Just slap anything on when you see a blank canvas staring you in the face like some imbecile. You don’t know how paralyzing that is, that stare of a blank canvas is, which says to the painter, ‘You can’t do a thing’. The canvas has an idiotic stare and mesmerizes some painters so much that they turn into idiots themselves. Many painters are afraid in front of the blank canvas, but the blank canvas is afraid of the real, passionate painter who dares and who has broken the spell of ‘you can’t’ once and for all. Vincent van Gogh
Let us keep courage and try to be patient and gentle. And let us not mind being eccentric, and make distinction between good and evil. Vincent van Gogh
One must work and dare if one really wants to live. Vincent van Gogh
People are often unable to do anything, imprisoned as they are in I don’t know what kind of terrible, terrible, oh such terrible cage. Vincent van Gogh, letter to brother Theo
Poetry surrounds us everywhere, but putting it on paper is, alas, not so easy as looking at it. Vincent van Gogh
Success is sometimes the outcome of a whole string of failures. Vincent van Gogh
The night is even more richly coloured than the day ... If only one pays attention to it, one sees that certain stars are citron yellow, while others have a pink glow or a green, blue and forget-me-not brilliance. And without my expiating on this theme, it should be clear that putting little white dots on a blue-black surface is not enough. Vincent van Gogh
The only time I feel alive is when I’m painting. Vincent van Gogh
The stars are the souls of dead poets. Vincent van Gogh
The work is an absolute necessity for me. I can’t put it off. Vincent van Gogh
There is nothing more truly artistic than to love people. Vincent van Gogh
There may be a great fire in our soul, yet no-one ever warms himself at it, and passers-by see only a wisp of smoke. Vincent van Gogh
Though I am often in the depths of misery, there is still calmness, pure harmony and music inside me. I see paintings or drawings in the poorest cottages, in the dirtiest corners. And my mind is driven towards these things with an irresistible momentum. Vincent van Gogh, letter to brother Theo
Well right now it seems that things are going very badly for me. Vincent van Gogh, letter to brother Theo
What am I in the eyes of most people – a nonentity, an eccentric, or an unpleasant person – somebody who has no position in society and will never have; in short, the lowest of the low. All right, then – even if that were absolutely true, then I should one day like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody, has in his heart. Vincent van Gogh, letter to brother Theo July 1882
What is true is that I have at times earned my own crust of bread, and at other times a friend has given it to me out of the goodness of his heart. I have lived whatever way I could, for better or for worse, taking things just as they came. Vincent van Gogh, letter to Theo July 1880
What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything? Vincent van Gogh
When I have a terrible need of – shall I say the word – religion, then I go out and paint the stars. Vincent van Gogh
The Impressionists didn’t set out to be popular. The only great painter ... in the widest possible sense was ironically enough the only one who achieved absolutely no success in his lifetime: Vincent van Gogh. Kenneth Clark, Civilisation 13/13: Heroic Materialism, BBC 1969
His unconquerable need to paint. ibid.
The most devoted painter of the stars was that hardened lover of the witching hour Vincent van Gogh. Van Gogh was obsessed with the night. Waldemar Januszczak, The Art of the Night **** BBC 2011
Holland’s greatest gift to Impressionism was a red-head, small and wiry, beady-eyed and grumpy. It’s the brilliant little Dutch gnome Vincent van Gogh. Waldemar Januszczak, The Impressionists IV: Painting and Revolution: Final Flourish, BBC 2011
He was dark, driven, obsessive. ibid.
After a couple of absinthes he [Van Gogh] could start a fight with a Buddhist monk. ibid.
Art is full of mysteries. And mysteries need solving. This is Van Gogh’s famous Self Portrait, a self-portrait with bandaged ear at the Courtauld Gallery in London. It’s famous because Van Gogh’s ear is so famous. Everyone knows the story of him cutting it off with a razor. And this picture painted soon after in 1889 commemorates that tragedy. The Art Mysteries with Waldemar Januszczak: Van Gogh’s Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear, BBC 2020
It’s a picture full of mysteries: why does this easel look like a cross? Why is the bandage so prominent? And what’s this Japanese print doing here at the back? … And the biggest mystery of all, why did he cut off his ear in the first place? ibid.
It’s a hidden crucifixion; the easel at the back is his cross; and where Christ had his loincloth, Van Gogh has this grubby bandage that covers his wounds. ibid.
You can see Van Gogh’s faith in Nature as a religion. Andrew Graham-Dixon, The High Art of the Low Countries III: Daydreams and Nightmares, BBC 2013
A work that is so dark, so murky: The Potato Eaters. ibid.
Shortly before 8 am in central Amsterdam on Saturday 7th December 2002 … In the museum quarter a van pulls up and two men unload a ladder and put some tools into a bag … and snatch two paintings close to the hole from which they had entered … and make their way with the paintings into the city. Andrew Graham-Dixon, Stealing van Gogh, BBC 2018
More than 40 of his masterpieces have been stolen in at least 15 separate heists. ibid.
But for me the very greatest artist of that period has always been van Gogh. Francis Bacon, cited The Art of Francis Bacon
Van Gogh got very near to the violence of life itself. ibid.
Starry starry night, paint your palette blue and grey
Look out on a summer’s day with eyes that know the darkness in my soul
Shadows on the hills, sketch the trees and the daffodils
Catch the breeze and the winter chills, in colors on the snowy linen land.
Now I understand what you tried to say to me
How you suffered for your sanity
How you tried to set them free
They would not listen they did not know how, perhaps they’ll listen now. Don McLean, Vincent, 1971
In ten years he produced over a thousand paintings and even more drawings. His work seems effortless with an almost childlike touch. But it is in fact complex, passionate, expressive and the result of immense study as well as feeling. Great Artists With Tim Marlow s1e14: Van Gogh, Sky Arts 2003
The miner’s harsh living conditions made a deep impact on Van Gogh. He decided to share their hardship. ibid.
Depression was a powerful force in Van Gogh’s life and work. Living itself seemed a continuous struggle for him. He’d no money and he often went hungry. When he was twenty-one he fell in love with one of his models – a pregnant and alcoholic prostitute. ibid.
This is Van Gogh’s first major oil painting ... of the workers, the peasants, around the farm at Nuynan. ibid.
When Van Gogh arrived here in Paris in 1886 it was already the artistic capital of the world. But it also introduced a new idea, a new concept to art history, that of the avant-garde ... Leading the way were the Impressionists. ibid.
And this is where Van Gogh lived in Arles, a small four-bedroom house, the Yellow House as he called it next to the cafe where he ate his meals and it was here that he was able to settle for the first time really over the previous ten years. ibid.
In fact Van Gogh’s mind was troubled by much more than isolation. He found himself gripped by terrible seizures and hallucinations. Doctors later diagnosed epilepsy. Van Gogh feared insanity ... The illness was becoming a central part of his painting. ibid.
He used thickly applied paint; in some places it stands out from the canvas in great blobs giving an extra dimension to the flower heads. ibid.
In 1987 one of the Sunflower paintings sold at auction for nearly forty million dollars. The ultimate accolade in a market-driven world. But supremely ironic given that Van Gogh failed to sell more than a single picture in his lifetime. ibid.