1 00:00:06,932 --> 00:00:11,403 Theo, what am I in the eyes of most people? 2 00:00:22,892 --> 00:00:27,727 Just for once, everything was going right for Vincent van Gogh. 3 00:00:27,812 --> 00:00:30,042 He'd just sold his first painting 4 00:00:30,132 --> 00:00:34,284 and he'd been hailed by the critics as the genius of the future. 5 00:00:37,212 --> 00:00:40,602 He was painting like a demon, a picture a day. 6 00:00:41,932 --> 00:00:47,723 One of them, this one, Wheatfield with Crows, was a revolutionary masterpiece. 7 00:00:50,932 --> 00:00:54,368 It's the painting which begins modern art. 8 00:01:04,172 --> 00:01:09,883 Yet, within a few weeks, the man who had achieved it had killed himself. 9 00:01:14,772 --> 00:01:16,410 Now, why would he want to do that? 10 00:01:19,412 --> 00:01:24,964 All his life, Vincent had this childlike faith that his art revolution 11 00:01:25,052 --> 00:01:27,202 would be seen by everyone. 12 00:01:29,092 --> 00:01:33,449 So, was The Wheatfield a cry of anguished frustration 13 00:01:33,532 --> 00:01:36,729 that he would never realise his vision in painting, 14 00:01:36,812 --> 00:01:41,010 or was it a shout of triumph that finally he'd done it? 15 00:01:41,092 --> 00:01:46,246 And this kind of painting, turbulent, raw, overwhelmingly emotional, 16 00:01:46,332 --> 00:01:48,766 was the new art for the people? 17 00:02:25,532 --> 00:02:31,129 Ask anyone, who's your idea of the tortured artist, the mad genius? 18 00:02:31,212 --> 00:02:35,046 Chances are you'll get one answer, and just one answer, 19 00:02:35,132 --> 00:02:37,327 Vincent van Gogh. 20 00:02:37,412 --> 00:02:39,528 Sliced his ear off, didn't he? 21 00:02:39,612 --> 00:02:41,967 Well, no, actually, he didn't. 22 00:02:42,092 --> 00:02:45,368 What he did do was cut off a fleshy chunk of earlobe. 23 00:02:45,452 --> 00:02:49,240 Oh, I know, I know, that's enough to suggest he is barmy, isn't it? 24 00:02:49,332 --> 00:02:52,881 And when he eventually did shoot himself, there was bound to be a chorus of, 25 00:02:52,972 --> 00:02:55,406 ''Well, yes, he would, wouldn't he?'' 26 00:02:55,972 --> 00:02:59,567 Soft pink. Soft pink and blood red. 27 00:03:00,452 --> 00:03:02,727 Soft pink and blood red, 28 00:03:02,812 --> 00:03:06,600 soft Louis XV greens and harsh blue-greens. 29 00:03:12,212 --> 00:03:14,442 An infernal furnace. 30 00:03:33,492 --> 00:03:38,327 How would a man like that make art as stunning as this? 31 00:03:49,092 --> 00:03:52,289 What others diagnosed as mental sickness, 32 00:03:52,372 --> 00:03:55,011 Vincent thought was an illumination, 33 00:03:55,092 --> 00:03:58,607 a new vision of what art could be. 34 00:03:58,692 --> 00:04:02,002 A revelation of heaven, here on earth. 35 00:04:14,332 --> 00:04:17,130 He thought of himself as a prophet, then. 36 00:04:20,372 --> 00:04:22,488 But also, as a thinker. 37 00:04:24,332 --> 00:04:28,450 The thoughts poured themselves out in a torrent of words. 38 00:04:29,292 --> 00:04:32,409 Page after page, day after day. 39 00:04:37,692 --> 00:04:40,843 All you have to do to find the real van Gogh, 40 00:04:40,932 --> 00:04:47,121 no fool at all, but a thoughtful, observant man, is to read his letters. 41 00:04:47,212 --> 00:04:50,761 Hundreds of them, mostly written to his younger brother, Theo. 42 00:04:50,852 --> 00:04:54,527 And you'll see that intelligence burning away. 43 00:04:55,012 --> 00:05:00,291 My dear Theo, God, how beautiful Shakespeare is. 44 00:05:01,292 --> 00:05:05,080 His language and his method are like a brush 45 00:05:05,172 --> 00:05:08,289 trembling with excitement and ecstasy. 46 00:05:11,412 --> 00:05:16,691 So meet this other van Gogh, not a creature of blind instinct at all, 47 00:05:16,772 --> 00:05:18,842 but an insatiable bookworm. 48 00:05:19,292 --> 00:05:23,922 I have made more or less a serious study of Victor Hugo 49 00:05:24,012 --> 00:05:29,086 and Dickens, and recently Aeschylus and a few of the great minor masters. 50 00:05:29,932 --> 00:05:34,926 Okay, the scary one who'll buttonhole you in the pub and bang on and on 51 00:05:35,012 --> 00:05:37,731 about George Eliot and Charles Dickens, 52 00:05:37,812 --> 00:05:40,406 and you'll be backing off from the awful pong. 53 00:05:41,412 --> 00:05:45,200 Well, you do know that Fabricius and Bieder counted among the minor masters? 54 00:05:45,292 --> 00:05:47,647 Bieder? Bieder? 55 00:05:57,732 --> 00:06:01,930 So, underneath the scabby face and moth-eaten coat, 56 00:06:02,012 --> 00:06:04,606 Vincent lived the life of the mind. 57 00:06:07,612 --> 00:06:14,165 For a long time, art never came first, what mattered most was the search for salvation. 58 00:06:15,652 --> 00:06:17,483 It was in his blood. 59 00:06:17,572 --> 00:06:21,360 His father, the Reverend Theodorus van Gogh, 60 00:06:21,452 --> 00:06:24,728 was pastor in a village in the south Netherlands. 61 00:06:25,732 --> 00:06:31,011 So even when he was rescued from the Calvinist Dutch gloom by his uncle 62 00:06:31,092 --> 00:06:35,882 and sent to London as an art dealer, he's out to save souls. 63 00:06:46,612 --> 00:06:52,767 It was in the Victorian gaslight that the real Vincent started to emerge. 64 00:06:52,852 --> 00:06:56,401 Amidst the grime and grit of Disraeli's London, 65 00:06:56,492 --> 00:07:00,610 the starchy young Dutchman rediscovered Jesus. 66 00:07:02,172 --> 00:07:06,324 It is an old faith. It's an old faith and it is a good faith. 67 00:07:06,412 --> 00:07:11,247 Our life is a pilgrim's progress, and our life is, uh... 68 00:07:11,932 --> 00:07:15,049 It is an old faith and it is a good faith that our life... 69 00:07:15,132 --> 00:07:18,966 He appointed himself as a missionary to the destitute. 70 00:07:19,052 --> 00:07:24,080 And as he wore out shoe leather tramping past the dispossessed, the drunks and the whores, 71 00:07:24,172 --> 00:07:29,041 Vincent grew to despise the pygmy world of the galleries. 72 00:07:29,132 --> 00:07:32,408 What he wanted to be was a preacher. 73 00:07:32,492 --> 00:07:34,483 It is an old faith and it is a good faith. 74 00:07:34,572 --> 00:07:37,530 Our life is a pilgrim's progress, that we are strangers on the earth. 