Doomed to Fail - Ep 26 - Part 2: The Infinite Artist - The Tragedy of Vincent Van Gogh

Episode Date: July 6, 2024

This is it! Our final re-release and we are all caught up!It's one of Taylor's favorite episodes. Let's talk about our dear Vincent van Gogh! 🎧 Immerse yourself in the vibrant yet turbulent life of Vincent van Gogh, one of history’s most fascinating and misunderstood artists. This week, we explore his artistic genius, the personal struggles that haunted him, and the enduring mysteries surrounding his tragic death. Join us for an intimate look at the man behind the masterpieces. 🎨🌻 #ArtHistory #VincentVanGogh #PodcastEpisode #ArtisticGenius #VanGoghLegacy #HistoricalMysteries #Masterpieces #HistoryPodcast #ArtLovers #TragicLife Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

Hi friends. It's Taylor from doomed to fail. We're the podcast that brings you history's most notorious disasters and epic failures twice a week every week. But for the past year, we've been bringing you three episodes a week, or sometimes even more, war on vacation, because we've been re-releasing our first 26 episodes. Those episodes, we did one really long episode with two stories in it, and then we decided to divide it in half and do two episodes a week. So in that vein, we re-released all 26 of our first episodes as two separate parts. And this is our very last re-release. So this has been exhausting to do this. I've recut 26 episodes into 52 separate episodes, redone all the socials, re-uploaded it to Simplcast, redone the YouTube videos,

just done the whole thing. And I am both excited that it's over and also worried the We don't have endless content to give you all, but hopefully our new episodes will be fulfilling and great as that is our goal. If you have any ideas for us, please let us know. We're at doom to failpod at gmail.com. We have a new website, doom to failpod.com. And we are on all the socials at doomed to fail pod. So with no further ado, I guess, this is episode 26, part two on the life and death of Vincent Van Gogh. And this is one of my absolute favorite episodes that we have ever done. I learned so much about Van Gogh, despite, as I probably mentioned, being an art history major in college, I learned so much more about Van Gogh from reading

a very, very long book about him, you know, and learning a lot about his life via various articles in the internet and such, but a very troubled man, a very troubled life. He, like, as you know, he didn't know that we were all going to love it, but I'm so glad that we do. And I hope that somewhere in the universe and the star dust, he knows that he is beloved across the world. Since this episode aired, I went to Japan in April 24, and I saw a Van Gogh in a museum in Hiroshima. So he is, you know, all over. And we definitely, definitely love him. And also shout out to the hero of the story, who is Vincent Van Gogh's sister-in-law, Yo Van Gogh. It is because of Yo that we know about Vincent and definitely stick around because there's some really fun stories of her

you know owning a boarding house that had like sunflowers in the dining room just unbelievable work that she did to make sure that we know about Vincent today so thank you to Vincent Van Gogh for sharing your vision with us and thank you to Yo Van Gogh for making sure that we did not forget about Vincent and his life so I hope you enjoy this very very last re-release episode 26 Part 2, The Life and Death of Vincent Van Gogh. Thank you. The matter of the people of the state of California versus Hortthall James Simpson,

case number B.A.019. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. I'm muted. I think you could have heard me peeing, but I just like to mute it. just in case.

Just in case. I pee in this totally different room, but just in case. I thought there was a bucket next year. Oh, God. Like, you remember when you were like, oh, I'd like a chamber pot? I was like, absolutely. Okay. I'm ready.

Hold on. No, I'm not talking about Russia today, as far as, but I am talking about something that does have a little bit of a true crime bit in it in the end. So that was unexpected. So I'm excited to tell you about that. I was thinking, we're talking about, we talk about, what relationships was a dramatic thing that happened in a in a relationship and then i was thinking like do you remember how i have this extremely expensive degree in our history that i'm still paying for

yeah so i'm like what are some things in our history that seems super dramatic and what is the story that we think we all know so i thought who was the person that caused vincent van go to cut off his ear oh my god that is so cool yeah hell yeah and it's not at all what i thought this is a fernetic, colorful, tragic story. It begs the question, like, do artists have to be starving? Do you have to be mentally ill? Does something have to be wrong for you to create, like, great art? So this is a wild ride of Vincent Van Gogh's life.

Yes. It's going to be a cousin. It'll be something gross. It's a cousin, isn't it? No, it's not even a woman, and it's not sexual. Weird. So I'll tell you more. Also, I know that were I a Dutch speaker, I would say Van Gogh and not Van Gogh, but I can't do it.

I'm not doing that. I'm not doing that. I can't. No. I don't. It's like when people will say cacamole when they're trying to say, well, it's just like, I get that you speak a language. I can't speak and I'm really proud of you, but like, you don't have to big up me. You call guacamole. I mean, I think. You know who I'm thinking about, right, Taylor? No. Tell me later. Yeah, I'll tell you later. I imagine. But I do, I do think that once Dan Carlin does a, if he does anything on Van Gogh, I'll say Van Gogh, because I'll say whatever Dan Carlin says. But until then, I'm going to say Van Gogh, because that's what I came up with. So I'm going to tell you about the many failed relationships of Vincent Van Gogh, starting with his parents, his brother Theo, God, a sex worker named Cien, his cousin Kay, the art world in general, an artist named Paul Gogan, and ultimately himself. So his year. All fail, all failed. I also, we are both older than Vincent Van Gogh will ever be. He died when he was 37. Wow. And we have things that he so desperately wanted and never had we have good friendships we have loving families we have homes we have i have children someday you might have children who knows but like vincent van go so desperately wanted this family and he

will never have them but in a hundred years no one will remember us you know what's that people will this podcast uh-huh so yeah no i just it's it's interesting and i think the tragedy that we all know is like he wasn't famous in his lifetime sure you know And he was, you know, this tortured artist, and he totally was. He had this wild need to be accepted and loved and to express himself. And, like, that was what ultimately, like, led to his death. In March, 1987, Van Gogh's painting, a vase with 15 sunflowers, was sold for an adjusted $94.21 million.

And that tripled the last painting ever sold before that. So it was like a new era of art. So, like, Van Gogh, obviously is like, everyone knows him. You can see his art. You know exactly what he does. You can think about it. You, like, picture it immediately. Yeah, I went to the Van Gogh.

There's in Austin, they set up a Van Gogh. The Emerson thing. The experience. Van Gogh is what it's called. I did it in Las Vegas. Yeah. Yeah. It's cool.

Yeah. I mean, he's everywhere. And Wikipedia's list of the top 89 most expensive paintings, I don't know why I was with 89 on that list ever sold. 11 of them are his. So 11 of like the top, you know, most expensive. the paintings ever sold are his, he only sold one in his last year of his life. So he only saw one that he sold that he had sold. There's a, did you ever watch Doctor Who? I've seen a few

episodes. I'm not like a huge Doctor Who. I know what a TARDIS is. So perfect. So there's one, and I've only seen this clip, but it's a beautiful clip where they get Van Gogh and they take him to exhibit in like 2010. And they ask the, the Dossent to tell them like, you know, what is it about Van Gogh? And he goes off and he taught says, he's the, you know, he's one of the greatest artists that ever lived and Van Gogh starts crying and it's just like beautiful and like very lovely but in his life he never knew so again like you know I spent this week on a topic that people spent their whole lives doing so I'm definitely going to like miss things and there's definitely more of this story but it's such a good story so the thing that I read was the book Van Gogh the life

by Stephen Naccafe and Gregory White Smith so that's the book that I read and then I also have some like art history books from when I was in college that I looked at as well and then And then also just to mention, this is post-impressionism, if you were like, where are we with this? Well, one more thing that I don't, maybe I'm going to say for the end, but I just want to add now because it's fun, is there is a missing Van Gogh. It is called Poppy Fowers. It was stolen from the Muhammad Mahmoud Khalil Museum in Cairo twice. It was stolen in the 80s and it was stolen again in 2010 and no one knows where it is. That's pretty cool.

