Vincent van Gogh: A Biography
Category: Books,Arts & Photography,Individual Artists,Artists' Books
Vincent van Gogh: A Biography Details
The lives of many famous artists have been shrouded in mystery and conjecture, but none have been more controversial than the life of Vincent van Gogh. Remembered for his swirling brushstrokes and burning colors, Vincent van Gogh is today one of the best-known painters. Though his career as a painter spanned less than ten years, he produced a body of work that remains one of the most enduring in all of modern art. In his lifetime, however, he received little recognition. Today his paintings sell for countless millions, yet during his lifetime, van Gogh managed to sell just one painting. Van Gogh's road to be becoming a painter took a circuitous, often troublesome path. In his twenties, van Gogh served as a lay minister in a Belgian mining district. He practiced Christian virtues with such outward zeal that he found himself ostracized from society, which prompted him to set off for Brussels to study art. His religious zeal, his belief in the unimpeachable nature of man and his struggle, and his many tumultuous inner-turmoil's all resonate through his extraordinary body of paintings.
Reviews
I found the book extremely hard to follow for a couple of reasons. First is the type font and the layout. The book seems to have been condensed to save space for some unknown reason. The font is extremely small, letters are compressed together and the spaces are extremely tight within a paragraph which will make your eyes strain to read and ultimatley will give you a headache. Second and most important, the book was translated from French to English and the translation is difficult to comprehend at times causing to re-read what you have just read. It reads like someone who is learing English and writing for the first time and the sentence structure is baffling through out most the read. You will have to do your own interpretations of what is attempted to be said. I haven't even made it through two chapters yet I am already frustrated trying to get into this stroy. Having been written in 1931 also doesn't help matters since it seems wtiting styles were very different back then just adds to the difficulty in reading this book. But, I will continue on hoping that I can learn more about the life of Van Gogh which is why is bought this book in the first place.