75 00:07:37,612 --> 00:07:41,844 But, though this be so, we are not alone for our father is with us. 76 00:07:41,932 --> 00:07:45,925 Our father is with us. Is with us. 77 00:07:48,652 --> 00:07:51,007 We are pilgrims, and our life... 78 00:07:53,012 --> 00:07:55,401 We are pilgrims and our life... 79 00:07:56,252 --> 00:08:00,564 So St Vincent the Good abandoned the plush red carpets, 80 00:08:00,652 --> 00:08:05,043 and set off in search of captives starved for light. 81 00:08:14,452 --> 00:08:17,808 The coal pits of southern Belgium. 82 00:08:17,892 --> 00:08:23,364 Dirt poor and, as far as Vincent was concerned, in desperate need of saving. 83 00:08:25,132 --> 00:08:27,805 The young lay preacher took his dog-eared bibles 84 00:08:27,892 --> 00:08:31,089 and his eager retriever look through mucky streets 85 00:08:31,172 --> 00:08:35,131 where women hauled sacks of coke, and did his best. 86 00:08:38,932 --> 00:08:42,607 And our life is a long walk from earth to heaven. 87 00:08:43,852 --> 00:08:46,047 A long walk from earth to heaven. 88 00:08:46,132 --> 00:08:49,169 But it still wasn't enough. 89 00:08:49,252 --> 00:08:50,571 After a trial period, 90 00:08:50,652 --> 00:08:55,248 the missionary society who paid his pittance got rid of him. 91 00:08:55,332 --> 00:08:57,892 Excessive zeal, apparently. 92 00:09:05,012 --> 00:09:09,164 But you didn't get rid of Vincent van Gogh that easily. 93 00:09:09,252 --> 00:09:12,403 He hit on a different way to preach, 94 00:09:12,492 --> 00:09:14,403 he would paint. 95 00:09:14,492 --> 00:09:18,121 This would be Vincent's new calling. 96 00:09:22,652 --> 00:09:24,927 And this is amazing. 97 00:09:25,012 --> 00:09:29,449 He's nearly 30, he's not so much as picked up a paintbrush, 98 00:09:29,532 --> 00:09:32,763 much less had any kind of formal training. 99 00:09:32,852 --> 00:09:38,210 But Vincent's not bothered, this is his road-to-Damascus moment. 100 00:09:42,812 --> 00:09:46,441 In a way, I'm glad I never learned painting. 101 00:09:46,532 --> 00:09:51,083 I know for certain that painting is in the very marrow of my bones. 102 00:09:54,732 --> 00:09:58,088 I want to do drawings that will touch people. 103 00:09:59,972 --> 00:10:04,045 I want to get to the point where... Where people say of my work, 104 00:10:04,132 --> 00:10:07,761 that man, that man feels deeply, 105 00:10:07,852 --> 00:10:10,127 that man feels keenly. 106 00:10:15,332 --> 00:10:18,290 Art would succeed where the Church had failed. 107 00:10:18,372 --> 00:10:21,808 It would bring salvation and comfort. 108 00:10:21,892 --> 00:10:26,761 Its ministry would be to open the eyes of everyone, especially the poor, 109 00:10:26,852 --> 00:10:29,730 to the miraculous force of life. 110 00:10:29,812 --> 00:10:33,407 Exactly the kind of vision from which they were cut off 111 00:10:33,492 --> 00:10:36,802 by the grey relentlessness of the daily grind. 112 00:10:37,892 --> 00:10:39,644 I just wish that there were more 113 00:10:39,732 --> 00:10:42,804 and better opportunities and exhibitions to bring art to the people. 114 00:10:42,892 --> 00:10:45,326 I mean, far from wanting to hide the light under a bushel, 115 00:10:45,412 --> 00:10:47,642 I'd sooner let it be seen. 116 00:10:49,612 --> 00:10:54,561 And if he were to give people a sense that heaven was in simple things, 117 00:10:54,652 --> 00:10:57,007 calloused hand, the petal of a flower, 118 00:10:57,092 --> 00:11:00,607 you'd better be a labourer yourself, Vincent thought, 119 00:11:00,692 --> 00:11:05,720 and you'd better head to the lower depths, and live with them, too. 120 00:11:06,972 --> 00:11:11,602 And you don't get much lower than shacking up with a broken-down prostitute, 121 00:11:11,692 --> 00:11:16,208 habitually drunk, bad case of quinsy, single mother, sickly kids, 122 00:11:16,292 --> 00:11:17,520 another one on the way. 123 00:11:18,932 --> 00:11:22,891 Clasina Hoornik, Sien to Vincent who took her in, 124 00:11:22,972 --> 00:11:25,884 would be his unlikely muse. 125 00:11:25,972 --> 00:11:29,203 Sien's history of misery marked on her body. 126 00:11:29,292 --> 00:11:35,083 The drooping breasts and stringy hair became the food of Vincent's inspiration. 127 00:11:35,732 --> 00:11:39,088 There's no such thing as an old woman, he wrote to Theo. 128 00:11:39,172 --> 00:11:44,724 And in the lovingly described lines of a used body, you can see what he meant. 129 00:11:52,612 --> 00:11:54,887 My dear Theo. 130 00:11:57,092 --> 00:12:00,687 I'm longing to see what an impression Sien makes on you. 131 00:12:01,892 --> 00:12:06,761 She's... There's nothing special about her. She's just an ordinary woman of the people, 132 00:12:06,852 --> 00:12:10,288 who holds something of the sublime for me. 133 00:12:18,372 --> 00:12:23,400 Not surprisingly, this didn't go down brilliantly with the vicar father. 134 00:12:25,132 --> 00:12:28,727 Theo, no prude, didn't much care for it, either, 135 00:12:28,812 --> 00:12:33,488 but it didn't stop him steadfastly supporting his brother's latest career. 136 00:12:35,612 --> 00:12:40,242 No matter how surly, unpredictable or ungrateful Vincent was, 137 00:12:40,332 --> 00:12:45,725 every month, regular as clockwork, the brotherly subsidy rolled in. 138 00:12:46,932 --> 00:12:49,207 In return for keeping him afloat, 139 00:12:49,292 --> 00:12:53,570 Vincent supplied Theo, now himself an art dealer in Paris, 140 00:12:53,652 --> 00:12:55,608 with paintings for sale. 141 00:12:56,532 --> 00:13:00,207 Trouble was, according to Theo, they were unsellable, 142 00:13:00,292 --> 00:13:03,170 dense, clotted, murky things. 143 00:13:06,932 --> 00:13:11,528 My dear Theo, my dear Theo, my dear Theo, 144 00:13:12,652 --> 00:13:15,644 what's so very contrary about you is that, 145 00:13:17,212 --> 00:13:20,249 one sends you something and one hears nothing in reply, 146 00:13:20,332 --> 00:13:22,243 and you do not lift a finger! 147 00:13:24,092 --> 00:13:28,529 But one is not allowed to say, ''I cannot manage on the money.'' No. 148 00:13:30,732 --> 00:13:32,609 And I should like to add that I shan't be asking you 149 00:13:32,692 --> 00:13:35,001 whether you approve or disapprove of anything I do. 150 00:13:35,092 --> 00:13:41,565 But baby brother believed, and stuck by his cantankerous, passionate Vincent. 151 00:13:43,292 --> 00:13:45,965 Not everyone was in it for the long haul. 152 00:13:46,052 --> 00:13:50,967 Sien got tired of Vincent's campaign to turn her into a good Dutch hausfrau, 153 00:13:51,052 --> 00:13:54,408 and disappeared back into the Hague gaslight. 