Diana Wheeler, violin for the live reading, Daniel Plane cello for the recording
David Simmons – producer/director/script writer
Graphic design by Krissy Pohold
April 13, 2023 ArtLitLab, Madison, WI
Director’s Note
No artist is held in higher esteem than Dutch artist Vincent Van Gogh. His paintings appear not only on museum walls, but on tee shirts, coffee mugs and posters around the world. But to know the paintings and drawings is to know only one aspect of his genius. He wrote an estimated 2000 letters in his short life, more than 600 to his brother Theo, an art dealer in Paris, who often supported Vincent financially, and carefully preserved their correspondence. Many of them contained sketches as well. The letters document Vincent’s turbulent emotional life, his wide and deep reading, his artistic development, and his belief, despite a lack of commercial success, that he was in fact a great artist.
“You know the fireflies in Brazil that are so luminous that in the evening ladies stick them into their hair with pins. It’s very fine, fame, but see, it is to the artist what the hairpin is to those insects.” –Vincent Van Gogh, Arles, 1888.
van Gogh left Paris in February of 1888, seeking sun, new subjects and what he hoped would be a climate better for his health. But when he arrived in Arles on 20 February he found the city and landscape covered in a thick blanket of snow. He also found it difficult to converse with most of the locals, who spoke a very thick Provencal dialect. van Gogh could communicate enough to order in cafes (and brothels) but made few friends in the almost two years he spent there. One remarkable exception was the postman, Joseph Roulin, a “true Republican” and a socialist, whose portrait Vincent would paint many times – and later portraits of his entire family.
Roulin’s letters to Vincent, often after one of his periods of madness, are sincere and touching.
Vincent talked often about painting the night sky – his starry night, which he seemed to think evoked the eternal in his all too fragile world. He would not paint it until June of 1889 while recovering at the asylum in St. Remy, after a series of mental breakdowns the previous winter and spring. But I think he nailed it.
There is a common misconception that van Gogh’s paintings were a reflection of his attacks of mental illness. Nothing could be further from the truth. He produced no paintings while in the grip of his attacks, but he was astonishingly productive between them. He had a second attack in February of 1889 and would enter the asylum at St. Remy near Arles on May 8 – before that date he would produce these now famous works: Still Life with Onions, Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear, Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear and Pipe, Felix Rey, Sunflowers in a Vase, Gauguin’s Chair, van Gogh’s Chair, and three versions of portraits of Augustine Roulin (‘La Berceuse’).
Thanks to the full house who turned out for this reading … my apologies for those turned away when there were no more chairs.
This reading was a part of World Premiere Wisconsin. Thanks to Mike Fischer for this preview:
