Thanks to vangoghmuseum.nl

Johanna van Gogh-Bonger

Today I’d like to take a moment to honor one of the most important and most forgotten figures in Vincent’s work and life: Jo van Gogh-Bonger. Lovely, lovely Jo.

Jo married Theo van Gogh, Vincent’s brother, on May 2nd, 1889. Since Vincent died July 29th, 1890, Jo only met Vincent on a few occasions, all within the last three months of his life. She wrote him a handful of letters that speak for themselves. Here are her first words to him:

Dearest brother,                                                           8 May 1889

It’s high time that your new little sister came to chat with you and didn’t always just let Theo convey her regards. When we weren’t married yet I always thought: Well, I don’t really dare to write to Vincent about everything yet, but now we really have become brother and sister, and I would so much like you to know me a little and, if possible, love me a little.

For my part — it’s been the case for a long time — I’ve heard so much about you, both from Wil and from Theo — and here in the house there are masses of things that are reminders of you, when I find a nice little jug or a vase or something, then it’s always: Vincent bought that or V. liked that so much — scarcely a day passes when we don’t speak of you. [full letter]

Thanks to vangoghletters.org

Now, not only did this woman have a very sweet soul, but she also gave birth to Vincent Willem van Gogh (what a name to carry…), Theo’s son, on the 31st of January 1890. Vincent Willem ended up with all the paintings Jo had kept by her death in 1925, and in 1960 the Vincent van Gogh Foundation was founded based on their enormous family treasure; it still houses the largest collection of Vincent van Gogh’s work – “some 200 paintings, 500 drawings and 700 letters, as well as the artist’s own collection of Japanese prints” as they put it. But Jo is much more than the mother of Vincent’s nephew and heir. (Although, this photo of Vincent Willem in 1952 is positively delightful)

Thanks to vangoghletters.org

Theo inherited all of Vincent’s work upon his death (this was an unanimous family decision given that Theo had supported Vincent for almost the entirety of his ten-year artistic career), and then when Theo died six months later, Jo inherited everything.

I often consider Jo at that moment, who had been married for only a year and a half, given birth to a son and named him after her brother-in-law, her husband’s closest friend, and then watched both her husband and his brother die in the year following her son’s birth. Jo was 29 years old, quite alone, left with a one year old baby, hundreds of paintings and drawings and letters. What does Jo do?

In November 1891, ten months after her husband’s death, she wrote in her diary:

Besides the child he [Theo] has bequeathed me another task – Vincent’s work – to get it seen and appreciated as much as possible; keeping all the treasures that Theo and Vincent had collected intact for the child – that, too, is my work.

Within the next few months, she resolved to organize all of the letters Theo had kept of Vincent’s, to edit, translate, and publish them. This task, creating the first complete publication of the letters between Theo and Vincent, would take her twenty-two years. That’s over twice as long as Vincent spent painting.

Now while there were certain passages suppressed and certain liberties taken to protect some individuals (all of which was quite normal for the publication of letters at the time), no one can doubt the enormity of her undertaking… Most of the letters had no date and her notes reveal she had a very difficult time finding the correct order (and she was still wrong on various points). It is additionally astounding that she financed the publication herself. It would be seven years before she recouped the cost, let alone made a profit from her publication. And while she was organizing, editing and translating, she also endlessly promoted Vincent’s work through exhibitions and sales. What would have happened if it weren’t for Jo? I believe that she, more than anyone other single figure, secured Vincent’s legacy. Theo kept Vincent alive, Jo kept him remembered.

However, what always strikes me deep in my heart is what she did upon completing this incredible project. When Theo died in 1891, he had been buried in Utrecht, in the Netherlands, in his homeland. In 1914, Jo had Theo’s remains moved to Auvers-sur-Oise, where he could rest forever at Vincent’s side.

Thanks to wikipedia.org

And in their death they were not divided. (2 Samuel 1:23)

That was your motto for the publication of all the letters, Jo.

On behalf of so many, I would like to thank you. Thank you for your love, your dedication, your time, your energy… Thank you, Jo, for saving him. I really believe you did.

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…

August 25th, 2009
Hotel, first night in Arles
9:45am

I had a dream where I time traveled. However, this was no run of the mill time travel. I used no power other than my own force, my will power. I sat in a room and said to myself, I will go back thirty years to before I was born – 1979 – and I had some things to tell my parents. It was my first attempt, a first test. The room began to swirl, my heart pounded, I fell to the ground. I felt myself continuing to fall and fall, down through a series of spirals, then climbing up to a plateau. All this time I never physically left the room, my oldest friend sat there and watched me. It was as though the room had turned into a falling elevator – but she felt nothing.

Once I had recovered, was on said “plateau,” I began to write. I said nothing to my friend, but scribbled notes nonstop. She asked me if I was okay, I nodded gruffly. My head was somewhere between the past and present, what I wrote could affect the past. I took notes on truths I discovered, about what my parents did or thought. My words created the past, changed the past, knew the past like I never could…

Perhaps someone else out there knows what I mean when I say that writing is time travel – particularly nonfiction. I feel that I have always tried to bring my reader into my skin with my work, but with the subject of Vincent van Gogh, well… If his paintings transport me, then my writing must transport you too, Reader. If his licks of paint touch me through the threshold of his paintings, I must bring your cheek within his reach. The more I write about him, the more I have come to understand his spirit. It is not the details of his life so much that interest me, nor the details of his paintings, nor of his fame. I gather all those pieces, and bend them into mirrors. I use them to reflect his light from around the sphere.

For look: people used to think that the earth is flat. That was true, and still is today, of, say Paris to Asnieres.
But that does not alter the fact that science demonstrates that the earth as a whole is round, something nobody nowadays disputes.
For all that, people still persist in thinking that life is flat and runs from birth to death.
But life too, is probably round, and much greater in scope and possibilities than the hemisphere we now know.
- Vincent van Gogh, June 1888

The sentence I usually use to describe Vincent’s Yellow is that it’s about Vincent van Gogh, and the relationship I feel I have with him. I was recently asked if I feel that relationship existed when he was alive too.

Here’s the funny thing about coincidences: as they increase in quantity, they transform. A few years ago, I would have been wildly skeptical of most of the things I now say with ease, but Vincent, and Yellow, have stretched me. I have not seen his ghost, but I have felt his heat. I have had coincidences build up beyond reason. I don’t have a name for what’s going on, but I assure you, it exists. In reaching towards Vincent, I reached towards Nature, towards the Sun and the stars, towards the past, towards something greater and higher. Something has reached back and holds on to me, and has made my path very clear. I have continued and will continue with this project, because I don’t see any other choice for me.

So my answer as to whether this relationship existed while Vincent was alive is simple. Knowing this connection exists, means I know it existed before me. If it existed before me, it certainly existed before him. Honestly, I think it is beyond time. I’m not sure where he is exactly, except that I feel him near.

But to look at the stars always make me dream, as simple as I dream over the black dots of a map representing towns and villages. Why, I ask myself, should the shining dots of the sky not be as accessible as the black dots on the map of France? If we take the train to get to Tarascon or Rouen, we take death to reach a star.
-Vincent, July 1888