Throughout the research I found, I was able to discover more about Vincent Van Gogh than I expected I would find. Vincent Van Gogh had a very tragic life, his career as an artist was short-lived, lasting only 10 years. He struggle with mental illness, rejection, poverty, and depression. He painted throughout his life because it was the one thing that helped him feel sane. He was the artist who cut off his ear, why? Due to his illness and a disagreement; a fight with his friend and artist Gauguin, who Van Gogh came at with a razor but ended up cutting his own ear. Based on all of this, my question changed from why did Vincent Van Gogh cut of his ear to who was Vincent Van Gogh as a person, it truly amazed me that behind all the simple, yet beautiful paintings created was from him, even in the state that his mind was in. This is important because it really shows that there is more than what meets the eye. I believe everyone should hear about this as we all struggle with something most of our life, and this man although dealing with mental illness, that did not stop him from what he loved and what he believed to be his calling.
Author: Libby Delarosa
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.
How does overcrowding and prison guard abuse worsen the behavior and mentality of a prisoner?
Prisons are a type of correctional facility, prisons are where individuals convicted of crimes serve sentences. The 4 main purposes behind prisons are to deterrence, incapacitation, rehabilitation and retribution, it pretty much deprives individuals of their freedom in a way of making them pay a debt to society for their crimes. Prisons are all over the world but the first “modern” prison was the Eastern State Penitentiary, which used solitary confinement as a way to give inmates time to reflect on their crimes and reformed. A summary review of the half-century expansion of police and prison power shows that debt, violence, and prison have served primarily political purposes in the context of deepening economic inequality. There are two different types of prisons, public and private. Public prisons are owned and operated by a state or federal government. The taxpayers bear the costs, and the operation is put under the control of government officials. While private prisons are built, owned, and operated by a private company that contracts with the government to house prisoners. The government in order to make budgets cuts, pays per inmate so the more inmates there are the more money is received. The problem with this is that these “companies” would keep half of that money and the rest of it wouldn’t even be enough for the inmates and their living conditions and requirements. This soon causes overcrowding and in return causes poor prison conditions which can even be life threatening to their health. Nowadays, prisons aren’t what they were first made to be. Prisons are also known to cause mental health illness to the prisoners like depression, anxiety, disorders that affect mood, thinking, or behavior. Prisons are like a boot camp but much worse, they can physically abuse you, torture you and the accommodations are made to be uncomfortable, this doesn’t only come from the prison guards but within the inmates as well.
Rahmani’s intellectual home consists of people, places, and processes but people and places have a more important part than the process. Rahmani was an egotistical and pessimistic person, he feels out of place, yet he feels everyone else is the problem. He is a good student and he thinks too highly of himself to the point where school was pointless and felt like he wasn’t being challenged or his being intelligent was meaningless among those who weren’t like him. He felt like no one cared to even try to put in the effort to learn, as well as the professors, as if they were all just waiting until class was over go home and repeat, he himself became a part of that cycle. Towards the end, it all changed, both the school and the class of students and professor changed his perspective and he found where he belonged. In English class, a short story was being discussed, “Cat in the Rain”, and he was surprised to learn that this girl had a different interpretation of what he originally thought, it bewildered him, even more when the whole class began to say their own thoughts on the story. He found this to be what he needed, he finally felt like he belonged, the eagerness to learn that came from everyone gave him the opportunity to feel it as well what he has been longing to feel and he finally found purpose and meaning in school. It made him who he wanted to become and in return his egotistical and pessimistic self was gone and he began to tutor and help others giving purpose to his own self.