154 00:13:57,252 --> 00:14:00,608 Which leaves Vincent where, exactly? 155 00:14:00,692 --> 00:14:05,368 He's 30 years old but, as he says, his wrinkles make him look more like 40. 156 00:14:05,772 --> 00:14:09,287 For money, he depends entirely on his brother, Theo. 157 00:14:09,372 --> 00:14:13,570 For sex and love, he goes from the unsuitable to the impossible. 158 00:14:13,892 --> 00:14:16,565 And as for his efforts in his belated new profession, 159 00:14:16,652 --> 00:14:20,406 well, they're best generously described as uneven. 160 00:14:20,492 --> 00:14:26,328 So when he lopes back to his parents' house, he's not exactly the apple of their eye. 161 00:14:27,612 --> 00:14:31,730 I sense what Father and Mother think of me instinctively. 162 00:14:32,612 --> 00:14:34,921 I do not say intelligently. 163 00:14:35,892 --> 00:14:37,689 They shrink from taking me into the house, 164 00:14:37,772 --> 00:14:42,004 as they might shrink from taking in a large shaggy dog with wet paws. 165 00:14:43,852 --> 00:14:47,447 ''He'll get in everyone's way, and his bark is so loud. 166 00:14:49,332 --> 00:14:50,731 ''In short, 167 00:14:52,692 --> 00:14:55,525 ''he is a filthy beast.'' 168 00:14:56,852 --> 00:14:58,922 And then, it happens. 169 00:15:00,572 --> 00:15:04,645 The Potato Eaters is his first knockout masterpiece. 170 00:15:05,932 --> 00:15:09,891 It's a resume of everything he's felt and thought up to now. 171 00:15:09,972 --> 00:15:14,648 Everything that would make him a revolutionary artist is already here. 172 00:15:20,012 --> 00:15:24,528 The dark, thick colour was chosen not just for pictorial effect, 173 00:15:24,612 --> 00:15:29,083 but you might say, philosophically, to say something. 174 00:15:30,412 --> 00:15:34,041 And that something isn't meant to be charmingly rustic. 175 00:15:34,132 --> 00:15:36,123 I mean, how brown can you get? 176 00:15:36,212 --> 00:15:40,171 This is manure brown, the grey brown, as he explained, 177 00:15:40,252 --> 00:15:43,562 of dusty spuds before they've been rinsed. 178 00:15:45,012 --> 00:15:50,040 Lost in total identification, van Gogh paints like a clod. 179 00:15:50,932 --> 00:15:54,971 The heavy, loaded brush doing its own manual labour. 180 00:15:56,972 --> 00:16:01,488 The picture seems trowelled and dug, rather than painted. 181 00:16:02,412 --> 00:16:05,927 There's total union between painter and subject. 182 00:16:07,252 --> 00:16:08,844 It's all in the hands. 183 00:16:08,932 --> 00:16:10,411 I've tried to bring out the idea that 184 00:16:10,492 --> 00:16:12,722 these people, eating potatoes by the light of their lamp, 185 00:16:12,812 --> 00:16:16,088 have dug the earth with the selfsame hands that they're putting into the dish. 186 00:16:16,172 --> 00:16:19,130 Manual labour, a meal honestly earned. 187 00:16:19,692 --> 00:16:24,208 Anyone who wants to paint peasants looking namby-pamby had best suit himself. 188 00:16:25,052 --> 00:16:30,649 It's almost as if he's having a go at the polite siennas and decorous burnt umbers 189 00:16:30,732 --> 00:16:35,647 of the drawing-room paintings he'd had to sell in the Hague and London. 190 00:16:36,692 --> 00:16:40,970 It's this lot who dine in a state of grace. 191 00:16:41,052 --> 00:16:45,887 Their potato supper, a holy communion of the toiling class. 192 00:16:46,812 --> 00:16:50,327 He knows he's done something chock-full of power, magisterial. 193 00:16:50,412 --> 00:16:53,165 So excitedly he sends it off to Theo, 194 00:16:53,252 --> 00:16:57,404 who moans about how hard it is to sell Vincent's dark pictures, 195 00:16:57,492 --> 00:17:00,086 when everything in Paris is bright. 196 00:17:03,452 --> 00:17:04,805 Theo, 197 00:17:06,852 --> 00:17:09,286 it's become very apparent to me 198 00:17:10,212 --> 00:17:13,284 that you couldn't care less about my work. 199 00:17:14,812 --> 00:17:19,408 What I've had against you this last year is a kind of relapse into 200 00:17:22,052 --> 00:17:23,963 cold respectability, 201 00:17:25,052 --> 00:17:28,362 which to me seems sterile and futile. 202 00:17:40,452 --> 00:17:43,012 But something's niggling at him. 203 00:17:43,092 --> 00:17:47,643 Maybe he does after all have something to learn from the French. 204 00:17:48,972 --> 00:17:52,442 Maybe, if he was there, if he was living with his brother, 205 00:17:52,532 --> 00:17:57,128 together they could shake the art world out of its indifference. 206 00:18:01,132 --> 00:18:05,648 The usual story is the Dutch frog kissed by Impressionism 207 00:18:05,732 --> 00:18:08,769 and turned into the prince of colour painting. 208 00:18:08,852 --> 00:18:11,969 Vincent and his art at last lightened up. 209 00:18:12,052 --> 00:18:14,122 Away with the northern murk, 210 00:18:14,212 --> 00:18:18,524 bring on the tubes of carmine, cobalt and chrome yellow. 211 00:18:19,252 --> 00:18:20,810 It's not all wrong. 212 00:18:20,892 --> 00:18:24,726 Vincent does get colour, becomes addicted to it, 213 00:18:24,812 --> 00:18:28,885 consuming its brilliance, disgorging it onto the canvas. 214 00:18:30,292 --> 00:18:35,320 And, for a while, he does what you're supposed to do as a trainee Impressionist. 215 00:18:35,412 --> 00:18:39,530 Down by the river at Asniéres, trap the light and you've got the point. 216 00:18:39,612 --> 00:18:45,050 So everything is speckled and freckled, dappled and mottled. 217 00:18:45,132 --> 00:18:48,408 Right then, it's Pissarro on Monday. 218 00:18:49,292 --> 00:18:52,329 Look at the colour-coded dots in this restaurant, 219 00:18:52,412 --> 00:18:55,529 and you'll see him doing his pointillist homework. 220 00:18:55,612 --> 00:18:58,001 Seurat on Tuesday. 221 00:18:58,692 --> 00:19:01,570 Oh, Vincent could do it all right, 222 00:19:01,652 --> 00:19:05,964 but there was something altogether too decorative about the Impressionists, 223 00:19:06,052 --> 00:19:12,048 marinading the meat of human existence in the rinse of their luminescence. 224 00:19:14,092 --> 00:19:18,483 Van Gogh's version of nature would always be earthier, clumsier, 225 00:19:18,572 --> 00:19:23,327 smellier, truer and still unsellable. 226 00:19:23,412 --> 00:19:25,528 It must be Theo's fault, thinks Vincent, 227 00:19:25,612 --> 00:19:29,400 and organises a show of pictures in a local cafe, 228 00:19:30,212 --> 00:19:33,249 hobnail boots and cut sunflowers. 