Pretty cool. And pretty fun. So let's talk about him himself. Vincent Van Gogh was born on March 30th, 1853 in Groot-Zerndert, Netherlands. So there's a lot of words that I'm not going to be able to pronounce because they're Dutch and French coming at you. Just FYI. You just remind me that I actually went to his actual museum when I went to Amsterdam. Cool.

Yeah, it was really cool. He does a lot of lithographs. There was like a lot of like, no. Yeah, okay. It stuck in my mind of like, I didn't know that guy. I thought he's a painter only and I guess, no. He did thousands of works. There's so much Van Gogh stuff.

It's crazy. Yeah. His parents, Theodorus Van Gogh and his mother, Anna, his dad was a minister of the Dutch Reformed Church, so they were Protestant in a very Catholic area. It was a very family-first family. His mom was very strict, wanted the family to be together and be happy. This is also like a weird time in the Netherlands. They are, think about nature a lot, think about the garden, they think about flowers.

they have this idea that people have all the time, that there is this glorious past that we have to go back to, that we have to remember. And they're remembering times when the Netherlands was really successful. And they're enchanted by that. They're enchanted by the past. And we talked a little bit about that in like the tool up being an episode, you know,

when people were like first becoming to be middle class and starting to like get money. And people like had a lot. It was very prosperous time for them. but also it was because of slavery that they were so successful. So they know that by this time. Things are so easy when other people knew all the work for you for free. Yeah, exactly. So they have this memory of a time where things were great,

but they also don't want to remember the fact that they were great because they enslaved people. Right. Vincent himself was the oldest surviving brother of six children. A brother was born the year before him, exactly a year before him, whose name was also Vincent Van Gogh, but then the brother died still born and then Vincent was born a year later, which is like maybe weirder for us than it was for them, but still kind of weird. I don't love it. Yeah. And it's like his parents were still mourning

the dead one to name this one Vince. That's a little weird. Yeah, I don't love it. Different times. Yeah. So his parents kept having kids. His mom actually had her last kid at 47, which I think is Interesting. So his family read a lot. They love reading Dickens. They love reading fairy tale books, things like that. They read a book. This isn't really important, but one of the authors that they liked was a man named Edward Woolworth Litton, Leighton, who I've never heard of. But he was the first person to ever write, it was a dark and stormy night. Oh, nice. Which is kind of fun, you know. I guess someone had to write that for the first time. And I don't know anything else about him, but it's fun. That's he was the first person. to write that. Another big thing in the Van Gogh family is they'd make each other gifts. So they loved Christmas. Imagine

like, you know, a Dutch Christmas. There's, you know, a lot of like candles and ribbons and flowers and they would make each other presents. So they would crochet things and collage things and always just like a really loving family. The dad's three

mantras were duty, decency and solidity. So fate has ups and downs choose the middle. Like just like do the middle path, which does not it's not at all what his children did but that's what he was like trying to force upon them solid so what does it mean and what i wrote is yeah fate has ups and downs but you choose the middle like you stand strong in the middle so like when a good thing happens don't forget that bad things happen well to them yes so when a bad thing

happens don't forget that something good will happen eventually like this two shall pass stuff but also when something good is happening don't forget that something that can happen any moment i'm such an idiot i typed salinity and i was like the dissolved salt of content of body really salty water is our third family virtue i don't know why it just is but that made it hard obviously for the kids to be themselves because your parents are like failure is always around the corner you're going to have a weird a weird life right because him and his mom did not get along very well he did a lot of art he would send things to her she would throw it away she was like this jerk kid of mine you know his dad was very religious and so that definitely had an impact on vincent's life eventually they sent him to a boarding school because he was a lot to deal with he was very like he would read a ton and do all this art and do all these things but he never really fit in anywhere and so his parents were like you're kind of making this family crazy so you know everybody else is like following the rules going to school living like a

relatively like normal life for for preacher's children and Vincent like can't do that he's kind of all over the place so they send him away he goes to several different boarding schools he still doesn't fit in so they're trying to figure out what do we do with this like our oldest son who's kind of we're going to have to like support him forever because he can't figure out his shit out essentially I would encourage that and be like the ones that don't fit are the ones that do cool shit so yeah he's about to do cool shit for sure the Van Gogh family actually is very was very successful in two ways they're successful in gold and successful in art so it's not crazy that vincent would be an artist there's art as an art family his dad is is a preacher because his

dad was so it was like several several generations of like going right back to your exact dad whatever like that line was preachers but but everybody else was like in in the art world his uncles are art dealers. So there are people who are like telling everybody what to like an art during this time in big cities, like in Paris, in London, like all over Europe. His dad also, to note, did have a fun time in university before he got married and then he decided to become more pious. So at least at least he had like a little bit of personality in there. But right now also there's this crazy thing happening where there's a new book called The Life of Jesus that came out and it for the first time in these guys's life. They're seeing Jesus as potentially a real person and not like as the son of God. So it's kind of throwing a wrench into things. So it's kind of a crazy time to be involved in religion. But Vincent decides that they're like, he needs to get out of the house. He won't go to school. He keeps walking home from school. So his, he had an uncle named Vincent Van Gogh. And this uncle was called Sent. So scent is his uncle's nickname for Vincent. And he's an art dealer. So he made money in an art store. He was a very fun guy.

I'm confused. Hold on. His uncle was named Vincent Van Gogh. Yeah. He was named after his uncle. The Vincent's and the family. Okay. But the uncle's of Vincent Van Gogh, but his nickname is Sent.

So we're just going to call him Sent. Call him Sent. Okay, cool. Yeah. And so Sent is one of the first people who started to see, like you were saying with the lithographs, like art that's like reproducible. And people want to see to get prints. So he would sell Prince.

They sold Prince in the Hague and he became very rich. And Uncle Sent was not. able to have children with his wife. So his wife and him just like worked together and they brought Vincent on as sort of like, you know, a family, maybe a son figure who can work with him. Vincent was 16 when he went to work in Cents store in the Hague. He's the worst at work. So do you ever like go into like a niche store and there's like a nerd there that you just

like don't want to talk to? That would usually be me at like GameStop. I was going to say like at GameStop. Like, yes. So imagine he's like the nerdiest dude at the GameStop and people and people are like trying to just go in and like buy art and like do these things and he's kind of freaking out about everything. He's like, you should buy this because it's this and this is this and he's like, this applies to this poem, applies to this book, applies to this thing. And he just has so much going on in his head. Then when you talk to him, you're like overwhelmed and people are like, no, thank you.

So they kind of like back out of the store slowly and like don't want to buy anything. So they sent him to the back of the store because they're like, you can't talk to us. Too weird, but you're way too weird. Sorry, sorry, bro. He moves around he's 16. By 19, he's in very, very much in the scene of going to brothels all the time. He spends a lot of time with sex workers, sometimes just to talk, sometimes, like, other things. But like, something weird happens during this time where they're just like, you got to cut that out.

