the art collectors

Wednesday, May 6th, 2009

What?! Did Gauguin Hack Off Van Gogh’s Ear?

A new book snuffs accepted history, asserting that Vincent Van Gogh did not cut off his own ear, but rather fellow artist, Paul Gauguin, was responsible for the mutilation. Van Gogh’s Ear: Paul Gauguin and the Pact of Silence, argues that Gauguin sliced off his friend’s ear with a fencing sword during a heated argument while he staying with Van Gough in France.  As evidence, art historians, Hans Kaufmann and Rita Wildegans, draw on police reports, correspondence, and statements given by the two artists after the mutilation.

Naturally, it hasn’t taken much time for the claim to be denounced. Writing for Bloomberg News, Martin Gayford states that all evidence still clearly points to Van Gogh himself, and that neither his testimony nor Gaugin’s can be trusted – the former “was unconscious and delirious in the immediate aftermath, and intermittently deranged during the remaining year and a half of his life,” and the later “wasn’t, admittedly, an ideal witness…dying and dosed with absinthe and morphine when he wrote his most detailed account.”

Over at the Guardian, Jonathan Jones dispels the theory, arguing that the book draws haphazard conclusions from vague letters between the two artists, and that ultimately, Van Gogh’s Self Portrait with a Bandaged Ear (pictured above) “associates his injury with his vocation as an artist and a martyr,” which “displays his bandaged ear in a way that accuses himself, not anyone else.”

Read more at the Telegraph here