229 00:19:34,292 --> 00:19:39,241 Technically, these are still lives, but there's nothing still about them. 230 00:19:39,332 --> 00:19:44,804 The boots are a self-portrait, tramping the long, weary march of the pilgrim 231 00:19:44,892 --> 00:19:47,406 towards a heavenly resting place. 232 00:19:51,092 --> 00:19:56,564 And the sunflowers, hardly the nature morte, the dead nature of their billing, 233 00:19:56,652 --> 00:19:59,485 these things are threateningly mysterious. 234 00:19:59,572 --> 00:20:04,407 The black seed heads bristling with irrepressible life force. 235 00:20:04,492 --> 00:20:08,565 Organisms landed violently from a burning star. 236 00:20:09,652 --> 00:20:14,123 Vincent hardly seems to be joining the Impressionists' club, then. 237 00:20:15,932 --> 00:20:20,562 So it's not surprising Vincent gets a crush on another misfit. 238 00:20:20,652 --> 00:20:24,770 An artist who's hanging around the edge of the Impressionist circle. 239 00:20:24,852 --> 00:20:28,765 A painter who carries with him an air of creative danger. 240 00:20:29,292 --> 00:20:31,248 Paul Gauguin. 241 00:20:32,092 --> 00:20:37,007 It wasn't as if they had much in common, apart from their hard-luck stories. 242 00:20:37,092 --> 00:20:41,608 Gauguin, the dodgy stockbroker, allowed to lurk on the edge of art. 243 00:20:41,692 --> 00:20:45,685 Vincent, the gin-soaked preacher down in the muck. 244 00:20:45,772 --> 00:20:48,969 And how uneasy they made everyone. 245 00:20:49,052 --> 00:20:51,247 If van Gogh stuck out like a sore thumb, 246 00:20:51,332 --> 00:20:55,450 Gauguin poked it in the eye of the Impressionist bigwigs. 247 00:20:57,132 --> 00:21:01,284 And the more Gauguin cursed the dealers, the more he screwed and drank, 248 00:21:01,372 --> 00:21:06,082 the more puppyish Vincent became in the presence of a master. 249 00:21:09,972 --> 00:21:15,444 But when Gauguin left Paris, gone west to Brittany, Vincent didn't follow. 250 00:21:15,532 --> 00:21:18,922 He needed somewhere warmer, more regenerating. 251 00:21:19,012 --> 00:21:22,163 A place where the chilliness of the Paris art scene 252 00:21:22,252 --> 00:21:26,609 would give way to what Vincent, the collector of Japanese prints, 253 00:21:26,692 --> 00:21:30,571 imagined as a monkishly pure way of life. 254 00:21:30,652 --> 00:21:32,768 Zen with olive oil. 255 00:22:24,852 --> 00:22:29,721 And in the spring of 1888, under the sun of Provence, 256 00:22:29,812 --> 00:22:32,884 Vincent can feel the life force stirring. 257 00:22:47,332 --> 00:22:53,362 Like the sunflower, Vincent turns his face into the nourishing light. 258 00:22:59,692 --> 00:23:01,045 Theo, 259 00:23:02,092 --> 00:23:08,361 no matter how incompetent you feel in the face of the overwhelming beauty of nature, 260 00:23:08,452 --> 00:23:10,602 you have to make a start. 261 00:23:11,692 --> 00:23:13,887 Herewith, another landscape. 262 00:23:13,972 --> 00:23:17,328 For wheat has all the hues of old gold, copper, green-gold, 263 00:23:17,412 --> 00:23:21,963 or red-gold, yellow-gold, yellow-bronze, red-green. 264 00:23:38,972 --> 00:23:41,327 Just have a look at the sower. 265 00:23:41,412 --> 00:23:45,325 It's his take on an older painting by Jean-Francois Millet. 266 00:23:47,332 --> 00:23:52,122 Vincent's version echoes Millet's lyrical anthem to noble toil. 267 00:23:52,212 --> 00:23:55,329 But Millet's sower is rooted to the soil, 268 00:23:55,412 --> 00:23:58,927 while van Gogh's floats on a carpet of brilliance, 269 00:23:59,012 --> 00:24:01,572 like Jesus walking on water. 270 00:24:02,692 --> 00:24:07,447 A scene of drudgery is dissolved into the fertility miracle 271 00:24:07,532 --> 00:24:11,684 that's being enacted beneath a high-wattage sun. 272 00:24:13,572 --> 00:24:18,327 Van Gogh described the paintings that really work for him as a jouissance, 273 00:24:18,412 --> 00:24:22,246 the French for orgasm, and it really did mean that. 274 00:24:22,332 --> 00:24:27,281 A great ejaculation of emotional energy, not to mention paint. 275 00:24:29,212 --> 00:24:32,170 ''Yes, well, that's what I go to the brothel for, '' 276 00:24:32,252 --> 00:24:35,881 you can hear Gauguin sneering from his garret in Brittany. 277 00:24:36,532 --> 00:24:41,606 But that's precisely why van Gogh denied himself that doubtful pleasure. 278 00:24:43,052 --> 00:24:48,604 Painting and fucking a lot don't go together. 279 00:24:48,972 --> 00:24:51,486 It softens the brain, which is a bloody nuisance. 280 00:24:52,652 --> 00:24:56,122 Or at least, limit the fucking to once a fortnight. 281 00:24:56,212 --> 00:24:58,806 Now, what Vincent really wanted to share with Gauguin 282 00:24:58,892 --> 00:25:02,851 wasn't a night out with the whores, it was a creative nest. 283 00:25:03,332 --> 00:25:05,766 What he'd been longing for was a studio 284 00:25:05,852 --> 00:25:10,084 where partners, linked in passion and devotion to art, 285 00:25:10,172 --> 00:25:12,322 could live and work together. 286 00:25:14,012 --> 00:25:18,767 But he did send Gauguin the pictures of his boots and his cut sunflowers, 287 00:25:18,852 --> 00:25:21,730 the most potent twosome he could think of. 288 00:25:21,812 --> 00:25:25,441 Paul and Vincent, the ultimate double act. 289 00:25:28,452 --> 00:25:33,810 Did Gauguin really buy into Vincent's dream of a little commune in the sun? 290 00:25:33,892 --> 00:25:35,245 Don't think so. 291 00:25:35,332 --> 00:25:38,847 But the ever-supportive Theo had offered to sponsor Gauguin 292 00:25:38,932 --> 00:25:41,241 if he joined Vincent in Arles. 293 00:25:41,332 --> 00:25:44,722 Gauguin was broke, so why wouldn't he listen to a deal 294 00:25:44,812 --> 00:25:48,487 where board, lodging and materials would be paid for? 295 00:25:49,612 --> 00:25:51,887 But then, there was Vincent. 296 00:25:51,972 --> 00:25:56,887 Like everyone else, Gauguin was a bit nervous of his histrionic passions. 297 00:25:58,972 --> 00:26:02,328 Gauguin procrastinated. Should he go? 298 00:26:02,412 --> 00:26:06,451 Vincent waited in a fever of excited preparation, 299 00:26:06,532 --> 00:26:09,251 like a groom waiting for his bride. 300 00:26:09,332 --> 00:26:14,247 The room which will be Gauguin's will have white walls, and... 301 00:26:16,492 --> 00:26:19,086 And will be hung with yellow sunflowers. 