The Mental Health Of Vincent Van Gogh Essay

Vincent Willem Van Gogh was one of the most influential post-impressionist artists of his time. He created a variety of painting in his life, mostly in his last years before he committed suicide following years of mental illness and ill health. From his early days he suffered from depression. After moving to London he became isolated and turned to painting as a way of pre-occupying himself. For most of his life he lived in poverty, smoking and drinking heavily. Despite all this, he persevered with his creative works, taking additional exams to better himself, although this may have caused him additional stress. The Mental Health Of Vincent Van Gogh Essay.

He was often caught up in altercations and confrontations due to his unconventional mannerisms and style. It is this turbulent life that led to one of many dramatic episodes – one of them being self mutilation. It is believed that Van Gogh started to hear voices and so he took a razor to stop the voices and cut off his ear. His state of mind was very disturbed t the time, he wrapped up his ear in paper and sent it to a prostitute that he had been visiting. It is believed that Van Gogh had had a psychotic episode, a complete mental breakdown and was diagnosed with having “acute mania and generalised delirium. “After some hospital treatment, Van Gogh ploughed on despite continuing to suffer from depression, hallucinations and delusions. Together with his work overload, poor nutrition, insomnia, he had many speculative diagnosis including bipolar disorder, acute intermittent porphyria, temporal lobe epilepsy. In spite of this this he continued to paint, his illness having a significant effect on his work, highlighting both his emotional expression and creative brilliance. Van Gogh produced many portraits in his time as an artist.The Mental Health Of Vincent Van Gogh Essay.  A particular one of interested is a self portrait of him with a bandaged ear which he painted after his incident of self mutilation. The emphasis on the bandage highlights how significant this event was for him and painting this was a form of self expression. His facial expression is gloomy, his skin tone is yellowish green. It is picture is a mirror image of himself, as if he doubts himself. Vincent Van Gogh- Self Portrait with Bandaged Ear (1989)His portraits were ‘purposeful’ and ‘physiognomic’ mostly created during introspective, reflective periods often emphasising the high level of self assessment and scrutiny that he would put himself through. This is apparent in his gaze which is directed slightly away from the viewer. His appearance in this portrait is that of someone who is unstable and unkempt, unshaven, sunken eyes and jaw. He uses bold colours to express his mood, particularly yellows and greens which he emphasised symbolised ‘emotional truth. ’ He referred in his writings to his ‘anguished mood’ and ‘fatality of circumstances’.

ORDER A PLAGIARISM-FREE PAPER NOW

Van Gogh was considered a tragic failure and madman throughout his life. On the 27th of July 1890 he shot himself in the chest with a revolver. His self mutilation and self portrait was indeed signs of serious self harm and suicidal tendencies. Indeed it took him 30 hours to die from his point blank gunshot would- a slow, painful self inflicted painful death. It is since his death that critic have tied to understand his psychological state and the impact this had on his work. His illness was seen as an impediment to his work, he was often disengaged for long periods and this hindered him from reaching the true heights of his potential. Yet many have suggested that it was his artwork that kept him sane and it was everything else that was disturbing to him. Vincent Van Gogh is recognised even to this day as a ‘misunderstood tortured genius. ’ Indeed both madness and creativity are reflected in his paintings and are a reflection of the turmoil that was going on inside his mind. Vincent’s last words were: “The sadness will last forever”. Psychiatrist to this day refer to the Van Gogh Syndrome- a mental illness linked to the self mutilation of the ear. The Mental Health Of Vincent Van Gogh Essay.

Vincent Van Gogh was a really unique individual. He was born on March 30, 1853 in Groot-Zundert, Holland. He was raised by both his father and mother while growing up, and shared his parents with three sisters and two brothers. He was sixteen years old he when he started working at an art gallery and started to learn a lot about being an art dealer. He ended up moving away in order to sell art, but in 1875 he decided to leave the art dealing and devote his life to evangelism. His parents supported the decision and helped him to begin a ministry with miners in Borinage. By age 27, Van Gogh ended up moving back home to live with his parents and decided he was going to focus on art and drawing even though he did not have any experience. He ended up moving away to live near his cousin to take drawing lessons. While he was taking lessons from his cousin Mauve, he started dating a pregnant prostitute whom had a child out of wedlock already. Her name was Sien Hoomik. When his cousin Mauve found out about the relationship, he turned on Van Gogh and stopped lessons immediately. Soon after the lessons ended, Van Gogh ended up breaking off the relationship with Hoomik. Van Gogh ended up moving back home once again shortly after the relationship ended. When he got home, he discovered a new artist, Millet. Van Gogh was fascinated by his work. He started to try to copy his techniques and work and make it his own at the same time. In 1884 He started focusing on weathered hands and completed his painting, The Potato Eater’s. Though this painting was never known as his best after his life, it did get some attention at the time.The Mental Health Of Vincent Van Gogh Essay.  In 1886 Van Gogh ended up moving to Paris to live with his brother, Theo. Theo always supported Van Go… … middle of paper … …him feel worse about himself. Second, I would have prescribed him an anti depressant. He suffered greatly from depression throughout most of his life though he most likely didn’t talk to anyone about it. I think it would have been a good way to maintain an appropriate mindset as well as balance the chemicals in his brain. He also could have benefitted from medications in order to lower his anxiety and intense energy. I honestly think if Van Gogh would have been properly treated and gotten the help he needed, I think he could have lived a happier life and would have been around to see how respected his work has become. With my recommendations I think that he would have been set up for success and it could have even made a huge impact on his work and what exactly he was feeling would have came out in the art. Unfortunately, his life was cut all too short.

