Wednesday, August 30, 2017

A Budapest Attic Apartment Designed with Primary Colors



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A Budapest Attic Apartment Designed with Primary Colors
// Design MilkDesign Milk

A Budapest Attic Apartment Designed with Primary Colors

Boasting spectacular views of the Parliament building, this attic apartment in the heart of Budapest was renovated by Margeza Design Studio. The two bedroom unit spans 110 square meters (approx. 1,184 square feet) over two floors in a building that dates back to 1928 and is finished off with the studio's signature minimalist aesthetic.

White surfaces and polished white floors, paired with large windows, keep the space filled with light. A curated collection of colorful furniture and furnishings are displayed throughout for a vibrant and playful feel. Yellow armchairs from the 1980s rest alongside a custom white rug that's a map of Budapest with the Danube river displayed in blue.

The living room benefits from a living green wall, adding a bit of nature to the mostly white interior. It's even hooked up to an automatic irrigation system so little-to-no maintenance.

The custom designed Corian stairs house tons of storage for kitchen appliances, including the microwave, wine cooler, and washing machine.

Photos by Erdőháti Áron.


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Friday, August 25, 2017

Gemma Mahoney, a graphic design student producing professional work



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Gemma Mahoney, a graphic design student producing professional work
// It's Nice That

Gemmamahoney-graphicdesign-itsnicethat-lisg

Melbourne-based Gemma Mahoney might still be studying her bachelor's degree in communication design but her portfolio speaks the graphic design language of fully fledged professional.

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Don't forget the second step



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Don't forget the second step
// Seth Godin's Blog on marketing, tribes and respect

The first step is learning how to do it. Finding and obtaining the insight and the tools and the techniques you need. Understanding how it works.

But step two is easily overlooked. Step two is turning it into a habit. Committing to the practice. Showing up and doing it again and again until you're good at it, and until it's part of who you are and what you do.

Most education, most hardware stores, most technology purchases, most doctor visits, most textbooks are about the first step. What a shame that we don't invest just a little more to turn the work into a habit.

       

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8,000 Eyes Make a Visionary Magazine Idea



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8,000 Eyes Make a Visionary Magazine Idea
// Print Magazine

Who says magazines are dead? The London-base Eye has other ideas. It continues to find new ways to make printing a magazine a unique experience. Known for its striking covers, this current cover design for issue #94 is unprecedented. Each of the edition's 8,000-copy print run is bound with a unique, individually numbered cover, designed by Paul McNeil and Hamish Muir, and based on their typefaces TwoPoint and TwoPlus.

 

8,000 different variations make this mass-produced magazine one-of-a-kind.

The latest edition of Eye is a type special but the multiple "collect all 8,000" conceit is pretty unusual. Printed by Pureprint Group in Uckfield, East Sussex, the covers were created on the HP Indigo 10000 digital press using a variable data program called Mosaic. The remainder of the magazine was printed offset lithography. The Mosaic program supplies a different image file for each pass of the press, each derived in this case from a number of 'seed' files supplied by MuirMcNeil that repeat the letters of the word eye. Mosaic makes it possible to resize, rotate and change the color of the artwork, cropping it to make each cover unique.

Here is a video of the printing process, and a flip-through of the issue can be found here,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Get the Latest Issue of PRINT, Focused on All Things Typography

  • Jessica Hische and 9 other brilliant women ruling type and lettering today
  • The top 25 American type masters
  • Twelve overlooked typefaces you should be using
  • Inside Monotype and MIT's research lab
  • Tattoo artist as typographer?
  • Debbie Millman pens a love letter to Louise Fili
  • And much, much more.

The post 8,000 Eyes Make a Visionary Magazine Idea appeared first on Print Magazine.


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Studio Moross directs a new video for Mind Enterprises with a distinctly retro vibe



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Studio Moross directs a new video for Mind Enterprises with a distinctly retro vibe
// It's Nice That

Studio_moross_idol_film_its_nice_that_7

Studio Moross has directed a video for Mind Enterprises' track Idol, packing a distinctly retro vibe. Accompanying the synth-heavy single, the garish visuals combine photography and animation with some slick styling, creating a video with an aesthetic that pays tribute to Italian 70s TV animations and design. The Mind Enterprises website has also been designed to follow the theme of the video.

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You Don’t Want to Miss Out on These 6 Color Palettes



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You Don't Want to Miss Out on These 6 Color Palettes
// The Drawing Blog

Painting Palettes 101

6 Color Palettes | Painting Palettes | Watercolor Painting | Choosing a Color Palette | Color Triad | Watercolor Artist | Artist Daily
These six foolproof color triads enable you to achieve successful paintings without the hassle of color palette rial and error.

Color mishaps in paintings usually stem from using too many colors or combining paints that don't really work well together. However, alleviate both of these issues in one quick and simple fix: a compatible triad.

If three colors don't give you the results you want, you can add another color that shares their intensity, transparency and tinting strength without presenting a sour note into the color harmony. What's more, you may even find new combinations that work with the unused colors cluttering your paint box.