302 00:26:20,252 --> 00:26:21,970 And the beds 303 00:26:23,172 --> 00:26:24,924 will have an air of... 304 00:26:25,692 --> 00:26:27,284 Of permanence, 305 00:26:28,532 --> 00:26:31,126 solidity and calm. 306 00:26:32,652 --> 00:26:35,803 I really want to make this an artist's house. 307 00:26:38,772 --> 00:26:42,924 But not affected. On the contrary, nothing affected. 308 00:26:45,292 --> 00:26:51,049 SCHAMA: Vincent was sure their work would somehow undergo a process of creative fusion, 309 00:26:51,132 --> 00:26:55,683 from which a great explosion of artistic energy would be liberated. 310 00:26:58,212 --> 00:27:04,811 Except, with every painting, it became clear that Vincent's vision of the universe as a revelation, 311 00:27:04,892 --> 00:27:08,726 the boundary between water, land and sky dissolved, 312 00:27:08,812 --> 00:27:11,280 rapt lovers gazing at the burning stars, 313 00:27:11,372 --> 00:27:16,366 all this was happening now, without Gauguin. 314 00:27:21,772 --> 00:27:24,081 Ever since he'd discovered colour, 315 00:27:24,172 --> 00:27:29,451 Vincent had been fascinated by opposites that were also complementaries. 316 00:27:30,212 --> 00:27:33,363 Blue and yellow, red and green, 317 00:27:33,452 --> 00:27:36,524 and the drama they played with the senses. 318 00:27:38,932 --> 00:27:41,321 The drama wasn't just aesthetic, 319 00:27:41,412 --> 00:27:47,487 it was because van Gogh is still our pilgrim, moral and emotional. 320 00:27:47,572 --> 00:27:51,884 At the heart of all the greatest pictures from this prolific summer 321 00:27:51,972 --> 00:27:55,521 is the opposition between barren and fruitful worlds, 322 00:27:55,612 --> 00:27:58,604 between comradeship and loneliness. 323 00:27:58,692 --> 00:28:02,207 Pinks, pinks, pinks, soft pinks. 324 00:28:02,292 --> 00:28:04,248 Soft pinks and blood red. 325 00:28:04,332 --> 00:28:07,051 Soft Louis XV greens and harsh blue-greens. 326 00:28:07,132 --> 00:28:11,125 All this in an infernal... 327 00:28:13,052 --> 00:28:15,486 Welcome to the night cafe, 328 00:28:15,572 --> 00:28:18,962 the hangout of the lonely and the desperate. 329 00:28:24,412 --> 00:28:26,926 I've tried to express the idea 330 00:28:28,052 --> 00:28:34,048 that the café is a place where one can destroy oneself, 331 00:28:35,452 --> 00:28:39,081 go mad or commit a crime. 332 00:28:42,612 --> 00:28:48,403 So the colours shout and barge into each other, like drunks looking for a fight. 333 00:28:48,492 --> 00:28:54,931 Vincent, absinthe-sodden, staves off his anxieties about Gauguin's non-appearance 334 00:28:55,012 --> 00:28:59,005 by painting and painting and painting. 335 00:29:01,492 --> 00:29:03,369 Soft pink. Soft pink 336 00:29:04,492 --> 00:29:06,050 and blood red. 337 00:29:07,492 --> 00:29:11,201 Soft Louis XV greens 338 00:29:12,052 --> 00:29:14,043 and harsh blue-greens. 339 00:29:15,892 --> 00:29:18,929 All this in an infernal furnace, 340 00:29:19,012 --> 00:29:22,641 in a pale sulphur... 341 00:29:25,732 --> 00:29:29,042 And all this to express the powers of darkness 342 00:29:29,132 --> 00:29:31,043 in a common tavern. 343 00:29:48,852 --> 00:29:52,208 So what's the opposite of a hellhole cafe? 344 00:29:52,292 --> 00:29:56,365 Home. A warm kitchen hearth, domesticity. 345 00:29:58,492 --> 00:30:02,610 Meet the Roulins, Vincent's happy family. 346 00:30:05,212 --> 00:30:09,000 Monsieur Joseph Roulin, postman, salt of the earth. 347 00:30:10,772 --> 00:30:13,923 Vincent's primary colours and arresting frontal pose 348 00:30:14,012 --> 00:30:17,209 are the signals of straightforward honesty. 349 00:30:17,292 --> 00:30:21,171 Not just a public servant, then, but a pillar of society, 350 00:30:21,252 --> 00:30:24,528 who wears his uniform as though he was an admiral. 351 00:30:25,852 --> 00:30:29,401 And his whiskers proclaim his virility. 352 00:30:31,412 --> 00:30:36,361 So Madam Roulin is bosomy, maternal, comforting. 353 00:30:39,172 --> 00:30:43,643 The handsome young buck, Armand, in his check-me-out yellow jacket, 354 00:30:43,732 --> 00:30:48,362 caught on the cusp between teenage innocence and manly swagger. 355 00:30:48,452 --> 00:30:51,649 The moustache wispy, the hat cocked. 356 00:30:53,932 --> 00:30:57,891 He loves this family, and he wants to be loved back. 357 00:31:04,612 --> 00:31:08,651 Then Gauguin arrived, and the summer of visions was over. 358 00:31:16,412 --> 00:31:20,724 At first, Gauguin found the friendly competition amusing, 359 00:31:20,812 --> 00:31:23,280 and even creatively challenging, 360 00:31:23,372 --> 00:31:27,206 but the result was just to point out the differences between them. 361 00:31:28,412 --> 00:31:33,406 Here's what Vincent does with an excursion to a vineyard at the time of the grape harvest. 362 00:31:33,492 --> 00:31:36,131 A rush of energy through the painting. 363 00:31:36,212 --> 00:31:39,761 Lots of bending and picking under that great sun god, 364 00:31:39,852 --> 00:31:45,006 the brush jiggling in what he called his best spermatic manner. 365 00:31:47,572 --> 00:31:51,770 And here's Paul's take on rural labour, called In the Heat. 366 00:31:51,852 --> 00:31:55,162 A drowsy, heavy moment with two figures, 367 00:31:55,252 --> 00:31:57,402 one of which is a pig. 368 00:31:57,492 --> 00:31:58,925 A half-naked woman, 369 00:31:59,012 --> 00:32:02,163 her arm stained to the elbows with red grape juice, 370 00:32:02,252 --> 00:32:05,927 the shadow of her big breasts outlined, 371 00:32:06,012 --> 00:32:09,846 as though wanting the laziest of massages, 372 00:32:09,932 --> 00:32:13,686 which the painter duly supplies with his brushes. 373 00:32:16,452 --> 00:32:20,240 It wasn't just a matter of technique or subject matter. 374 00:32:20,332 --> 00:32:24,564 Their philosophies of art were diametrically opposed. 375 00:32:24,652 --> 00:32:29,089 For Gauguin, art was just a swim in pure sensation. 376 00:32:29,172 --> 00:32:33,404 ''Don't sweat it,'' he once crushingly said. ''It's just a dream.'' 377 00:32:33,492 --> 00:32:37,405 But for Vincent van Gogh, there was no joy without sweat. 378 00:32:37,492 --> 00:32:41,485 The ride his art gave you was into the world, not away from it. 379 00:32:45,492 --> 00:32:49,167 After barely a month with his new housemate, 380 00:32:49,252 --> 00:32:53,291 Gauguin is beginning to feel a serious space problem. 