Like, you can't do it anymore. Like, it wasn't like. Who's they? The broth of sex workers saw him to cut it out? No. Uncle Sent. people at the store because of something that happened in the brothels. I don't know

exactly what it was, but like everybody knew that he had like maybe like freaked out on someone, you know what I mean? Like he did something and everybody was like uncomfortable aren't him? So like you got to go. So sent him to London to another store. It just sounds like an autistic kid. Yes. He definitely absolutely. There's so much mental illness

that like we would think about differently and I'll tell you actually what they know he had later. But yeah. Like something's up. His brother, he had a younger brother named Theo. Theo is five years younger than him. Theo was sent to a similar job in Brussels, and he did great. Theo's great. He's personable. Everybody likes him. He is always the one that will financially support Vincent for his whole life. So Vincent's whole life, he will ask Theo for money, and Theo will send him money while Theo is selling other people's art. And he's like, he's doing

fine. Theo is fine. Vincent gets sent to London to work in the same company, but in a stock room. And he was bummed. He didn't want to be in London. London was like really dirty and gross and like so many more people than he was used to seeing and like he didn't know if he loved it and he felt very like isolated and alone. Another thing that happens during this time, which I think is crazy, is he because he wasn't doing very well, he was about to get drafted into the military and the military was going to send him to Sumatra to like fight in like a war there that they were having. And he He got out of it. His parents paid 600 guilders, which is a year's salary, to send a bricklayer in his place. That is privilege.

Yeah. And instead, I was kind of like, hey, I sent him his money, but also like, yeah, he wasn't going to send him to some mantra to do that. So he sent some poor bricklayer in his place. But Vincent will always be a financial burden to his family, like always. And he's always trying to find another, like that family feeling he had when he was younger before people started to try to like get rid of him in certain ways. So why he's in London, he meets a family, like a woman and a widow and her daughter. He's like, this is my new family. We're super happy.

I like love it here. He invites his sister. His sister was like, it's weird. Like, you're being weird. Like, why are you so obsessed with these people? And there's so many relationships he'll have. We're like, the only last a month. But the first two weeks are like, this is the best thing that ever happened to me.

This is it. This is my thing. And then the last two weeks are awful. And then he leaves and never talks about it again. And it happens over and over. He has autism. like it's just obviously like he just has like a disconnect from whatever we don't it's all good you're discussing but yeah no exactly he has a disconnect like in his head he's like seeing things differently

than everybody else's seeing right you know he's like absorbing all this literature all these stories all this art and it's just like he cannot express it in a way that isn't crazy you know people like yeah he's like ah one people are like you got to calm down right we can't we can't do this he decided that he was super lonely, he didn't know what to do, so he turned to God. He was like, my dad is a pastor, preacher, or whatever, I want to do, I want to do the same. So during this time, also, he was in Paris when the Impressionists were making their move. So, like, the ones that you know, like Monet is doing his thing, and he missed it. He doesn't write about it.

Because, again, like most of the people I talk about, we know about him through his letters. and he missed it because he was going into this religious fervor being like, I can be the best preacher out there, you know, and... But then he also missed it because Monet wasn't famous when he was... No, he wasn't a way that it was like, they were trying to be disruptive. So you would have heard him, you know? Like, maybe that people weren't like, he's amazing and like they're putting water lilies in their house, but they were like, he's being disruptive.

So you would have known. Yeah. Yeah. So he also just like... I put like Putin because, you know, I guess speaking of Putin, he had this romanticized idea of the past, which Putin does as well. So Putin looks at Catherine the Great and says, like, there was this time in Russian history where we were the best. And that isn't true because things were horrible things were happening all over the country, but he wants to like be a part

of that past. And so Vincent always saw like, I want to be a part of like the French revolution. Like I'm, I was born too late. So he is very lonely. He gets, fired from his job in London. He goes home for Christmas. Christmas is again a huge deal. People complained about him. They wanted to act like nothing had happened. They just like kind of wanted him to go away. So also, I guess also back to Russia. Of course I mentioned Russia like nine times and that's. Just like Rasputin, Vincent went for a walk for a really long time. There you go. They went for a walk for months. He would walk for days along the countryside. He was like walking around kind of preaching, not doing

much art, but like, you know, really like reading the Bible and becoming very, very religious. He finally got a small job at a church in London. So he's walking around England. He gets a job in London. He speaks English. So he speaks English, Dutch, French, but his English is very heavily accented and he's super excited. So people are just like, what is this? As he's like preaching in the thing, he's very passionate. He's very strange. No one thinks he's going to be a preacher, which is also really hurtful, you know, like his family's like, yeah, you're doing something that like a lot of us have done, but we don't think you're going to be successful. It's also, it makes him so much less cool to me. I didn't know he was trying to be a preacher. Like, he, like, lost so many cool points by trying

to be a preacher. Like, he gets him back. He gives him back. So he, now he's, like, walking around, he's smoking, he smokes constantly, like he smokes a big, like a big pipe all the time. And he studies and studies and studies, but like, he doesn't study the right way. You know, it's like he does that thing that he always feels like he needs a teacher, but he never finds a teacher that he will listen to. So he just like studies his own way, which is sometimes, which doesn't give him the outcome that he wants, you know? So that's like someone being like, I would read the Bible 15 times and that's how I'm going to become the most religious person of all time, you know, and you're like, okay, but you also have to like talk to people and like do other things, you know.

I have a joke in the, in the chamber and I'm not going to. No, do it. Go ahead. No, I'm not going to do it. Why you can do it eventually? do it let's just say there's other things the catholic church is done you know what i'm not doing it let's not catholic he's protestant but he just he's an artist he's an artist's heart an artist soul but he's like how do i express this he's trying to express it through religion he throws himself into it 100% and it doesn't work so meanwhile theo his brother even though he's successful in the art world, that's a successful store and is doing well,

he falls in love with some not as reputable ladies, and he gets someone pregnant, and his parents are like, absolutely not. So he has to- He had a prostitute pregnant, basically, what you're going to say? I think, I don't know if she was specifically a sex worker, but like someone who was poor, but he's definitely sleeping with a ton of sex workers.

That's going to be Theo's a lot in life. So he was getting super depressed. And that's what's happening coming in the background. Like Theo is successful in work. Like he gets offered a job for like a shit ton of money, like more money than anyone had ever seen. And he, you know, he's very successful. He goes to the opera.

He dresses really nice. Because another thing that Van Gogh's the family was really into was like dressing really nice and going for walks on Sundays. And everybody's seen them and being like, oh, they look nice. They have their shit together. You know, so Theo looks like he has a shit together when he does not have a shit together. Now, Vincent's 25, he's hoping to come a preacher. He becomes a pastor to a poor mining village in Belgium called the Bornage.

