted to be home. Two years later he was put into a middle school closer to their home in Tillburg, where he was deeply unhappy. At that school, Vincent’s passion for art took a very expressive turn and despite his art instructors philosophy being similar to that of Vincent’s impressionism art style, his profound unhappiness at the school overshadowed his lessons and he abruptly returned home shortly after.

Vincent later writes in his own words that his youth was:

“Austere and cold, and sterile”

In 2016, historians found evidence that casted a shadow of doubt over Vincent’s death by suicide. For many years it was believed that Vincent died as a result to a self-inflicted gunshot wound to his torso. However, historians as well as those with expertise in the criminal fields believe that because of the trajectory of the bullet it is nearly impossible for Vincent to shoot himself in the chest. Many historians now theorize that some of the village kids who poked fun at Vincent during his time in the village of Auvers-sur-Oise confronted Vincent while he was painting either in the field or a barn and something happened that resulted in Vincent being shot in the chest. As to why Vincent didn’t tell anyone about his murder since he survived the shot, it is assumed that due to his feelings of guilt tied to forcing his brother Theo into debt to pay for his art career and his depression, he allowed himself to die. He returned to the inn he was staying at, the Auberge Ravoux, where he was treated by two doctors but without a surgeon the bullet couldn’t be removed. Theo states that when coming to visit his brother the morning after he was shot, he found Vincent in high spirits and smoking.

Only for Vincent to die due to his untreated infection and he died in the early hours of 29 July. According to Theo, his older brother’s last words relate to his mental struggles during life and the heavy doubt and guilt he carried with him as he lived. Vincent’s last words were:

“The sadness will last forever.”

Before becoming a full-time artist, Vincent attempted a few different career paths. When Vincent was in his early teens, only a year after leaving his school in Tillburg, his uncle Cent (short for Vincent as it was a family name) gave him a position at the art dealers Goupil & Cie.

After his four years of training he was transferred to their branch in London and there he was very successful. By the age of 20 he was making more than his father, Theo’s wife who Vincent was close to said it was the happiest year of Vincent’s life. However, after the woman he grew to love rejected his feelings due to her engagement to another man, Vincent became distant and turned to religion looking for comfort. A few months pass and Vincent’s father and uncle arrange for Vincent to transfer to Paris to work so he could leave London and start over. This had the opposite effect resulting in Vincent cursing the art dealing company he worked at for their methods to get art and was fired as a result.

After being fired he returned to England to an unpaid job as a supply teacher at a boarding school. When that job had run its course, Vincent turned to his passion of religion and became a Methodist minister’s assistant. To support their son’s religious conviction and Vincent’s desire to be a pastor, his family sent Vincent to Amsterdam to stay with his uncle there and to take the theology entrance examination at the University of Amsterdam. He failed the exam and out of shame left his uncle’s house. He attempted to take a threemonth course at a Protestant missionary school near Brussels but failed that schooling as well.

Despite his efforts to become a pastor, even offering his home to a homeless man, the church did not seem him fit and believed he was undermining the dignity of the priesthood. By this time his parents were pressuring to come home and despite answering their call, his father grew tired of him within a year of him staying there and threatened putting Vincent in a lunatic asylum. It wouldn’t be until the fall of that year that Vincent

rediscovered his love of drawing and it was only through Theo’s suggestion and encouragement that he take up art in earnest. With Theo’s support, Vincent traveled to Brussels to study with a Dutch artist known as Willem Roselofs.

Roselofs persuaded Vincent to attend the Academie Royale des Beaux-Arts, and despite Vincent’s hatred of formal schools of art he attended. There he got an understanding for anatomy as well as the standard rules of modeling and perspective before later leaving to pursue art whole-heartedly.

Despite the support of his brother Theo and his brother’s wife Johanna, Vincent felt like he was a burden to them. Vincent and Theo had a wonderful relationship with each other. Vincent loved his brother and his brother’s wife and son. So much so that it tore him inside to know how much debt he put his brother into in order to buy him paints and canvases for paintings no one wanted. Many historians claim that because of this feeling of guilt Vincent developed for not “earning his share” so to speak, that Vincent sought to kill himself but never could do it out of love for Theo. However if he was indeed murdered the day he died, he may have saw it as a chance to give his brother the release he thought Theo needed.

When a few months after Vincent’s death, Theo also died. They say it was from grief by a broken heart.

College students often undergo a change of major or a change of their desired career path during their short four years at a university.

This change can happen once over the four years or it can happen ten times during one of them; despite the ability to change major while at university, it is expected of 17 years old kids in America to decide what they want to do with the next forty years of their life. Many kids who are 17 don’t really know what they want to do and while many adults like to say that it’s okay and they’ll find out in university, that is often not the case for many of them.

