The ghost of Van Gogh

I have to confess, probably my favorite painter in the world is Vincent Van Gogh. I love the liveliness of his lines and the freedom of his palette. I love the fact that he decided not to paint anything until he had mastered drawing. I love the fact that he wrote long letters to his brother Theo with little pictures drawn on the side - and that we still have them. And i love his daring, and love of craft, persisting in the face of utter non-acceptance of his vision. (As many of us may or may not know, he sold no paintings before his death.)

Van Gogh was the ultimate visionary, mastering a craft and expressing what he saw with such taste and exquisite sensitivity that it took our eyes 100 or so years to comprehend the beauty of it. Now his collections create stirs wherever they go: he is a posthumous rock star, with new kinds of lively lines - lines of people waiting to see his collections at museums compiling his works, as we witnessed most recently at the Met - (of NYC).

What most of us know all too well is that he cut his ear off. In fact, i wonder if we remember much else about him in the popular mind. That's just a quirk of human information processing: if it's shocking, we tend to remember it.

Anyway, i suppose, as one who has discovered the virtues of art, I have a fear of its dangers. If i dare to dream and set down my dreams, will i, too, die penniless and misunderstood? My sensible side says this is just such a drama; but some other side is not so sure. I suppose the courage of art is to step into the void and deliver something forth, without concern for the likeability of the outcome. How do artists weigh this against financial obligations? It's a mystery. But as i was recently reminded, Tolstoy had 13 children - and he wrote War and Peace. I wonder what his wife did. Hmmm.