381 00:33:00,252 --> 00:33:04,882 Gauguin and I discuss Rembrandt and Delacroix a great deal. 382 00:33:04,972 --> 00:33:08,362 The debate is exceedingly electric. 383 00:33:09,372 --> 00:33:13,365 Sometimes, when we're finished, our minds are as drained as a... 384 00:33:13,452 --> 00:33:16,205 As an electric battery after discharge. 385 00:33:24,532 --> 00:33:28,081 He's irked by Vincent's manic rate of painting. 386 00:33:28,172 --> 00:33:31,050 A picture a day, sometimes even more. 387 00:33:31,132 --> 00:33:35,250 And he's starting to feel something he never dreamt he'd have to worry about. 388 00:33:35,332 --> 00:33:37,243 Envy. Envy? 389 00:33:37,332 --> 00:33:41,086 Of Vincent van Gogh? So he exorcises his jealousy 390 00:33:41,172 --> 00:33:45,085 by doing van Gogh as the painter of sunflowers, 391 00:33:45,172 --> 00:33:51,691 slumped in a chair, body and face distorted, as if already a deranged invalid. 392 00:34:00,332 --> 00:34:01,890 It's me, 393 00:34:04,212 --> 00:34:06,168 but it's me gone mad. 394 00:34:08,692 --> 00:34:11,570 Not mad exactly, but suffering. 395 00:34:12,292 --> 00:34:16,604 Vincent was an epileptic and struggled with deepening bouts of depression, 396 00:34:16,692 --> 00:34:18,125 made worse, no doubt, 397 00:34:18,212 --> 00:34:24,162 by the relentless bad news from Theo that still no one wanted to buy his pictures. 398 00:34:27,012 --> 00:34:31,483 The broody frustration began to surface in scary mood swings. 399 00:34:32,052 --> 00:34:34,691 Gauguin could smell them coming. 400 00:34:35,892 --> 00:34:37,883 My dear Theo, 401 00:34:39,452 --> 00:34:42,728 I think Gauguin's a little disenchanted with me. 402 00:34:44,332 --> 00:34:48,086 Gauguin's very strong and very creative, 403 00:34:49,252 --> 00:34:52,562 and because of that he needs peace and quiet. 404 00:34:53,932 --> 00:34:57,481 Will he find it elsewhere if he doesn't find it here? 405 00:34:58,412 --> 00:35:02,041 Well, I await his decision with absolute equanimity. 406 00:35:05,292 --> 00:35:07,123 Not that much equanimity. 407 00:35:07,212 --> 00:35:10,249 That evening Vincent thrust into Gauguin's hands 408 00:35:10,332 --> 00:35:13,529 a newspaper article about a local knife attack. 409 00:35:14,252 --> 00:35:16,925 ''The murderer fled,'' the last line says. 410 00:35:23,572 --> 00:35:26,689 Gauguin didn't need chapter and verse spelling out. 411 00:35:26,772 --> 00:35:29,844 He was the murderer of their great project. 412 00:35:29,932 --> 00:35:32,162 That night he spent in a hotel. 413 00:35:40,972 --> 00:35:42,644 When he got back in the morning, 414 00:35:42,732 --> 00:35:47,681 there were police all over the front of the house and a lot of blood inside. 415 00:35:59,692 --> 00:36:02,843 It didn't take long for the story to get told. 416 00:36:02,932 --> 00:36:06,402 Around midnight, Vincent had shown up at his favourite brothel, 417 00:36:06,492 --> 00:36:09,564 handed one of the girls, Rachel, a small package. 418 00:36:09,652 --> 00:36:13,281 Inside was a large piece of ear. The girl fainted. 419 00:36:13,372 --> 00:36:15,328 Well, we all would, wouldn't we? 420 00:36:34,892 --> 00:36:39,647 By the time Vincent was discharged from hospital, Gauguin had gone, 421 00:36:41,012 --> 00:36:46,166 and van Gogh committed himself voluntarily to a mental asylum nearby. 422 00:36:52,052 --> 00:36:54,282 My dear Theo, 423 00:36:55,492 --> 00:36:59,770 it just won't do for us to think that I'm completely sane. 424 00:37:18,452 --> 00:37:22,684 If I recover, I must start afresh. 425 00:37:30,692 --> 00:37:35,288 But I'm afraid that I will never reach the heights to which 426 00:37:36,012 --> 00:37:38,765 the illness to some extent lead me. 427 00:37:51,052 --> 00:37:53,088 Yours, with a handshake, 428 00:37:55,492 --> 00:37:56,845 Vincent. 429 00:38:14,652 --> 00:38:19,885 Inside the walled hospital, Vincent was looked after by solicitous doctors, 430 00:38:20,852 --> 00:38:26,324 but the accelerating rhythm of the attacks was unpredictable and terrifying. 431 00:38:26,892 --> 00:38:29,645 He'd feel better, venture cautiously out 432 00:38:29,732 --> 00:38:33,771 and, gathering confidence and energy, would paint 433 00:38:33,852 --> 00:38:38,687 to stave off the next attack, which he knew would be inevitable. 434 00:38:45,372 --> 00:38:51,322 His sickness was both the destroyer and the midwife of his masterpieces. 435 00:38:52,332 --> 00:38:56,041 For it was precisely between the spasms of craziness 436 00:38:56,132 --> 00:38:59,761 that Vincent saw the world most intensely. 437 00:38:59,852 --> 00:39:05,290 Was suddenly possessed of his vision that heaven could exist here on earth. 438 00:39:05,692 --> 00:39:08,490 His mission had never been clearer. 439 00:39:10,092 --> 00:39:13,926 These grey, broiling, surging works 440 00:39:14,012 --> 00:39:18,881 aren't the product of his madness, they're exactly the opposite. 441 00:39:18,972 --> 00:39:24,171 They're the documents of Vincent's battle to keep disintegration at bay. 442 00:39:24,852 --> 00:39:28,367 Whether Theo can sell them doesn't matter any more. 443 00:39:44,532 --> 00:39:49,048 They're wild, but they're also deeply sane. 444 00:39:49,132 --> 00:39:52,920 A man in total control of his painterly faculties. 445 00:39:53,012 --> 00:39:55,162 He may have sensed the seismic tremors 446 00:39:55,252 --> 00:39:59,768 that the ground would once again buckle and heave beneath his feet, 447 00:39:59,852 --> 00:40:03,208 but his grip on the brush was never stronger. 448 00:40:07,492 --> 00:40:10,370 Well, here I am, at it again. 449 00:40:12,772 --> 00:40:16,321 I could almost feel I have a new spell of lucidity before me. 450 00:40:16,412 --> 00:40:19,688 It's just that the attacks, when they come, 451 00:40:20,532 --> 00:40:24,969 well, I don't know. But what is one to do? 452 00:40:28,772 --> 00:40:31,684 There's no remedy, except one, 453 00:40:33,612 --> 00:40:35,364 which is to work. 454 00:40:40,572 --> 00:40:43,803 What we're looking at, of course, is only incidentally 455 00:40:43,892 --> 00:40:45,769 a stand of cypresses, 456 00:40:45,852 --> 00:40:47,888 the cart-wheeling stars. 