If one was to ask someone to name five artist off of the top of their head, they are destined to get Van Gogh as one of their answers in the response of that person. Even though he remained poor and and almost anonymous for most of his life, he is still considered one of the greatest artist of all time.

Vincent Willem Van Gogh was born in 1853 in the Netherlands. He struggled with mental illness for all of his life, before dying. Gogh was thirty seven at the time of his death. He was a Dutch post-impressionist painter and was known for his use of color and the express of emotions in his paintings. It is estimated that over his lifetime that he created around 2,100 pieces of art. He was birthed into a somewhat wealthy family, and when he got older, he actually worked as an art dealer. He was a very religious man, and was a member of the protestant religion. The Mental Health Of Vincent Van Gogh Essay.

By the time Gogh was a teenager, his family began to financially struggle, leading him to have to leave school and become an art dealer. He became fluent in many languages such as English, French, and German. When he was relocated to London, we grew to love the English culture, and visited many many art galleries. Although he fell in love with a woman, she did not love him back, and even denied his marriage proposal, causing him to have a mental breakdown. He was later fired from his job for influencing the customers to not buy the worthless artwork. He later taught at an all boys schools and hoped to be a minister one day. After a year of studying for the entrance test, he was rejected. He tried once again to be a minister elsewhere, but once again was rejected and failed.

Van Gogh endured delusions and psychotic episodes. Although he was in fact concerned about his mental health, that did not stop him from heavily drinking and not eating the way that he should. At times, he even ate paint. Believe it or not, he actually cut his own ear off with a razor.The Mental Health Of Vincent Van Gogh Essay.  After a heated argument with a friend, the anger got the best of him and he cut his ear off. The next morning he was admitted to a hospital and was very weak from all of the blood that he had lost. After being released from the hospital, he turned to painting as stress reliever. When he could not deal with the depression any longer, he was once again admitted into a mental facility, where he would paint during the day and go to the hospital at night.

Over his career, he had several very well known painting. Some of those paintings include Potato Eaters, Self Portrait, and The Starry Night. Not being all, obviously, but those are just a few of his most famous artworks. The Painting “The Potato Eaters”, is known as one of Van Gogh’s first masterpieces. The painting is a picture of five people setting around a table eating potatoes. He wanted it to seem as if they just had a different way of life than we do, and that they earned their food. He considered this painting his most successful piece of artwork. Another one of his most famous artworks is “Self Portrait.” Self Portrait is exactly what the name of it means, a self portrait of himself. In the portrait, he is looking away and his reddish beard and hair are very noticable, along with his bluish green eyes. The background of the portrait is in blue, and has thick strokes going different ways. The strokes of blue seem to get darker as they get closer to his person. It is said that he painted around about 36 self portraits of himself during his career. Most artist paint self portraits as seeing the achievement in themselves. Finally, the painting, The Starry Night. Painted in 1889, it is arguably his most famous painting. It is indeed a masterpiece in itself. He painted the painting from his room in the mental hospital after the ear event. The view one can see in the painting is the view that he saw out of one of the windows in his room in one of the Mental Hospitals that he attended, with the add on of a village at the bottom. One of the most recognizable things about the painting is the moon in the top right corner. There are several different meanings to the table, and just about everyone has a different meaning for the famous painting. Even though most of everyone knows about the painting, at the time of his death, Van Gogh considered it a failure. The Mental Health Of Vincent Van Gogh Essay.

ORDER A PLAGIARISM-FREE PAPER NOW

Vincent Willem Van Gogh is one of the best, and most famous, not only painter, but artists of all time. He created around 2,100 pieces of artworks, most coming in the last two years of his life. Throughout the length of his life, Gogh was seen as a failure as an artist, and as a person in the eyes as some. As we all know now, he is a great accomplished artist, and he made himself that. In fact, he even has a museum dedicated to him that opened in 1973 and has the most of his pieces of art works, located in Amsterdam in the Netherlands. He struggled with mental illness in his life, even cutting his own ear off one time. His life ended in the arms of his beloved brother, Theo, who supported him financially at times in his life, days after shooting himself in the chest. The popularity of his paintings did not come until after his death, and now has arguably the most recognizable painting in the world, known as, “The Starry Night.” No matter the amount of success he gained during the time of his living, Vincent Van Gogh will forever live on as one of the art legends. He should be very proud of himself now to see where he stands in the art world. The Mental Health Of Vincent Van Gogh Essay.