And he's one of the people who, you know, reads the Bible and interprets it as, like, if you suffer, you're lucky. You know, like, you're lucky because you're suffering. And so that was good because it was a mining town. And on April 17th, 1879, there was a huge fucking explosion and a ton of people died. It's a fucking mining town. He tried to, like, comfort people and they were just like, absolutely not. you know like because he's a weird though

yeah like everyone we noticed exploded like we can't we can't with you so he was there he was there a month and he kept trying to like be like I'm also going to suffer he would he would

like not eat for days you know he'd walk for days he wouldn't take care of his body because he was like I have to suffer to like be religious so now he's like he's trying way too fucking hard you know

and so he gives up he's like I'm not a preacher he becomes an atheist it's over okay who knows yeah whatever he really really believed he just wanted to like do something with passions like i can put my passion into this and that didn't

work it was like too much so now he likes art i mean he moves to brussels and he starts taking art classes he spends money on nice clothes he you know tries to start a print collection tries to make money from selling his collection but again like even if he is in art classes he doesn't last very long and even if he you know dresses really nice people are like we can tell that you're weird you know And like later, there's all tons of stories of people who like, you know, they're asked 20, 30 years later, do you remember him? And they're like, yeah, we remember him. He was really fucking weird. You know? Yeah. Yeah. It was a weird guy. Whatever. And he became obsessed with several artists. And he would like, be like, I want any to study under you. I need to like be a part. Learn, teach me everything. And that would last like a month, just like everything. You know, it would be like super high, high, super low, low. Over. And then he would like never talk to them again. he became obsessed with his cousin K and he asked her to marry him and she said no

absolutely not she said I was kind of on to something when I thought it was a cousin that did this to him yeah but this I mean this I don't even know he was like oh I really want to he asked her to marry him and she said never no never which is very dramatic it's not what you want to hear and so he was like I really want to see her like you know he like tried to go and talk to his uncles and be like, I need to see her.

And they were like, no, like, just absolutely not. So he had to like kind of like deal with that. Like he was still trying to find this like family. He feels like he is a late bloomer, obviously. He meets more artists, an artist named Mov. He meets for a while. But he never has enough money. He always gets in fights with people.

He just like can't keep it together. The big thing that Theo keeps telling Vincent is you need to make saleable art. We be able to sell your shit. Like in the book they say saleable art like 15 million times. Like this is the thing. that you need to do but he just can't do it he knows art dealers he knows artists he knows what people are buying and he just like cannot do it he approaches art like he approached being a preacher like he's impossible to get along with because it's just like so into it and so in his head and produces

this stuff that comes out like garbled and people don't get it yeah you know so one thing that he loved doing is he loved drawing people and he insisted on drawing people from from a model like from having a person there he couldn't really draw from his imagination that was not something that he did he stood in front of things and drew them so he would spend all of his money on models a lot of time they were sex workers a lot of time they were really poor people that he would give like a couple coins to and then they would like you know pose for him but people still thought that was really weird you know they'd be like oh you're going to go like stand in this guy's house and just like pretend to eat for an hour three hours and he's going to paint you like people thought that were that was really strange

Kind of that strange. Yeah. So he tried to master some things. He struggled to paint perspectives. He bought this frame to help him do perspectives. Like it wasn't like perfect at really anything because it was just so like kind of kind of overwhelming in general. He met a sex worker named Sien and she was pregnant when he met her and he, you know, fell in love with her, thought they'd have a family together and he like loved her very passionately even though she was gross. so we know we have drawings of her we know about her life sand was gross she has she was just s i e n she was just

riddled with STDs and she was pregnant and she like you know was missing her teeth was like a witch yeah she's not doing great and of course he gets gonorrhea so it's actually like really bad and they're both in the hospital at the same time while Stan is having her baby and Vincent is being treated for gonorrhea which I don't know the details but I did learn in the book they tried to like get rid of it by inserting bigger and bigger catheters into him until like flushed out which sounds fucking terrible and his dad came to visit him during this time and was like dude you have to stop talking to this woman like you have to get out of this and Vincent was like no I love her I'm going to go back to her as soon as I get out of here whatever he continues to be supported

by Theo, his family kind of threatens to take over and put him under conservative ship and be like, you know, you have to you can't take care of yourself. But he insists that he's okay and this whole time he's kind of been drawing

and now he wants to paint. So he's starting to get into painting and he's starting to get more money from his brother and he's still with with Sien. He thinks of himself as like Robinson Crusoe like by himself on this island. of passion that like no one understands and he's always like I'm about to get make something that

you can sell I'm like this close to making something that everybody will want to buy everybody's be patient with me the consequences will be dire if you're not he'd rather die than quit like all those things he still really thinks he can do this and in the in the book that I read this is where they say he starts waving the red flag of mental instability because he's like even more losing it than before i'm gonna i'm gonna go on a limb here i will say this might be a bit of a shock i am not looking very artsy person i don't care about art that much i don't know what look i just know what looks good to me i don't really i will say like i'm looking at his paintings in the thick brushstroke linework stuff that he does like it is

objectively really really cool and awesome And also, his family's right. He is unstable. He should have been locked up. He should have had a conservative. Like, when a pregnant prostitute comes knocking on your door and you're like, I want to be your baby. It's a, somebody get this guy help.

Like, yeah. I don't know. It's like, if any of our brothers did that, you'd be like, no, no, no, no, no. It's like, we used to make Christmas cards at home and like make mama cake for a brother. And now you got like this woman pregnant and you have gonorrhea and you don't know. Like, she said, what are you talking? It's not an indictment on her or whatever. It's like, we all come from different walks of life.

There's like, sometimes it's okay if there's no overlap. Yes, totally. And you, yeah, you would also tell your brother to cut this out. Yeah. If asked. Exactly. So, I mean, this is such a long story. There's so many things.

But eventually he's living in Trenton with his brother. He leaves Cien. Ced's story ends later. But she eventually throws herself into a. river and dies by suicide. So her life continues to be awful and gross for until it's over. And so he's lived with his brother for a little bit. His brother has a mistress and he wants them to like all live together. He's like, we can live together. Like he really needs, he wants his family unit back. He remembers when he was younger. But Theo won't,

won't live with him at this point. His mom falls and he moves back to Belgium, to the Netherlands to take care of her. And he, you know, got a, got to pay. patron got a painting teacher. He ended up meeting a woman named Margo and she was 43 and he was younger. So he must have been like 35 or 34 at this point. But she's like super in love with him. So she falls in love with Vincent and she is a woman who's a daughter of a neighbor and the neighbor died and his three daughters live in the house alone. Like what have happened to Lizzie Borden and her sister? They lived in the house alone. And her sisters are such bitches. They're They're like, you're too old to get married.

You can't marry him. And like, yes, he's crazy and all the things. But like, give me a break. Like, you just, like, told her she can't get married. She can't be happy. So poor Margo. The problem isn't that she's too old. The problem is that he's an unhinged maniac who has VD from prostitutes.

Like, what am I the only one missing this? No, you're totally right. That's definitely a lie that history is told. They've been like, you're too old. They've been like, dude, that guy's dirty. Yeah, that's the problem. You're right. You're right.

But his sister's, like, her. our sisters were like, are you pregnant? Like, what the hell? And she's like, no, I just love him. And they're like, no, absolutely not. So she meets him in a field in like the middle of the night. And she's like, I love you so much. I don't know what to do. And then she faints because she had taken strychnine to try to kill herself. He made her throw up, took her to the doctor and just felt terrible after that. But he eventually did leave. And obviously did not get married. But she's maybe the only person who really did love him, like unconditional. maybe that one woman's sad. It's all sad. So he has all these relationships. He has this like beautiful imagination. It's 1885. He's still at home, but he's sad. He's taken care of his his mother

after her injury. She fell. And Theo is still in Paris. And he's like he told he tells Vincent he makes him think of old people who think their youth was better. He's like you're acting like we have this idyllic childhood. You have to go back to. Eventually, he's still with his parents and his dad dies.