To get you in the right tune, here are six color palettes to explore, featured in the 30th Anniversary Edition of Exploring Color Workshop by artist Nita Leland. Then try creating your own exciting triads. Enjoy!

Delicate High-Key Palette

6 Color Palettes | Painting Palettes | Watercolor Painting | Choosing a Color Palette | Color Triad | Watercolor Artist | Artist Daily
Delicate High-Key Color Wheel: The triangle shows the color triad of rose madder genuine (left), aureolin (center) and cobalt blue (right)

Delicate tinting colors — aureolin, cobalt blue and rose madder genuine — make an exquisite high-key triad, limited in contrast and beautifully transparent.

In watercolor, the colors are nonstaining, easily lifted and extremely useful as glazes. Although they're pure, bright colors, they all have relatively weak tinting strength.

Flowers are delightful subjects for the delicate high-key palette, but there are other options, too. How about a misty river scene or a soft portrait?

Light-filled landscapes also are successful with these colors, but you can't make strong darks with them. Powerful darks would destroy the delicacy and subtlety of this palette.

Used carefully and sparingly, burnt sienna is a good addition to the palette, because it enables you to increase your range of darks slightly.

6 Color Palettes | Painting Palettes | Watercolor Painting | Choosing a Color Palette | Color Triad | Watercolor Artist | Artist Daily
My granddaughter's portrait, Dream On (watercolor on paper, 9×6), illustrates the harmony of the delicate high-key palette. I splashed in the spontaneous background and layered well-diluted colors to model her features and the shadows. Then I added details. Soft edges and delicate colors represent the innocence of childhood.

 

Bold Palette

6 Color Palettes | Painting Palettes | Watercolor Painting | Choosing a Color Palette | Color Triad | Watercolor Artist | Artist Daily
Bold Color Wheel: The triangle shows the color triad of pyrrole red (left), Winsor lemon (center) and phthalo blue, red shade (right)

Transparent, high-intensity colors of great tinting strength — such as Winsor lemon, phthalo blue (red shade) and pyrrole red — make a versatile triad.

This daring palette can range from dramatic, bold statements featuring rich, intense darks to sensitive, elegant images using delicate tints. The value range runs the gamut from the lightest light to the darkest dark.

These dynamic colors generate energy, brilliance and sharp contrast in any subject, including cityscapes, landscapes, portraits and flowers. Non-objective or abstract compositions can be dazzling with this intense triad.

The transparency of these colors makes them useful as glazes when well diluted, but their staining property merits a word of caution: They can't be lifted easily once they're dry.

6 Color Palettes | Painting Palettes | Watercolor Painting | Choosing a Color Palette | Color Triad | Watercolor Artist | Artist Daily
Free Spirit (watercolor on paper, 14×20) features an intense palette of Winsor red (pyrrole red), Winsor lemon and Winsor blue (phthalo blue, red shade). It makes rich washes surrounding the glow of the last light of day as it reflects off snow. Does light ever look like this? Maybe not, but the colors express the time of day just as I imagine it. You can take liberties with color if you make your point.

 

Traditional Palette

6 Color Palettes | Painting Palettes | Watercolor Painting | Choosing a Color Palette | Color Triad | Watercolor Artist | Artist Daily
Traditional Color Wheel: The triangle shows the color triad of cadmium red (left), new gamboge (center) and French ultramarine (right)

The traditional palette is a combination of high-intensity, transparent and opaque colors with intermediate to strong intensity strength. Its workhorse colors are found on almost every artist's palette: new gamboge, French ultramarine and cadmium red.

New gamboge lends some transparency to the mixtures. French ultramarine is semitransparent. Cadmium red is very opaque. Many artists think of this palette as muddy, but it features a wide range of values.

This is an ideal palette for natural subjects: the olive greens of trees and grasses; the subtle violets of shadows; beautiful browns; and earthy yellows. You can dilute mixtures for high-key paintings, but they lack the subtlety of a high-key palette.

Even with its limitations, this is a very useful palette, particularly if you supplement the traditional triad with other colors, such as permanent alizarin crimson, to improve its transparency in mixtures.

6 Color Palettes | Painting Palettes | Watercolor Painting | Choosing a Color Palette | Color Triad | Watercolor Artist | Artist Daily
Patricia Kister's Just Organic (watercolor on paper, 11×15) emphasizes a full range of values from light to dark using the traditional palette.

 

Old Masters' Palette

6 Color Palettes | Painting Palettes | Watercolor Painting | Choosing a Color Palette | Color Triad | Watercolor Artist | Artist Daily
Old Masters' Color Wheel: The triangle shows the color triad of burnt sienna (left), raw (center) and Payne's gray (right)

The early masters were limited in their color choices and used colors much like the ones in this palette: raw sienna, Payne's gray and burnt sienna. This palette of values and intermediate tinting strength yields low-intensity, semitransparent mixtures.

It's surprising how many artists fall in love with the Old Masters' palette when they try it. Its subtlety is sublimely moving and highly effective. Any genre works well, but the colors are particularly well-suited for portraits, autumn florals and landscapes.

