09-27-2013, 10:12 PM
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Why did Vincent van Gogh cut off his ear ? On 23 December 1888, frustrated and ill, van Gogh confronted Gauguin with a razor blade, but in panic, left and fled to a local brothel. Deeply lonely at the time, he often visited the prostitutes at a brothel on Rue du Bout d’Alene’s as his single emotional and sensuous point of contact with other people. While there, he cut off his left ear, though it is often claimed that it was only the lower part of his left earlobe. He wrapped the severed ear in newspaper and handed it to a prostitute named Rachel, asking her to "keep this object carefully." He staggered home, where he was later found by Gauguin lying unconscious with his head covered in blood. Van Gogh was taken to a hospital and remained in a critical state for several days. He asked for Gauguin continually over the next number of days, but the Frenchman stayed away. Gauguin told one of the policeman attending the case, "Be kind enough, Monsieur, to awaken this man with great care, and if he asks for me tell him I have left for Paris; the sight of me might prove fatal for him. Gauguin wrote of van Gogh, "His state is worse, he wants to sleep with the patients, chase the nurses, and washes himself in the coal bucket. That is to say, he continues the biblical mortifications Theo—notified by Gauguin—visited, as did both Madame Ginoux and Roulin. Gauguin left Arles and never saw van Gogh again. In January 1889, van Gogh returned to the Yellow House, but spent the following month between the hospital and home, suffering from hallucinations and delusions that he was being poisoned. In March, the police closed his house after a petition by 30 townspeople, who called him "four roux" (the redheaded madman). Paul Signac visited him in the hospital and van Gogh was allowed home in his company. In April, he moved into rooms owned by Dr. Rey, after floods damaged paintings in his own home. Around this time, he wrote, "Sometimes moods of indescribable anguish, sometimes moments when the veil of time and fatality of circumstances seemed to be torn apart for an instant." Two months later he had left Arles and entered an asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence Other Story In December the two artists visited Montpellier and viewed works by Courbet and Delacroix in the Museé Fabre. However, their relationship was deteriorating badly. They quarrelled fiercely about art. Van Gogh felt an increasing fear that Gauguin was going to desert him, and what he described as a situation of "excessive tension" reached a crisis point on December 23, 1888, when Van Gogh stalked Gauguin with a razor and then cut off the lower part of his own left ear, which he wrapped in newspaper and gave to a prostitute named Rachel in the local brothel, asking her to "keep this object carefully."[59] Gauguin left Arles and did not see Van Gogh again. Van Gogh was hospitalised and in a critical state for a few days. He was immediately visited by Theo (whom Gauguin had notified), as well as Madame Ginoux and frequently by Roulin.
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