So his dad's last day, he goes out and repairs the fences, does a long walk in the snow home. And then later, after he should have been home, a maid hears a sound on the door, opens up the door, and the dad has leaned against the door. He's had a massive stroke and he's dead. So he made it all the way home, like in the snow by himself, but then died at the end. which reminds me of my great grandpa who went to the doctor one day and the doctor said, you're doing great, you're absolutely perfect. He went home and chopped some wood and then had a heart attack and died. Like, top one second, both ass.

So now his sister, Anna, is such a bitch and she's like, you killed dad. It's your fault that he said because you're hearing, you're stressing him the fuck out. And so he feels terrible. He's with his parents. He doesn't know what to do. He is acting weird. His brother is like, you have to sell some stuff. what do we do? He's so close. And so he makes this lithograph, like you were saying.

So he learns how to, like, do this new form of art where you can, like, quickly reproduce stuff, these lithographs. And he does one called the potato eaters. And it's, I'm looking at that right now. Yeah. So it's like a family eating. And he was obsessed with, like, the peasantry and, like, poor people and their lives. And people saw it. And they were like, what is this? It's weird. Like, where are their organs? It's dark. It's very dark. This is not like, I'm going to look at this and feel jolly and I'm not going to put this in my living room basically totally and it ends up in someone's living room later in the story but at this point people are like this is weird like we don't know what it is um so nothing sells he's he's

pretending that like everything is is okay but nothing is going well he moves to antwerp and he also now this is where he can track syphilis so it's just like again tons of uscetes so the medicine for syphilis was mercury which has his own problems So it would make you crazy, obviously. Like, you know, like the mad hatter. You know that? Yeah. Because like hatters would be mad because of the mercury.

Did you remember that? So like that. And then it made you lose your hair. It made you spit a lot because like the mercury, I don't know, whatever. So he would like, his hair was falling out. His teeth were falling out. He had sores in his mouth. Like he was just like not good.

And he was trying to spend all of his money on like getting models. We could start painting them. And he was like learning how to paint, taking classes. And just was like, like never working out for whatever reason things aren't looking up and he moves to paris to be with theo and he gets wooden dentures he starts eating he starts dressing nice spends a few months at school but it doesn't work like he goes to school where there's like the teacher is like okay today we're going to paint pairs like a still life and everybody else is like do to do i'm going to

paint normal and vincent is like covered in paint there's paint dripping down his arms he's like slapping paint on the thing he's like talking to himself all these things and people and People are just like, don't get it. They can't handle it. And they're like, he can't do it. So he doesn't stay in school very long. And then Theo meets a woman who's going to be really important later named Johanna Gesnia. And he is like, he met her in Holland.

He's like, I love her. He goes to ask her to marry him. She's like, I don't know you. Like, what are you talking about? So she like turns him down and Theo goes back to Paris very, very heartbroken. So her name's Johanna. We're going to call her yo. if it's spelled Joe but pronounced yo which is super cute um so yeah yo because

johanna you know they're called her yo so theo is starting to get sick as well because Theo was also riddled with STDs so i'm not so okay sorry i'm not reacting anymore i get it everybody has syphilis everybody has gonorrhea it's fucking awful so he i don't even know what those things do to you but imagine it's awful. But it's like you know the source. Why do you keep going back to the source? That's what caves my head in. Like, anyways. But like emotionally, he keeps going back to the source of the things that hurt him, you know? So it's like just true. I don't know. It's a, yeah, you're right. The whole thing. So Theo starting to get, get tired of Vincent, they're living together, which has been Vincent's dreams to live with his brother. But it's just,

not working out. Vincent's obsessed with like this this madame at this cafe called the cafe tambourine he's fucking that up he's fucking up every relationship that he's in and Theo is actually now in charge of buying all the Impressionists and selling it. So like he's one of the reasons that Impressionism is even such a big deal is because he was in charge of buying it for the store and selling it. So it's like after they were like the avant-garde thing and now they're like the mainstream. Vincent is still not selling. Theo sells none of work. He was doing some cool things. Some things that I didn't know that he was doing. He became obsessed with Japanese art. So there's some Japanese-inspired things that Vincent Van Gogh did. He would draw, like, he would copy Japanese paintings and then draw borders and just put like gibberish

Japanese symbols around it because he like didn't speak Japanese or Japanese, but he would try to like learn from that. So a lot of like these like deep colors come from that art. In February 1888, he leaves Paris. He leaves living with his brother, which was his dream because he does that for Theo's health. Because Theo is like getting sick from stuff. Phyllis, like super sick, and can't handle having Vincent around. It's just too much. So he leaves and he goes to his town in France called Arl. A-R-L-E-S-R-L-E-S-R-L. This is where a ton of stuff happens. So Arl is a place where Vincent paints his most known works of art. He goes to this town. It's like a beautiful old town. It is, it has Roman ruins. It has like Renaissance ruins. It has like so much history. It was something where like, you know, the Roman. went through it to get to the rest of Europe. It's just like a beautiful, beautiful place. And he rents this house. It is yellow and it is called the yellow house. And that is where he does a lot of his work that you may have heard of. One thing he says during this time is he says, I use color to express

myself forcefully. So he's like really painting a lot. Oil paints are new at this time too. So it's like a whole thing. He spends a lot of time and late nights in a cafe. He stays in a room. He calls it a free love hotel obviously we know what that cafe is but but it's like a lovely thought to be like oh like we're out late at night with like artists and people that kind of don't care this is his opportunity to start over you know so he's like who can i have come here with me and like actually do art with me so he asks another painter named paul gogan to come live with him and takes it sounds familiar so look it up so gogan had spent a lot of time traveling the world he just in South America and he paints a lot of like native people so there's a whole thing about like

the cultural appropriation of Gogan painting his native people and all of that but he paints like a lot of things his colors are very deep but they're also very like matte or Vincent's are very like shiny yeah but gogan is older he's 40 that's like older nobody else he's married but his wife he doesn't give shit his wife lives somewhere else and people fucking love him like he's starting he's really charming and people just like being around him where they do not like being around Vincent

and also Vincent is starting to get older and he can no longer have sex because of the STDs. So that's like a big thing. Absolutely ridiculous. But like

you know what? You know what? I think like every human in their life has like a counter and that counter takes down how many sex workers you can hook up with and he just hit his limit like at 15 i mean it sounds like it was a lot more than 15 but no no no at 15 years old i mean like he went way over yeah no he i mean yes he that was bad he shouldn't he is it ruined his body for sure theo is giving go again money also and and vincent money and to be like a patron so now he's like both live together it's going to be wonderful it's going to be like it's a beautiful place and they move into into the yellow house gogan is like

i'm gonna counter your arguments i'm actually looking at go gains or how is misappropriation this is like lovely lovely like this like i don't i don't depicted in like a bad way at all and this is 100 and i don't know i didn't that's like one of the last things i read i don't know anything about it i can talk about gogan later but i don't know right wanted to bring that up because it's like in the news but also like if you look up like a photo of gogan he doesn't scream super sexy to me people loved him oh no it's i don't know why like he has a ton of stories you know maybe that maybe they're exaggerations who cares people like love being around gogan so they'll be like oh i'll pose for you gogan and then they'll go to go to the house and be like oh fuck

vincent lives here too you know and then like he'll paint a picture of someone and vincent will paint the same person at the same time but that person's hand will be in front of their face because they don't want Vincent to look at them. Oh, wow. Because they just, like, don't like him, you know? Another thing for, for, I wrote, this must have been in the book. Or he has hypnotic sensuality. I don't know why.

