Talk:Vincent van Gogh

Don McLean

Is there room in this article, perhaps under the last topic of Legacy, to mention Don McLean's beautiful tribute "Vincent", and to link to that artist's article? Mr. McLean gave such a thought-provoking viewpoint on Van Gogh's life, that I think it deserves mention. MarkGoldfain (talk) 19:25, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

Personally, I also think that that song deserves a mention. However, that would probably be more fitting in a section called something like "Van Gogh in popular culture", since "Legacy" is currently more about his influence and recognition within the realm of visual art, rather than his influence and recognition among the general public or among artists working in other mediums (like songwriters). I think that a section along the lines of "In popular culture" should be created (perhaps as a sub-section within "Legacy") if there is enough notable things to put in it, and that McLean's "Vincent" should be mentioned if that section is created, but I think I should leave that to other editors who have more knowledge on the topic, since this is a very good article and I don't want to risk bloating it with things that aren't really important to the topic. BreakfastJr (talk) 06:22, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

See here: Cultural depictions of Vincent van Gogh...Modernist (talk) 10:30, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

An interesting observation

I'm not an art expert nor I have read this article yet, but there's a few things I wanna suggest.

It is widely known that van Gogh became famous only after his death. Google Ngram Viewer also shows that. [1] It also shows that in English language books, the name Vincent van Gogh made a huge breakthrough, in terms of usage, in the early 1950s (apparently in 1953). Is there any particular reason? Is anybody willing to do a research and find out what happened (i.e. why and who published a huge number of books on van Gogh) in 1952-54? The only sentence that indirectly talks about this phenomenon is this sentence: "Abstract Expressionism of the 1940s and 1950s is seen as in part inspired from Van Gogh's broad" in the Influence section.

In French sources, books that mentioned or were entirely on van Gogh peaked circa 1914.[2] I think this might be something to look into. --Երևանցի ^talk 21:57, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

van Gogh and the ear incident

According to an article published in The New York Times on May 5, 2009, two art historians in Germany challenged the story that van Gogh cut his ear. Instead, they suggested that it was Gauguin, and van Gogh was protecting his friend. I have not read the book by those historians (Hans Kaufmann and Rita Wildegans), titled "Van Gogh's Ear: Paul Gauguin and the Pact of Silence," and do not know what happened to this hypothesis. I would appreciate if somebody follow up and comment on this story. --Curacuriositas (talk) 13:32, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

I did check up on it. There's a piece by Martin Gayford, one of our sources, here. On the whole I think it's not worth mentioning on grounds of weight (why mention something that presently gets no support from the experts?) It also strikes me as something implausible on swordmanship grounds (neatly slicing off an ear without other injury? ... hmhh) Jennie Matthews 97 (talk) 04:00, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

We didn't mention it - although there was a discussion at the time [3] - because it seems farfetched, I agree with Jennie...Modernist (talk) 12:09, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Ah yes, sorry I hadn't realised it had already been discussed at some length before. I completely agree with the consensus view there. Jennie Matthews 97 (talk) 01:13, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

The Gun

In the section on Van Gogh's death, the 2nd paragraph makes the statement that no gun was ever found. The last paragraph in this section mentions Gustave Ravoux, "the owner of the gun."

One of these statements must be wrong; how could anyone know the owner of the gun if no gun was found? I assume 2 different editors at work here, and a reconciliation is needed. I know nothing of the circumstances - could someone better informed than I clear up this mystery? 69.42.41.75 (talk) 07:04, 4 January 2014 (UTC)History Lunatic

The story is that Gustave Ravoux (the innkeeper) gave Vincent the gun to scare away crows, as repeated in Tralbaut's 1969 biography (p. 329). I don't know what his source was, presumably the much later reminisces of his daughter Adeline (bear in mind that Tralbaut was writing at a time when it was still possible to interview some of the characters of the time: Adeline for example died in 1965). The gun indeed was never found. Jennie Matthews 97 (talk) 01:13, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Rationale for revert

I have reset the page to how it was before Modernist reset it to how it was before I edited it.

There were two edits since Modernist's reset; one was another user independently making one of the changes I had made in my edits (showing that it was probably a good idea), and another was the addition of a link at the bottom, which I've kept in.

Some of the changes I made in my edits were just directly following guidelines in the Manual of Style. Two examples are that double quotation marks should be used for quotes instead of single quotation marks (except for quotes within quotes), and that punctuation should only be included within quotations if that punctuation was originally in it. Both of these are in MOS:QUOTEMARKS.

Apart from those sorts of things, I do understand that the changes were somewhat subjective, and were not fixing mistakes so much as changing the style. I also understand that some of these might just be personal preference. However, none of these changes (such as serial commas) were actually against any guidelines, and I don't think there's even any reasonable reason to find them personally distasteful (at worst, they're neutral).

Also, some of those changes are ones which—while not explicitly recommend in any guidelines—do enhance the clarity of the article, as far as I can see. For example, I replaced "In preparation for Gauguin's visit, Van Gogh bought two beds" with "In preparation for Gauguin's visit he bought two beds" (to clarify the meaning of "he"), and I replaced "admitted" with "stated" in "In his final letter to Theo, Van Gogh admitted that as he did not have any children, he viewed his paintings as his progeny", because "admitted" unnecessarily and inaccurately made it sound like viewing his paintings a his progeny was about something to be ashamed of and something which made Van Gogh feel guilty.

None of these changes were very significant at all, but I think they make this good article just ever-so-slightly better, and so I've returned them. BreakfastJr (talk) 06:00, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

I've returned the imagery to the format that works best; please leave them as is. I've left your other edits in place. As the main contributor to this article - with more than 1000 edits I do appreciate your input, thanks for your effort...Modernist (talk) 13:52, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, that's all totally fine. Also, thank you for all your work on this and other articles. BreakfastJr (talk) 11:30, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

sentence in the intro.

hi. i think this one: "His work included self portraits; landscapes; still lifes; portraits;..." needs work. i can imagine the semicolons-rather-than-commas being the result of wishing to avoid too many commas, esp. in relation to the ones near the end of the sentence, but in my opinion, the semicolons just don't work. commas are the proper thing here, right? maybe a punctuation guru needs to check me out, but i don't think so. in any case, i always say write it correctly and let the chips fall where they may in terms of how it looks or is perceived, etc. and if w/the commas where the semis currently are it looks just too weird, then it wouldn't take too much to re-work the sentence to avoid the perceived pitfalls. everything else in the intro looks great; i like the clear, economical style. 63.142.146.194 (talk) 23:17, 8 August 2014 (UTC)