ART CHRONICLE
171
the artist was not yet at home. Nevertheless, the picture has an excellent
unity, imposed on elements far from tractable, and such unity is the
first requirement. (Does not Max
J.
Friedlander, the authority on old
Lowlands art, say " . . . unity-sure sign of originality"?)
In the same year Van Gogh did some studies in black crayon–
of a peasant woman's head, of hands-and in pen and ink---of land–
scapes-that show an adeptness which, for all the expressive distortions
involved, would satisfy academic standards. This alternation of skill and
clumsiness (neither of which makes or breaks his art) continues through–
out his career. One would be inclined to say that his skill was always in–
volved with his state of mind, and that the occasions on which the
former succeeded sufficiently in resisting the latter were the occasions
of his genius. In so far as Van Gogh was a great painter-and I believe
he was at times-he was not artless, certainly not an amateur.
Though Van Gogh's originality is constituted by the distortions
and displacements provoked by emotion more than normal in its in–
tensity, his best work was done before his first attack of outright insan–
ity. That best work was the fruit of his Paris and early Arles period
(February 1886 to the end of 1888), the only time in his life when he
lived with other painters.
It
was then that he most firmly controlled
his feeling for the sake of pictorial ends. His fracas with Gauguin
marks the turning point. His style may have become more strongly af–
firmed thereafter, his drawing more nervous, his color more direct,
violent, and original, but his art lost in strength and unity; it became
more striking and strident, but also more monotonous in its stridency.
The pure flow and its sure, subtle coordination fail. He had become
too sick to control and modulate the expression of his feeling, to the
directness of which he now sacrificed almost everything else.
Thus if it is thanks in some degree to his derangement that we
have Van Gogh's genius, it is not thanks to his insanity that we have
the greatness of his art. This is in a sense a consolation. At least his ex–
treme anguish was not required for his best moments as a painter. And
it is reassuring to have even Van Gogh's case confirm one's belief that the
artist functions best in the company of other artists-to know that Van
Gogh's career, from which the myth of the lonely artist has drawn so
much of its strength, actually demonstrates the opposite. Namely, that
art is an intensely social product and suffers in the long run under iso–
lation.
Alfred Henry Maurer, the American artist who committed suicide
in 1932, is another tragic case, though much more with respect to his
