A FIRE IN HIS SOUL

Six hundred pages on two years in his life might seem excessive, until one starts reading.

Van Gogh (1853-1890) may be the only artist whose work is recognized by people with no interest in art. Biographies are plentiful, and journalist and art historian Unger, author of Picasso and the Painting That Shocked the World, insists that this is not another. Instead, it’s a close examination of 1886-88, the years that the artist spent in Paris with his brother after arriving as an obscure painter of drab scenes of peasant life. Unger delivers an account of the young artist that may unnerve readers accustomed to the colorful media portraits. His van Gogh is a cripplingly neurotic, perhaps mentally ill, figure who “found relief from his own pain by inflicting it on those closest to him” and who leeched unmercifully off his younger brother. Unger includes an expert history of France’s art scene over the previous century, dominated by the early struggle and later triumph of the avant-garde. Despite the traditional depiction of van Gogh as a solitary genius, he quickly joined a coterie of like-minded painters (Paul Gauguin, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, Georges Seurat, Paul Signac), and his work began to take on the vivid color and imagery he is known for. It didn’t hurt that his brother was an art dealer more willing than colleagues to patronize new work. By the time van Gogh left for the south of France, his work seethed with the nervous energy that attracted praise even during his lifetime. Despite abbreviated attention to the two years before his death, Unger delivers valuable insights into van Gogh’s person as well as his art.

An incisive inquiry into an immortal artist’s life.