But his stuff is, like, really, really selling. But they also are, like, they're battling in their personality. Gaghan is very slow, very, like, specific with his painting. Vincent obviously is not. Vincent spends all their money on, like, random things. Gogan is, like, we need to have a budget. Like, we need to have, we need to clean, like, you can't live like this in vins that just like can't do it but at the same time and gogan's

starting to get praise and theo's selling his stuff which fucking sucks because it's like oh you sell his stuff but not mine yeah you know and he's like super upset about it but he's like pretending this isn't happening he's trying to to rent more rooms than the yellow house like build his commune it's just him and gogan gogan is trying to leave he's like I got to get out of here so he's like writing letters to people being like I have to get out of the space like I just came to live with this guy but he's crazy I got to go on December 23rd 1888 gogan goes for a walk and Vincent is like he's leaving like I don't know what to do he's leaving me and he there in that time there'd been like a murderer which I don't look up there's like a murderer in

France that everybody was like worried about and there was a paper and the paper said the murderer has fled so it was like this murderers out in the out in the world so this newspaper clipping Vincent follows Goghann as he goes through this walk hands him this newspaper clipping that says the murderer has fled and then he runs back home and Gogan is just like, okay, and Gagin goes off, like, unto his night. That's when Vincent goes to a bar. He's drinking absent. He's fucked up.

He's overwhelmed with everything. He's being rejected again and again. Theo has actually gotten Yoh to marry him. So Theo is about to get married. He sees Gogan's room is empty. He's like, he's gone. I'm all alone. And that's when he cuts off his ear.

Wow. That's what did it? Yeah. Wow. Yeah. so he is like I have to do something grand to like hurt myself you know dude he's like an abuser relationship he's like a gas letter it's like you made me do this you made me do it's like one of those things mm-hmm so I'm gonna show you

it knowing this is this is the visual part of this podcast so he takes his ear moving my headphone he pulls it out by the earlobe and takes a straight thing a straight razor and cuts it up like this so we cut the whole thing the whole thing off. Then he's bleeding profusely, and he wraps it up. He wraps his head, and he wraps up the ear in, like, paper or whatever, and he goes out to try to find Gugan. And he's like, where can I find him?

And he goes to a brothel where he knows Gagin is, but they won't let him in. They're like, get bleeding. You're crazy. You can't come in. Gagin's like, dude, this is what I'm talking about. exactly like do you see what i'm talking about 100% so he hands his ear to like the receptionist at the brothel and says remember me and goes back home so when they say like the thing that i had heard was that he like gave his ear to a sex worker but he didn't he gave his ear to a sex worker at the brothel because he's trying to find gogan to be like look what you made me do don't you love me dude i don't blame everyone for thinking this guy's a fucking weirdo like this is like yeah but again his brain's riddled with fucking syphilis like in mercury point it's just like so i didn't

okay so far i assume there's autism ADHD involved there's probably going to be like a little bit of something else mixed in there as well as part of the cocktail but even worse than that his vd is eating holes in his brain and then what's and that's being filled in with mercury poisoning and immediately it's just like all that it's all not it's all that 100% now he has to go to a mental institution like to an asylum like he has to and they Theo comes to visit him he only sees a day he takes all of his paintings back to paris and kind of leaves him in this institution where Vincent like yells his PJ he's his pajamas yelling the whole time you know like people wake up and he's in bed with him. He's just like doing weird stuff. We'd be like, dude,

you can't be in bed with me. Dude, this has to be like a comedy movie. Vincent, I mean, I know it's sad. It's sad because it's a mental illness. He shouldn't be laughing at people that are suffering. I get, I get it. But it's also like, it's such a crazy, he's such a crazy historical figure. And like, Vincent Van Gogh was in my bed screaming at me with his ear bleeding all over my chest. you'd be like this crazy fucking artist was like, am I bet again? What the hell? You know? Ludicrous.

Ludacres. So he he's in the hospital. He leaves for a little bit and goes back to the yellow house and Aral, but the people, 30 of his neighbors signed a petition to have him go back. They're like, we don't want him here. Put him back. So he goes back because he was like walking around drunk, you know,

just like doing weird stuff. He couldn't budget. He couldn't do anything. He's in or out of the hospital. Theo gets married to Yo. And, um, They're blissfully happy, as far as everyone knows. Vincent is on his way to go back to Paris, to live near Theo and Yo. But then he's like, in a moment of clarity, he's like, no, I got to go back to the institution. So he goes back to the institution because he's like, I can't, I don't want to hurt you.

And I don't want to hurt your new life that you have. So he goes back. Theo takes all of his art, including sunflowers. Like when Vincent went to finally pack the yellow house, it had been, it had been flooded. Everything was kind of moldy. So a lot of his work you get to throw away, but a lot of it was like some of the stuff that we know today, like the Sunfours and the really famous things, the potato eaters were in there as well. So he sends that all back to Paris with Theo. And then also just to note, on June 25th, 1944, an allied campaign to destroy the bridges over the Rhone River bombed the area and the yellow house was destroyed.

So are you going to get to the most famous painting? Yes. Okay. I'm coming up to it. Sorry. It's happening really soon. Now Vincent is in a beautiful asylum in the mountains of France. And this is when they discover that this is what he has.

He has epilepsy. He has latent epilepsy, which means he doesn't have physical seizures, but they happen in his brain. It causes him to have anger and mood swings and to work furiously and have exaggerated activity. It's like an epileptic fury that's like only mental and doesn't really come out in like the physical shaking that you think. think of like a seizure, but it's happening in his brain. That's a lot of what's happening to him. The things he's seeing are like all the things his brain like this fire that like other people don't see. That's why he's so like, besides other things, I'm sure of ADHD, all the gonorrhea, the syphilis, the mercury poisoning, but he also has epilepsy, which makes

sense because there's actually a lot of epilepsy in his family. He has an uncle who's epileptic and it totally syncs with what he does because like if you're having this like latent epileptic seizure that's in your mind, you become totally manic, you forget what you're doing, and then later you have like serious, serious remorse. That's what happens to him all the time. So this, in this asylum in France, is where he does paint a starry night. Is that you're talking about? Yeah, I also want to point out that late stage syphilis also causes seizures and epilepsy. So as we try to like paint brush over, these are not congenital defects. The man was born. with he fucked his way into epilepsies what happened it's also in his family so i don't know it could be

it could be both sure sure yes we are not doctors we're not doctors go get tested be be careful everyone i was thinking about story night vincent as i've said didn't paint from memory or from his imagination he painted from looking at things that's why he was like obsessed of having models except obsessed with having people actually there when he drew them. But a starry night, he would stand in his room, with barred windows, looking out at the night all night long, looking at the stars, and then in the morning, they would let him go down into a studio to paint by day, and that's how he painted a starry night, which is like the only thing he ever painted from memory and from his imagination.

