But the commodification, the misinterpretation, the drama, the mythology of Van Gogh is all important, and I have eventually come to embrace it. For Vincent van Gogh created one enormous thing without a drop of intention, and that is his Myth. Van Gogh is perhaps a name with as many resonances as Ghandi, probably less than Hitler, but certainly more than FDR or Genghis Khan (and I refer to the resonances with the general population… I finally met someone who did not know who Vincent van Gogh was this past week and it about knocked my socks off). What Vincent did is in no way comparable to what these other men did, but his actions, his life, his influence has reached far and wide like a pebble’s ripple in a pool. Except that those ripples gained a force of their own, and continue to roar across cultural oceans.

What I love to look at now are the many iterations, the many re-fashionings and re-imaginings of Vincent/Van Go, and smile at the infinitely deep well of inspiration this man has become. He has become much greater than he ever could have imagined – he is sometimes so immense I wonder if I will ever know him all. As I once wrote in my journal: His life was the birth of a universe in an egg shell. I still believe that whole heartedly.

From Halloween costumes (this one is particularly well done)

Thanks to wtfcostumes.com

to NASA comparing the illumination of interstellar dust around this star to one of his paintings

Thanks to hubblesite.org

to hotel suites modeled after his paintings

Thanks to design.nl

to credit cards

Thanks to tagesanzeiger.ch

to shoes with quotes from his letters on them,

and cartoons,

Thanks to neatorama.com and bizzaro.com

and dolls with removable ears

Thanks to philosophersguild.com

or removable heads

Thanks to baronbob.com

to books (an Amazon search reveals almost 2,000) and movies (Amazon shows 22 results for movies and television, but I’m sure there are more out there that one cannot buy) and short films ranging from the more realist Vincent’s Final Moments to the surrealist Vincent and Absinthe

to the iPhone application Yours, Vincent which puts his letters and sketches at your fingertips

Thanks to iphonespies.com

to University investigations into which star Vincent painted in The White House at Night, 1890

Thanks to hermitagemuseum.org

(it was Venus, and it was precisely in that spot the night he painted it, by the way)

to songs, both the lesser known and the famous –

It becomes irrefutable that Vincent is a universe, a mountain worth climbing and full of ever-branching caverns. I am lucky enough to consider myself an explorer of all things that trace their root to him. The portrayals of this man and his work in all its iterations are not necessarily historically accurate, but they reflect what Vincent van Gogh truly means to those that reflect him back at the world and inevitably spread his words, his paintings, his life to those that did not know him at all.

In this way, Vincent van Gogh is still very much alive to me. He is an idea, a spirit that is still developing, still changing, still reaching out…