56%, more than half, of those currently enrolled

in college during the 2020-21 school year

say they can no longer afford their tuition.

And this is not even taking into account those with a college fund. As someone who has a college fund, I can speak from personal experience how stressful and anxiety inducing it is to change majors late into the timeline of graduation. The fact that because the pressure to get a college education and a career starts at age 17, many young adults second-guess themselves the more they grow and discover themselves during their twenties and even their thirties. I bring this issue to light to offer a connection between the struggles of being a young college student and having no idea what you want to do and second-guessing everything you do, to Vincent van Gogh’s journey to being an artist.

He was a successful man at twenty but because of his struggles with himself and his self-esteem, he lost confidence in himself and in what he was doing with his life. Even though he found a passion in art again during his thirties, he still felt guilty for his passion because of the debt his younger brother Theo was gaining as a result of his financial support to Vincent. Vincent cared deeply for Theo and his brother’s family, so much so he often thought about leaving the life of being an artist in order to not be a financial burden. But Theo wouldn’t allow him to do that. Vincent understood the struggles of feeling like a burden to someone who is helping you with your passions, something many college students feel as they travel a path many others wouldn’t because it’s not highly desired in the workforce.

Because of the understanding and empathy Vincent van Gogh shows both as an artist and as a man struggling to find his place in the world, I propose a monument to be created in his honor and in honor of those inspired by people like him, people who have nothing to lose but everything to prove.

For this monument, Vincent van Gogh will be positioned as if he is working on his newest art piece while sitting on a stone bench. On either side of him lays his bags of supplies or piles of canvas, sculpted out of the stone to be sloped slightly in order for people to sit or lay next to him and watch him work. Or even to work with him. While his board is blank of any work in progress, stone pegs on the board allows those who visit to leave behind a piece of art for the next person or even for Vincent himself. This monument is meant for like-minded creatives and those who feel a kinship with Vincent, understanding his mental struggles and offering the artist some accompaniment. As well as having that same kind of accompaniment themselves through his presence. I feel it is important to clarify that unlike many of the other statues and monuments on van Gogh, this version of van Gogh will make it obvious that he is a young man. His face is without the age of time though his eyes will have bags from long hours of work after all he is meant to reflect those of college age and create a sense of relatability. And since he was in his late twenties to early thirties when he first started to take art seriously, it would make sense to portray him as such.

The purpose of this monument is to draw people to sit alongside Vincent and to relax beside someone who understands what the mental struggle is like.

It creates a call to attention to many of the issues college students undergo without it necessarily being something super proactive. This monument will acknowledge those who struggle to find themselves and who struggle with mental stress and gives them a place to go and a place to sit with someone they know sympathizes with them. It’s not a solution in the slightest to the issue at hand but a monument is not supposed to be a solution, it’s meant to honor. This monument will honor and reward those who need to take a moment to breathe, who second-guess their purpose in life, who want to try a different path, and any other personal struggles Vincent helps them to relate to.

While I have not personally be able to walk through the campus of Mason for myself due to the pandemic going on as I am writing this, I do have a general idea as to where I would like the monument to be placed. Somewhere outside and commonly traversed by the student populous, especially those in the College of Art due to Vincent being an artist. For that reason I have indicated the path or paths where the monument can be placed that connect the College of Art Building and the Johnson Center with blue dots.

As for alternative locations, I would suggest gardens and parks. Places with a lot of foot traffic and is often visited by minds looking for something that gives them passion. Areas with a lot of color and variety is easy to get lost in and often leads to relaxation and ease of mind.

◊ United States Botanic Garden

(Washington, D.C.) ◊ Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden (Richmond, VA) ◊ New York Botanical Garden (New York City, NY) ◊ Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden (Miami, FL) ◊ Atlanta Botanical Garden (Atlanta, GA)

◊ Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Garden (Dallas, TX) ◊ Lotusland (Montecito, CA) ◊ Desert Botanical Garden (Phoenix, AZ) ◊ The Topiary Park (Columbus, OH)

Bedroom in Arles, 1888. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam Café Terrace at Night, 1888. Kroller-Muller Museum, Otterlo Irises, 1889. J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles Naifeh, Steven W.; Smith, Gregory White (2011). Van Gogh: The Life. Random House. ISBN 978-0-375-50748-9

Starry Night Over the Rhone, 1888. Musée d’Orsay, Paris Still Life: Vase with Twelve Sunflowers, August 1888. Neue Pinakothek, Munich The Mulberry Tree, October 1889. Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena Wheatfield with Crows, 1890. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

Gaelin Murphy AVT 180-D10 April 6th, 2021