So the town that's in a starry night is sort of like, there was a town that he could have seen from his room. It's not that town, but it's like similar. And then he made it a lot smaller and more quaint. And then on the left, there's obviously like the big cypress trees and he could have seen those from his bedroom window as well. So that was like the view there. We should have done more from memory because that one's like, I don't know that. That's obviously the best one, I think. Well, I think also that's so interesting because it's like people are telling him you have to go to school and like learn these like concepts of art. And he was like, yes, but he would try it and he couldn't do it. So he was like kind of forcing himself to tone it down for everybody else.

you know but when he was like i'm just going to go ahead and do it then he makes a starry night wow yeah which i've seen it's in the um in the in the moma in new york city so i saw that yeah lovely um which is where i got is it big is real cute yes it's not huge but it's not like small bigger than mona lisa yeah so this is the first time he's ever done that it's like you know maybe potentially this like firework of electrical impulses in his brain who knows all things. But he's painting Starry Night. He's three lines artistic things, but also he's like eating his paint and drinking kerosene from the lamps. So it's not great. So they're going to be like, you can't paint anymore. You're not going to have, you can't have sharp objects because you're

starting to go crazy. People started to see a sunflower paintings and kind of like them now. There's an article about him in the paper. And people started to be like, oh, isn't it interesting that this artist is institutionalized? You know, like, I don't know. It's kind of cool. So they started to like do that, which is, like, super unfair that the people who pay attention to him once he'd already been, like, hospitalized for his problems. So, then Theo and Yo have a baby. How many in their baby? Vincent Van Gogh. Oh, that's cute. There's another run. So the baby Vincent and Vincent hasn't met Yo yet, but he, like, they write letters. She's very nice to him. When she meets him for the first time, she's like, he looks great. He looks healthy. Like, he's not

what I expected. Like, he looks fine. Actually, Theo looks worse, you know, because of his syphilis, but whatever. Yo actually did not get syphilis, so lucky duck on that one. There's like piles and piles of art around, around them. He's sending it to Theo, like frantically. He gets out of the institution and he goes to a town that I absolutely cannot pronounce. It's a very sir oise. Why is he sending? Is it because his art was finally being recognized and valuable and he's trying to monetize? No, I mean, that's what he always wanted, but he's just like, producing a lot at this point. So he let him out of an institution

for whatever reason and he goes to the small town and he's painting a lot. He's looking at gardens. He's asking Theo and Yo to come back and live with him. He's like, we could be a family. We've got to live here. We'd have this garden. They do come and they bring the baby and he like shows the baby of the yard. He's like, look how lovely it could be

like, he's like, I'm feeling better. Like he's, all accounts, he thinks he's feeling better. And so on July 27th, 1890, Vincent went out to paint the field just like he always did. He wore his little hat. He brought his easel. He brought his paints. He walked up to the field. Hours later, he came home after walking like a mile, like literally up a hill, up a cliff to get back home. He is walking home. The people in town see him. His jacket is buttoned and he's limping. His landlord looks at him and says, like, Vincent, what happened? And he says, I wounded myself. And it opens up his jacket and he is a bullet hole in his ribs. People then forever were like he died by suicide. He shot himself. He died like 29 hours later. It was like super painful, like super. He didn't shoot himself in the head or like the

heart. It was like in his ribs like a really weird spot. And there's all of these things that are like, well, he had talked about suicide before. He was very like he was eating the paint. He was drinking the kerosene. But when he talked about suicide, he would talk about it as like drowning or like he never mentioned guns. There weren't really guns around at this time. They were very, very rare. The official story was that he shot himself and he died a few days later. And he actually said, like, I wounded myself. And Theo came to be with him and he said, Theo, let me die. This is where I want to die. Like, this is fine. So he never, like, so they just assumed that he had, that he had killed himself in that that was that was the end of vincent vango but there's also in this like i said

he was with a sex worker he was with a sex worker no no wow here's what i think it was and this is in the book and then like an article in vanity fair where the authors from the book talk about this but it sounds like there were these fucking punk ass kids in town who would make fun of him all the time and they would be like they'd like put sugar put salt in his coffee and they like found him masturbating in the woods and made fun of him because like obviously he's also masturbating and they're not wrong taylor no but they were mean to him like they were mean to him they found someone they could bully and they bullied him and the leader of this gang of bullies was named rene secretan and he was 16 years old but he fucking loved the old west of the united states so he had

this fake cowboy costume that he would wear to be like buffalo bill cody wild bill and he would wear this fake costume around and he would borrow a gun that the innkeeper had and pretend to be a cowboy so it sounds like the kids accidentally shot him playing cowboy and vincent didn't want them to get in trouble so said that he had hurt himself did they find a gun on benson no they never found the gun they found like a gun much later and never found his um paint or any of the things he brought with him so it sounds like the kids took it and threw it away there was no suicide a side note there was no painting stuff like yes he was depressed and yes he was all these things but he hadn't like said anything was going to happen which also like that happens to you know people who seem very very happy die by suicide and you don't know but that is like a thing that is suspicious so the authors of the book who what that i read they in the i don't know 2000 somethings they had a forensic person look at it look at the autopsy reports look at vincent

look at everything. And the person who did it was named Dr. Vincent DiMaio. And he was actually the forensic analyst who worked on the George Zimmerman case. So he's like a real like forensic guy in the news. And his conclusion is quote, is my opinion that in all medical probability, the wound incurred by Van Gogh was not self-inflicted. In other words, he did not shoot himself. Okay. I can't get that word for it. It could have been an accident. But that's like a whole thing. He was super sick. go was not going to live to be a hundred you know like he was going to die soon anyway but he was always like i will accept death when it comes but i'm not going to like necessarily seek it out

and then when it happened he was probably like this checks out my only thing is like if you're trying to ascribe logic to it the guy fucking slid his ear off and gave it to the receptionist of a broth he's not yeah he wasn't going to live much longer what you know because if you're argument is like what normal person would try and kill themselves by shooting them in the rib well you're not dealing with a normal person totally right it's totally right yeah but we just like we'll never know there's always rumors around town the rumor town was that some boys killed him by accident but they didn't say anything they didn't anybody get in trouble that that that that boy ended up growing up and becoming kind of a like a famous not famous but like a politician in the

area so they just like didn't talk about it anymore so like it could have happened it could have been him we'll never really know but it's not like black and white you know Theo, his brother, is obviously devastated that Vincent has passed. And he, you know, is like, I want to make, make him famous. He feels very guilty. He's obsessed with it. But he can't do it because of the syphilis. Of course.

So Theo actually dies six months later. He gets sent away to an asylum as well because his like mind is crazy with the syphilis, whatever it does. It's like not great. And he ends up dying like really young. Vincent was 37 when he died. Theo was 33. So he died pretty, pretty young. And he ended up being like a padded cell.

That's how crazy the syphilis made him. And then I mean, the Van Gogh family, like, you know, without going into all the things, like, another brother, he died by suicide. Another sister was actually sent away for 40 years. She lived in an institution. So like, the kids were not great. Yeah. In general. But Vincent was the one who like did it by like.

you know, to have this actual output from his, like, his mental instability. So, Yo remarried and she made sure that Theo and Vincent were buried together. And that could have been sort of like the end of his, his legacy. But then, you know, the question is, why do we know about him? Like, why would we ever know? He never sold anything in his life. You know, he sold like one painting in his last year of life. people ridiculed him he was always like on the outskirts of everything like there's no reason for

us to know about him but the reason we do is because of yo because she inherited everything so in so she moved back to the netherlands and made a um like a boarding house so she would have like people stay at her house it was her and vincent van go to the kid the baby and she had the potato eaters in her living room she has starry night in her dining room she had this crazy yeah these like like she had they were 800 million dollars worth of paintings no it's more like one of the there's a kid like a great great grandson of of theo was talking about in one of the articles i read like going through closets of vincent's work and he's like it's tens of billions of dollars that we were going through like in the closet you know and the vango family actually doesn't own any original vango works anymore they've all like donated it and sold it and given it so like the world can have it is like their their thing and But Yo had all this art and she had all of the letters that Vincent wrote Theo. She had all the letters, all of the paper that Vincent kept. So she read it all.

