Research Annotations

Blumer, Dietrich. “The Illness of Vincent Van Gogh.” American Journal of Psychiatry (2002)   ajp.psychiatryonline.org. 4 April. 2002

In Blumer’s work titled “The Illness of Vincent Van Gogh” we get a summary of the life of Vincent Van Gogh and the mental illnesses he had to endure during his last two years of his life. This contains detailed information of the people surrounding Van Gogh and how this caused his emotions problems to turn into a meltdown and what is soon to be known to be caused by temporal lobe epilepsy precipitated by the use of absinthe. It also detailed how his depression and bipolar aspects are clear in his history and life. I believe this will help me with my research essay by giving me more information about how these illnesses impacted his personality and his relationships with his family, friends and lovers. Dietrich Blumer, MD was a board certified psychiatrist in Memphis, Tennessee and leading figure in the lead of epilepsy as it relates to psychiatry. He was a Professor Emeritus at University of Tennessee Health Science Center College of Medicine. He has two publications of his own on psychiatric aspects and several publications which he worked on with others while affiliated with University of Tennessee and other places. This is peer reviewed and contains actual and accurate facts about the life of Vincent van gogh. According to the work that was published, “the highlights of van Gogh’s life are reviewed and discussed in an effort toward better understanding of the complexity of his illness”. This work was reviewed and researched on by doctors in medicine, MD, for everyone to better understand Van Gogh’s mental illness and its impact on his life. I found this source to be useful to me as it shines light on specific parts of van gogh’s life and who he really was. “Theo described Vincent in a letter to their younger sister as follows: “It seems as if he were two persons: one, marvelously gifted, tender and refined, the other, egotistic and hard hearted. They present themselves in turns, so that one hears him talk first in one way, then in the other, and always with arguments on both sides. It is a pity that he is his own enemy, for he makes life hard not only for others but also for himself.”

In this youtube video, “The letters of Vincent Van Gogh” with Ephraim Rubenstein posted by ArtStudentsLeagueNY, we get a summary of a lecture given by Rubenstein where he elaborates on the writing and emotions of the letters of Vincent Van Gogh that he wrote to his brother Theo. “The letters document their closeness there are periodic estrangement and subsequent reconciliations they chronicle Vincent’s fear of abandonment” Van Gogh was a lost soul; a young person trying to find his way, trying to figure out the meaning of his existence while at the same time grappling with all the essential problems; his work, family, love objects, but overall his mental health; fighting with himself and his illness all in one. I believe this will help me more as the letters are real, most importantly it is an elaboration of Van Gogh’s life, his thoughts and thinking at that time. Ephraim Rubenstein is an artist, his work is represented in numerous public and private collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, etc. Rubenstein is an active teacher, he is currently on the faculty of The Art Students League of New York, where he teaches Life Drawing and Artistic Anatomy, the Seminar in the Literature of Art and numerous workshops in various aspects of painting, drawing and materials. The purpose of this is to better understand Vincent Van Gogh through his letters especially as a mentally ill artist, but through one’s artist perspective. Based on the genre chosen it was a good choice as the intended audience are those interested either with art or the history of an artist, in this case Vincent Van Gogh and Rubenstein is credible for this as he is an artist himself as well as a lecturer and goes in depth behind Van Gogh’s letters. I believe this source will be useful to me as the letters were an important part of Van Gogh’s life and shine light to his mental health and his perspective through his life, as well as his art.

In Bailey Martin’s book titled, “Starry night: Van Gogh At The Asylum” we get a summary of a fully illustrated account of Van Gogh’s time before and at the asylum in Saint-Remy. Van Gogh wrote very little about the asylum in letters to his brother Theo, so this book sets out to give an impression of daily life behind the walls of the asylum of Saint-Paul-de Mausole and looks at Van Gogh through fresh eyes, with newly discovered material. Martin Bailey is a leading specialist on Van Gogh and an arts journalist. He is a London-based correspondent for The Art Newspaper. Bailey has curated several exhibitions on Van Gogh, including one at Tate Britain in 2019, and has written extensively on the artist. His books include The Sunflower Are Mine, Studio of the South, and Starry Night. Bailey is credible enough to write these books, he is knowledgeable not only in Van Gogh life but his artwork as well. It was a good choice for his audience being for anyone interested in Van Gogh and his time at the asylum before and during it. I found this book useful to me as it shines light on how impactful Van Gogh’s illness was on his life. The reason being that his illness caused him to be bipolar and alienate those around him, in this case his friend Paul Gauguin, the artist whom he had been working for awhile in Arles. Van Gogh’s illness revealed itself: he began to hallucinate and suffered attacks in which he lost consciousness. In this attack he used a knife and ended up losing an ear, and ending up at the asylum.