‘If we are not alone, where are the others?’ — Enrico Fermi
{ Vincent Van Gogh, Olive Trees with the Alpilles in the Background (1889) and Wheat Field with Cypresses (1889) }
{ Vincent Van Gogh, The Church at Auvers (1890), View of Arles with Irises (1888) and At Eternity’s Gate (1890) }
My dear Theo,
Yesterday Gauguin and I went to Montpellier to see the museum there. (…)
Gauguin and I talk a lot about Delacroix, Rembrandt &c.
The discussion is excessively electric. We sometimes emerge from it with tired minds, like an electric battery after it’s run down. (…)
Gauguin said to me this morning, when I asked him how he felt: ‘that he could feel his old self coming back’, which gave me great pleasure.
As for me, coming here last winter, tired and almost fainting mentally, I too suffered a little inside before I was able to begin to remake myself. (…)
As regards setting up a life with painters as pals, you see such odd things and I’ll end with what you always say, time will tell.
{ Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, 17 or 18 December 1888 | Continue reading | More: 902 letters from and to Van Gogh }
On 23 December 1888, frustrated and ill, Van Gogh confronted Gauguin with a razor blade. In panic, Van Gogh left their hotel and fled to a local brothel. While there, he cut off the lower part of his left ear lobe. He wrapped the severed tissue in newspaper and gave to a prostitute named Rachel, asking her to “keep this object carefully.”
Gauguin left Arles and never saw Van Gogh again.