She was so smart. She would translate books from Dutch to English. She was like a teacher. She like knew a ton about linguistics. So she was like, people need to see this and they will understand it if they understand how tormented Vincent was in his mind. So she invented in was the first person to really say like the tortured artist. like she was a person to like make a thing like you have to look at his work in context of his life so she did that and you know one thing is like in the article that i read like she would go to an important gallery with her baby she's holding her baby she's a woman no one takes women seriously and she would be like you have to look at this you have to read these letters you have to look at this art it is something and so she would rent galleries she became the person who championed this across europe she actually spent a couple years in america

having people look at his work as well. In 1905, the largest Van Gogh exhibit that ever happened in the Netherlands. It had 484 of his works on display. And she rented the galleries, printed the posters, invited the people, bought bow ties for the staff. Her son, Vincent, wrote out the invitations. Like, they made it happen. Wow. And then the question is, like, why did Yo do that? She only was married to Theo for like less than two years. But her journals and her life, she were a journal when she was younger saying that I wanted to do something with my life is important. Then it stopped. She said, I'm moving to Paris. And then two years later, she picked up her journals again. And the rest of her life was like, those two years in Paris were the best years of my life. And she was trying to recreate and share that like huge artistic journey with the world. And so that was like her motivation was like, this is the thing that I want everybody to know. We know about him because of her, because of all the work that she did. Otherwise, we would never have known. And One thing that he wrote in a letter to Theo, which is a quote from another artist, but it's something that he felt very deeply, is he said,

no results of my work would be more agreeable to me than that ordinary working men should hang such prints in their rooms or workplace, which is exactly what happened. Yeah. And I cut this out of my art book. I just framed the night cafe to hang up in my house. That's awesome. Yeah, I'm looking at it.

is so apparently the um the estimated value of story night is 100 million dollars it's crazy crazy it's one painting mm-hmm mm-hmm and arts you know arts like whatever you who knows like what makes something stick and something doesn't but his stuff is very special he's it's very yeah again like i don't i'm not like an art guy but like i look at it and i'm like man it like evokes something yeah you know it's an for everyone but but common people like you and me you know i will say this i will say that nobody in the world will ever convince me that Pablo Picasso was an artist or good at painting or good at his imagination or good at like it is it is like an acid trip on paper like is all it is like it is not good

I have a couple thoughts Picasso was actually a really good technical painter that he could paint things that were very realistic like if Van Gog could not but he moved past that and was like I could do this forever but I don't want you to so move on to like the next thing which was like

Picasso's like something you use that NYU degree tell me what giving it like a realistic Pablo Picasso painting oh but look up as blue period Picasso blue period so blue period thank you and why you thank you that was $100,000 but this is when he was doing like starting to get weird but like like it's good but it's not like you know you look at

a da Vinci painting and you're like what like right but that's a different but that had been done and it's different I need more time to think about this but yes how about like Van Gogh's stuff wasn't detailed but it's just like wow like the brush strokes like weird like how did how did you you know now i'm i'm so foolish because this entire time i thought it was just like a genius mind filled with curiosity and endeavored for truth and style and painting when really it was just a vd real brain full of holes filled with mercury poisoning like that's what what it takes to do. I think a good Van Gogh. I don't know. Picasso, yeah, probably one of those guys who the sheer force of personality made him super, super fascinating in life. And people

just like, were like, oh, then you must be a genius. I'm sure, Picasso. I don't want to be a dick, but like, do you watch what we do in the shadows? No. It's so good, but there's one where they have Guernica is one of Picasso's most famous paintings and it's like black and white and it's after like the like a bombing of the town of Guernica in Spain and it's like a horror thing but it's weird it's weird if you don't like it you wouldn't like it but anyway one of the vampires she says that she's in it and she calls him Pablo Picasso's funny let me get to that you're the first person to ever recommend what we do in the shadows to me it's amazing like forever ago like we were it's so good. Well, because even before the, even before the TV show, that's like three seasons now, there's the movie from like 10, 15 years ago. It's so good. The movie is the one that you recommend. Oh, my God. I mean, I love it. I love it. Yeah, it's crazy. I feel like the thing that that rocked me is I was like, oh, he cut his ear off for a woman and he absolutely did not.

It wasn't a better reason. A woman would have made more sense. No, but the, but the answer is every relationship that Vincent Van Gogh had was, was red flagly. flaggy and doomed he couldn't do it he just like could not do it and like that that um that beautiful two minutes from from doctor who but you're just like would he it'd be lovely to be able to tell him you know you know it'd be nice to be like you know people know who you are i think that he'd like that was a good one that was really good one i am going to start a lot this this will be a long episode yeah we're pushing just shy of two hours yeah whatever we had a lot lot to say we got three stories and i i do like how you know when we consider our topics you cover like this giant of creativity and insanity mixed with beauty and the movement it's like you're like

that guy in american mind who like films the sack in the wind you know and then no one's ever Thought I was deep. And I'm like, this guy's guts got fucking shot out like a can in 30 feet. Oh, my God. It's so gross. I made some beautiful things on mid-Journey of Van Gogh doing a diving bell that I'll share with you. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

Well, I have some listener mail. Oh, yeah. Let's hear it. Which is not listener mail because zero people have emailed us, but it's friends who texted me. That counts. I have a couple. I have three stories. so Beth from North Carolina

called She called to tell us that when Pat Robertson died Robert Pattinson was trending on Twitter because people were worried that he had died That's so good And it never fails And I would be more much sadder if that had happened

Even though I think I've ever seen a Robert Pattinson movie But still And then George from New York My friend George reminded me about talking speaking of the hapsburgs um the last crown prince of haps of austria actually died in 2011 at the age of 98 and he was the one that was in a wheelchair do you remember that 30 rock where jetta almost marries the hapsburg no um they do like a really great thing i think it's the guy can't remember his name my god the guy i play with t b herman and he's like in a wheelchair and

like but a prince so it's like it's really funny it's like definitely watch that um and then my last one is blair from austin i've heard of her you know um she She said that when you had mentioned, has anyone ever mixed whiskey and wine in a cocktail, she said that she used to work at a restaurant in Las Vegas and they would make sangria, but it was just a bottle of wine and a bottle of brandy and a ton of sugar and people would get shit-faced. God. So, I mean, man, I guess if you're trying to get shit-faced, that's one way to do it. Exactly.

So that was Blair's suggestion for, you know, mixing whiskey and wine. you just put together add some fruit and some sugar i'm sure that sangria is probably i mean no one would notice after the first half a glass that's true this is delicious yeah yeah it'll be like eating the fruit with a fork oh god it's all i'm just going to taste like it might well be nothing at that point exactly like mouth is numb and you can't remember we parked thank you listeners thank you everyone writing in yeah for texting me personally and you know i love it. I'm so, I really, I truly do love that. My friends are like, we love it. Thank you. And soon with our advertising that's coming out, everybody will love it as well. We're going

to be world famous. And yeah, that'll be our cross to bear, hopefully. Yeah, strangers find us on the internet. We're at Doom to Fail Pod, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, put everything up on YouTube so you can watch it there. That's what you do. But we're on all of the podcast platforms. Please like and subscribe. Tell your friends, this is our 12. 26th episode. So we have tons of episodes to go back on talk about Russia a lot. That's the true crime, lots of history.

Please listen. Thank you. Thank you all. And I think I'll go ahead and cut it off there. Okay.