Crazy is as crazy does

‘When you see a Gauguin,’ writes Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker, ‘you think, This man is living in a dream world. When you see a van Gogh, you think, This dream world is living in a man.’

Artists are supposed to be our designated crazies.

‘We gawk and stare as the painters slice off their ears and down the booze and act like clowns. But we rely on them to make up for our own timidity, on their courage to dignify our caution. We are spectators in the casino, placing bets... and we can sometimes convince ourselves that having looked is the same as having made, and that the stakes are the same for the ironic spectator and the would-be saint. But they’re not. We all make our wagers, and the cumulative lottery builds museums and lecture halls and revisionist biographies. But the artist does more. He bets his life.’
Adam Gopnik, Van Gogh’s Ear, The Christmas Eve that changed modern art

Gopnik points out that our judgement of mad artists parallels their success, or failure, in creating great art.

'Gauguin’s is a prime real-life case where doing the wrong thing - abandoning your wife and children and betraying your friends - appears to be morally justifiable, since the art made was, as it happened, great... His decision to abandon his family for art looks heroic, in retrospect, because luck was a lady - a muse - who blew on his dice.’

Van Gogh was awkward around people, his manic depression untreated, his oddness off putting. Estrangement, merged with his desire for authentic community, infused his paintings. ‘His inability to join the living doesn’t erode his delight in life,’ writes Gopnik.

Perhaps the ultimate act of insanity, for any artist, is persevering without the slightest assurance that anyone else will ever value the work.

‘The letters of van Gogh’s last year mark his acceptance of his isolation, coupled with the belief that the isolation need not be absolute - that, one day, there will be a community of readers and viewers who will understand him, and that his mistake had been to try and materialize that community in the moment instead of accepting it as the possible gift of another world and time.’
Adam Gopnik, Van Gogh’s Ear, The Christmas Eve that changed modern art

A 21st century bard, Pere Ubu’s David Thomas, echoes this in a recent Plain Dealer interview.

‘I'm too old to pay attention to much anymore, other than just getting the work done that I've got to get done. Whether anybody hears it or not, that's not my problem. There's no point in worrying about it.’

A fan club spanning time and space so vast that never may the artist know of its existence. Just another instance of an artist out of touch with reality? In face of public indifference, ‘saner’ artists put down their instruments, forfeiting their chances to endure.

Painting by Vincent van Gogh, Vincent Willem van Gogh

Wyatt and Vincent

They lived oceans apart in the later days of the 19th century, Earp the gunslinger, Van Gogh the psychedelic sower.

From a distance, they could be brothers. At the moment I'm feeling a bit too boringly sane to editorialize further, but we can track their smokey trails in these two eloquent documents.

Notes from American Experience - Wyatt Earp on PBS:

Wyatt is accused of stealing a horse in Van Buren, Arkansas. He evades punishment by fleeing... spends the next several years in saloons, gambling houses, and brothels of the frontier. He has multiple relationships with prostitutes, as well as several arrests for his involvement with them.

Wyatt Earp never lost the quiet charisma that had inspired loyalty and hatred in Tombstone.

He did not look old, a friend recalled. Somehow like a mountain or desert, he reduced you to size.

He died at home unsure of his legacy without ever making sense of the forces that had shaped his life.

Notes from The Yellow House: Van Gogh, Gauguin and Nine Turbulent Weeks in Provence:

Vincent - as usual connecting everything in his mental world - added Wagner to Monticelli, Delecroix, the Dutch painter Jongkind and himself in a list of crazy drunks and heavy smokers. These had all hit the bottle or lit their pipes, Vincent presumed, because of the mental exhaustion of devising complex harmonies of notes or colors.

That was no doubt what Vincent hoped to achieve with his painting: to find in art a force stronger than his neurotic temperament.

“Old Gauguin and I understand each other basically, and if we are a bit mad, what of it?” [said Vincent.] They would be vindicated - he thought, entirely correctly - by their pictures.

Vincent wasn’t only an inspired, mad artist; he was a great painter desperately trying to remain sane.

Photo credits Dodge City Peace Commission, Wyatt Earp and unknown, Vincent Van Gogh

Streams of fire

Profound ideas arise out of chaos. Madness. Risk.

Although - the mad madame makes no choice, does she - to be mad, or sane?  If she’s sane enough to choose, she’s not mad enough to fly.  Sanity will lead her to lists, and lists to obscurity.

Vincent Van Gogh had brother Theo in Paris to send him money and promote his art.  We revere the tormented painter and mention his brother in passing. But who’s the more troubled, the obsessed genius or the dutiful keeper of lists? Who sacrifices more for art that bejewels the world? And is it even possible for one artist to hold two allegiances in her belly, the bold invention, the bland accounting?

‘Vincent wasn’t only an inspired, mad artist; he was a great painter desperately trying to remain sane. He saw the world with a rare intensity which gave great power to his work.  And it was while looking and painting that he knew the greatest pleasure of which his tormented nature was capable.
Martin Gayford, The Yellow House: Nine Turbulent Weeks in Arles

 Poor, tormented Vincent. I see his work and weep hot orbs of gratitude.  If it hadn’t been for Theo, not a drop of noble Vincent would remain. 

Painting by Vincent Van Gogh, The Sower

susanweber.com

The sower

‘The sower broadcasting his seed was an image that had been with him almost since he had become an artist. It stood for a painter - or an evangelist - sowing the seed of beauty and truth.’
Matin Gayford, The Yellow House: Nine Turbulent Weeks in Arles

If I were a sower who saw her art as evangelism, her seeds indispensable to the good earth’s survival, my priorities would change.

Perusing my to-do list, which, out of curiosity, I’ve segmented into beneficiaries, fully two thirds of planned tasks benefit others and/or me. Family, friends and my teaching cohorts fall within this category. Earth, by which I mean the planet in toto, is assigned the remainder. This category holds my art and, largely because the other list is both large and short-term rewarding, is given short shrift.

Vincent Van Gogh, sometimes businessman and arts-community organizer, nevertheless prioritized his painting. Even his persistent melancholy failed to distract him from his call. Look at one of his sunflowers and know he chose wisely.

When I leave this earth, some imprint of my time here will stay.  Intuitively, I feel posterity’s rush when I compose, practice, record or perform music. Oddly perhaps, it’s also evident as I muse on art and culture here with you. It may be impossible to measure the scale or quality of my contribution to earth’s longevity.

For now, it makes sense to remember the sunflower seeds of a man named Vincent.

Painting by Vincent Van Gogh, The Sower