457 00:40:47,972 --> 00:40:50,361 What we're looking at always 458 00:40:50,452 --> 00:40:53,524 is the inside of Vincent's head. 459 00:40:58,252 --> 00:41:02,689 For anyone allergic to the outpourings of the crucified ego, 460 00:41:02,772 --> 00:41:05,286 it's all a bit of an embarrassment. 461 00:41:05,372 --> 00:41:08,603 But for millions more of us, 462 00:41:08,692 --> 00:41:11,889 an emotional connection is made. 463 00:41:11,972 --> 00:41:18,320 Every mark of Vincent's stabbing brush seems like a personal letter to us. 464 00:41:19,092 --> 00:41:21,845 We're moved by its humane openness, 465 00:41:22,252 --> 00:41:27,007 by his unconditional belief in our sympathetic understanding. 466 00:41:58,452 --> 00:42:03,845 In 1889, van Gogh painted his final self-portrait. 467 00:42:03,932 --> 00:42:07,527 Vincent himself described it as a study in calm, 468 00:42:07,612 --> 00:42:10,843 which seems a stretch when we get pulled into the vortex 469 00:42:10,932 --> 00:42:15,005 of all those whirlpools of paint that coil round his head, 470 00:42:15,092 --> 00:42:17,731 ride through the waves of his hair, 471 00:42:17,812 --> 00:42:21,282 as if the pulses of some engulfing migraine 472 00:42:21,372 --> 00:42:25,206 were throbbing mercilessly through his invaded body. 473 00:42:25,972 --> 00:42:30,170 A clinical map of physical and mental distress. 474 00:42:35,332 --> 00:42:37,800 But he's not gone under, has he? 475 00:42:37,892 --> 00:42:42,841 The cast of the face around which the swirling ocean of painted pain crashes 476 00:42:42,932 --> 00:42:45,366 is calm, watchful. 477 00:42:48,412 --> 00:42:53,805 And the colour he's chosen somehow makes the engulfing waves less morbid. 478 00:42:57,332 --> 00:43:02,122 Against it, he flies the flag of red-blooded resolution. 479 00:43:02,852 --> 00:43:09,087 Jaw line contoured by the brisling red hair of the fighter, watchful, pugnacious. 480 00:43:13,012 --> 00:43:15,572 I'm trying to recover. 481 00:43:22,212 --> 00:43:24,043 I am trying. 482 00:43:42,132 --> 00:43:44,851 I'm trying to recover. 483 00:43:50,572 --> 00:43:55,362 For despite the heroic battle, art against craziness, 484 00:43:55,452 --> 00:43:59,001 Vincent knew that sometimes nothing would avail. 485 00:44:00,132 --> 00:44:03,488 For days, my mind has been wandering wildly, 486 00:44:04,092 --> 00:44:08,608 and it must be expected that the attacks 487 00:44:08,692 --> 00:44:11,081 will recur in the future. 488 00:44:16,852 --> 00:44:18,729 It is frightful, 489 00:44:22,492 --> 00:44:24,323 apparently. 490 00:44:25,652 --> 00:44:28,325 I pick up dirt from the floor 491 00:44:30,212 --> 00:44:32,009 and eat it. 492 00:44:35,452 --> 00:44:37,408 Worse, actually. 493 00:45:21,612 --> 00:45:25,127 Desperate for his fix of chrome yellow. 494 00:46:07,852 --> 00:46:10,286 I'm trying to recover, 495 00:46:11,892 --> 00:46:15,202 like someone who was meant to commit suicide, 496 00:46:15,292 --> 00:46:20,320 but then makes for the bank because he finds the water too cold. 497 00:46:44,092 --> 00:46:45,730 He's survived, then. 498 00:46:45,812 --> 00:46:51,489 In fact, he's on the brink of a great power surge of creative fury. 499 00:46:56,492 --> 00:47:00,326 He's fidgeting to get going, to be somewhere else, 500 00:47:00,412 --> 00:47:04,007 to let all that inventive energy rip. 501 00:47:09,012 --> 00:47:11,162 What's happening is a miracle. 502 00:47:11,252 --> 00:47:16,406 He's translating mental upheaval into a revolution on the canvas. 503 00:47:29,772 --> 00:47:34,402 Theo sensed that this was a tremendous moment for his brother, 504 00:47:34,492 --> 00:47:38,485 but he worried that Vincent might implode from the intensity of it. 505 00:47:38,572 --> 00:47:43,566 If there was going to be a revolution, it would have to be one made in a refuge. 506 00:47:44,292 --> 00:47:46,931 Theo had just the right place, 507 00:47:47,012 --> 00:47:51,688 the village of Auvers-sur-Oise, 20 miles north of Paris. 508 00:47:52,732 --> 00:47:57,522 And the right man to keep an eye on his brother, Dr Paul Gachet, 509 00:47:57,612 --> 00:48:02,481 amateur artist, but more to the point, a specialist in melancholy. 510 00:48:07,572 --> 00:48:12,771 The prescription for maximum output with minimum stress seemed to be working. 511 00:48:12,852 --> 00:48:17,289 Vincent appeared to be able to relax with his nearest and dearest. 512 00:48:21,812 --> 00:48:24,201 Dear, Mother. 513 00:48:29,772 --> 00:48:36,564 Last Sunday, Theo, Jo and their little one were here, and they lunched at Dr Gachet's. 514 00:48:39,812 --> 00:48:44,124 And my little namesake made the acquaintance of the animal world 515 00:48:44,852 --> 00:48:46,649 for the first time. 516 00:48:50,012 --> 00:48:53,527 He was very well, as were Theo and Jo. 517 00:48:54,972 --> 00:48:59,363 For me, it's very, very reassuring to have them living so close. 518 00:49:23,052 --> 00:49:27,011 I am absorbed in this immense plain 519 00:49:28,172 --> 00:49:30,686 with wheatfields against the hills, 520 00:49:32,212 --> 00:49:34,442 boundless as the sea. 521 00:50:02,492 --> 00:50:06,246 So while the landscapes are mindscapes, 522 00:50:07,052 --> 00:50:09,486 they're anything but deranged. 523 00:50:10,252 --> 00:50:14,962 They're unflinching, tumultuous, heroic, 524 00:50:15,972 --> 00:50:18,566 and completely new. 525 00:50:21,292 --> 00:50:24,443 And here's the most startling of them all, 526 00:50:24,532 --> 00:50:26,443 Wheatfield with Crows. 527 00:50:27,052 --> 00:50:30,931 Not for what it's supposed to say about van Gogh's frailty, 528 00:50:31,012 --> 00:50:34,800 because I don't think the artist who painted this was frail at all, 529 00:50:34,892 --> 00:50:37,725 but for what it says about the conventions of art. 530 00:50:37,812 --> 00:50:40,963 It shows Vincent in total command, 531 00:50:41,052 --> 00:50:44,408 never fiercer in his contempt for the rules. 532 00:50:44,492 --> 00:50:50,488 In his headlong rush to junk the entire history of landscape painting. 533 00:50:51,892 --> 00:50:54,167 Starting with perspective. 534 00:50:55,092 --> 00:50:58,846 Its whole point had been to create an illusion of deep space, 535 00:50:58,932 --> 00:51:03,881 so that the eye could confidently wander through to a distant horizon. 536 00:51:04,852 --> 00:51:10,051 But here perspective is reversed, it's a road that goes nowhere. 537 00:51:10,132 --> 00:51:14,045 And the two flanking paths just seem to rise up vertically 538 00:51:14,132 --> 00:51:17,044 through the picture, like flapping wings. 539 00:51:17,132 --> 00:51:21,569 And what are those green borders? Grass, hedges, a corner of a tree? 540 00:51:23,652 --> 00:51:28,328 All our signals, our assumptions about how to read visual signs 541 00:51:28,412 --> 00:51:30,642 have been wickedly scrambled. 542 00:51:32,052 --> 00:51:33,963 So what are we looking at? 543 00:51:35,452 --> 00:51:39,331 Suffocation, sure, but elation too. 544 00:51:39,412 --> 00:51:42,006 Those crows might be coming at us, 545 00:51:42,092 --> 00:51:46,085 but equally they might be flying away, demons gone, 546 00:51:46,172 --> 00:51:50,290 as we sink into a total immersion in the power of nature. 547 00:51:51,932 --> 00:51:56,164 And into a massive wall of writhing, brilliant paint 548 00:51:56,252 --> 00:52:02,248 in which the colour itself seems to tremble and pulse and sway. 549 00:52:03,092 --> 00:52:08,689 And it's with this independent life of formed blocks of colour 550 00:52:08,772 --> 00:52:12,731 that Vincent van Gogh creates modern art. 551 00:52:24,172 --> 00:52:29,963 This physical feeling, simultaneously thrilling and terrifying, 552 00:52:30,052 --> 00:52:33,124 of being swallowed alive in paint, 553 00:52:33,212 --> 00:52:36,682 lies at the heart of so much modern art. 554 00:52:38,092 --> 00:52:43,041 And it was what Vincent had been yearning to realise, ever since he picked up a brush 555 00:52:43,132 --> 00:52:45,885 on the dark moors of north Holland. 556 00:52:47,412 --> 00:52:50,563 The pilgrim had gone the distance. 557 00:52:51,132 --> 00:52:56,286 I don't think there's the slightest possibility that accomplishing this revolution 558 00:52:56,372 --> 00:53:01,366 could have been a moment of suicidal despair for Vincent van Gogh. 559 00:53:01,452 --> 00:53:06,207 In his art, he'd never been more visionary, never more brilliant, 560 00:53:06,292 --> 00:53:08,328 but not in his life. 561 00:53:19,212 --> 00:53:24,047 For as spring turned to summer, Vincent really did think trouble lay ahead. 562 00:53:24,132 --> 00:53:27,124 Even as his own painting was going brilliantly, 563 00:53:27,212 --> 00:53:31,364 his tower of strength, Theo, began to look shaky. 564 00:53:33,852 --> 00:53:39,643 The pleasure he'd taken in his family now turned to worry, and even pain. 565 00:53:40,132 --> 00:53:43,920 Perhaps Theo's wife and baby would have to come first. 566 00:53:47,412 --> 00:53:50,006 Dear brother and sister, 567 00:53:50,092 --> 00:53:54,882 I still continue to feel the storm which threatens you, weighing on me too. 568 00:54:02,492 --> 00:54:08,601 You see, I try to be genuinely cheerful, 569 00:54:11,612 --> 00:54:14,570 but my life is also threatened at the very root 570 00:54:17,852 --> 00:54:19,490 and my steps are wavering. 571 00:54:35,532 --> 00:54:38,126 And you do not lift a finger. 572 00:54:55,132 --> 00:54:59,887 When Theo arrived from Paris, he found Vincent mortally wounded, 573 00:55:00,412 --> 00:55:02,972 a single shot to the abdomen. 574 00:55:04,212 --> 00:55:07,090 The two brothers stayed together. 575 00:55:07,172 --> 00:55:11,882 For a while, Theo was optimistic about Vincent's chances of recovery. 576 00:55:14,612 --> 00:55:20,005 But then, a day later, the fever mounted and Vincent slipped from consciousness. 577 00:55:20,932 --> 00:55:25,926 Theo held him as he died on the 29th of July, 1890. 578 00:55:28,852 --> 00:55:34,484 Gone precisely at the moment when his entire life was being vindicated. 579 00:55:35,012 --> 00:55:39,051 Theo believed that as well, that Vincent's time had finally arrived, 580 00:55:39,132 --> 00:55:40,406 but it was too late. 581 00:55:40,492 --> 00:55:43,529 Not just for Vincent, but for Theo, 582 00:55:43,612 --> 00:55:48,481 his own health deteriorated and within a year he was dead, too. 583 00:55:49,612 --> 00:55:52,126 There they are, side-by-side in death, 584 00:55:52,212 --> 00:55:56,364 as they had very much been wherever they were in life. 585 00:55:58,252 --> 00:56:00,971 In his last letter to Theo, Vincent wrote 586 00:56:01,052 --> 00:56:05,489 of how, not managing to have children, his paintings were his progeny. 587 00:56:06,732 --> 00:56:10,520 But he did have a child, of course, Expressionism. 588 00:56:10,612 --> 00:56:12,842 And many, many heirs, 589 00:56:12,932 --> 00:56:18,211 Kokoschka, de Kooning, Howard Hodgkin,Jackson Pollock. 590 00:56:28,212 --> 00:56:30,772 But there's something about van Gogh's legacy 591 00:56:30,852 --> 00:56:36,927 which is much more important than his fathering this or that ism of modern art. 592 00:56:38,412 --> 00:56:42,849 Vincent's passionate belief was that people wouldn't just see his pictures, 593 00:56:42,932 --> 00:56:45,730 but feel the rush of life in them. 594 00:56:45,812 --> 00:56:49,487 That by the force of his brush and the dazzlement of his colour, 595 00:56:49,572 --> 00:56:53,565 they'd experience those fields, those faces, those flowers, 596 00:56:53,652 --> 00:56:58,726 in ways nothing more polite or literal could ever possibly convey. 597 00:56:59,092 --> 00:57:03,529 His art would reclaim what had once belonged to religion, 598 00:57:03,612 --> 00:57:09,323 consolation for our mortality through the relish of the gift of life. 599 00:57:12,572 --> 00:57:15,723 It wasn't the art crowd he was after. 600 00:57:15,812 --> 00:57:18,372 What he wanted was to open the eyes 601 00:57:18,452 --> 00:57:21,762 and the hearts of everyone who saw his paintings. 602 00:57:22,172 --> 00:57:24,970 Well, he got what he wanted. 603 00:57:37,372 --> 00:57:41,206 What am I, in the eyes of most people? 604 00:57:43,492 --> 00:57:46,564 A nonentity? An eccentric? 605 00:57:49,772 --> 00:57:51,808 An unpleasant person? 606 00:57:55,172 --> 00:58:00,963 Somebody who has no position in society and never will. In short, the lowest of the low. 607 00:58:01,052 --> 00:58:05,603 Alright then, well, even if that were all absolutely true, 608 00:58:07,772 --> 00:58:09,490 then one day, 609 00:58:12,092 --> 00:58:14,526 I should like to show by my work 610 00:58:14,612 --> 00:58:19,367 what such a nonentity, such a nobody 611 00:58:20,812 --> 00:58:22,609 has in his heart. 612 00:58:26,532 --> 00:58:28,329 With a handshake, 613 00:58:29,612 --> 00:58:32,080 ever yours, Vincent.