With burnt sienna and Payne's gray substituting for red and blue, violet mixtures don't exist. Instead, a good dark takes its place. The greens and oranges are low key and mysterious.

This is the only time I recommend using Payne's gray on your palette as a color in its own right and not as a quick fix for adding darks to a painting.

6 Color Palettes | Painting Palettes | Watercolor Painting | Choosing a Color Palette | Color Triad | Watercolor Artist | Artist Daily
The unity inherent in harmonious colors is evident in Carla O'Connor's After Eight (watercolor and gouache on board, 30×22), which reflects the low-intensity color impression of the Old Masters' palette. O'Connor's colors set a pensive mood that whispers rather than shouts. This is clearly not the place for phthalo green, cadmium orange or other attention-grabbing colors.

 

Opaque Palette

6 Color Palettes | Painting Palettes | Watercolor Painting | Choosing a Color Palette | Color Triad | Watercolor Artist | Artist Daily
Opaque Color Wheel: The triangle shows the color triad of Indian red (left), yellow ochre (center) and cerulean blue (right)

If you're looking for unique expression, the opaque palette is a sure way to get it — but it's tricky. The mixtures are subtle and distinctive. Colors for this wheel are yellow ochre, cerulean blue and Indian red.

While cerulean blue seems a bit bright for a low-intensity palette, its density and opacity allow it to fit right in. Indian red has a stronger tinting strength than the other two colors, but they all seem to work well together.

Extreme darks are impossible, but you can get dark enough to have effective value contrast. The limited color range of the mixtures makes it interesting.

Work on a wet surface with the colors, laying them in with a big brush and then leave them alone. If you try to move the colors around, you'll make instant mud and disturb the granulating effects of the colors.

Paint rocks, buildings and landscapes with this palette, and don't bypass portraits and flowers as intriguing possibilities.

6 Color Palettes | Painting Palettes | Watercolor Painting | Choosing a Color Palette | Color Triad | Watercolor Artist | Artist Daily
Cerulean blue granulates beautifully on watercolor paper. I flowed this color onto damp paper with a 3-inch hake brush and rocked the paper gently so the paint would settle in Relics (watercolor on paper, 25×22). The opaque palette makes dusky violets and rich, earthy red-oranges. The green mixtures harmonize with all the other colors. I used plenty of water with these colors to ensure they wouldn't turn thick and chalky.

 

Bright Earth Palette

6 Color Palettes | Painting Palettes | Watercolor Painting | Choosing a Color Palette | Color Triad | Watercolor Artist | Artist Daily
Bright Earth Color Wheel: The triangle shows the color triad of brown madder (left), quinacridone gold (center) and indigo (right)

This is my personal favorite among the low-intensity triads. The bright earth palette has powerful tinting strength and is beautifully transparent. With this palette, you can achieve extremes of value from bright lights to powerful darks.

Using quinacridone gold, indigo and brown madder, you're forfeiting violet. But if you need it, you can tweak the color in your painting by including a brighter red or blue that will yield a violet mixture.

Color mixtures of the bright earth palette are more transparent and somewhat brighter than those of the Old Masters', but still rather low in intensity.

Paint colors in this palette result in distinctive portraits and abstract landscapes, but it's effective for almost any subject matter.

Keep in mind, because brown madder and indigo are staining colors, you won't be able to do much correcting with this lively earth palette.

6 Color Palettes | Painting Palettes | Watercolor Painting | Choosing a Color Palette | Color Triad | Watercolor Artist | Artist Daily
Pirouette (watercolor on board, 16×12) features the low-intensity colors of the bright earth palette. Strong tinting strength and the option for good light and dark contrasts are key to this color combination.

 

In the comments below, tell us which of these six color palettes inspires you. Or, share some of your own color triads. Happy painting, artists!

The post You Don't Want to Miss Out on These 6 Color Palettes appeared first on ArtistDaily.


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SHe’s not there, Kent Williams



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Slowdown Studio Launches Latest Collection Designed by Chaz Bear



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Slowdown Studio Launches Latest Collection Designed by Chaz Bear
// Design MilkDesign Milk

Slowdown Studio Launches Latest Collection Designed by Chaz Bear

LA-based Slowdown Studio just launched Season Seven of their limited edition, artist-designed blankets with the latest designs by Oakland-based artist and musician Chaz Bear, aka Toro y Moi frontman and head of Company Studio. The pair of blankets, Emerson and Barrett, puts forth Bear's graphic abilities, which have always played a pivotal role in his endeavors but might not have been as widely known as his musical pursuits. As with previous collections, each blanket is made in the USA out of 100% cotton that's grown, spun, and woven in North Carolina.

Emerson boasts an eye-popping wavy pattern in primary colors along with black dots on a white background.

Barrett is a graphic, black and white pattern featuring a Brancusi-inspired figure surrounded by four colors.


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Get Ready and Get Organized for Back-To-School!



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Get Ready and Get Organized for Back-To-School!
// Design MilkDesign Milk

It's August which means it's time for students to be heading back to school. Starting a new year, especially in college, can be daunting so you definitely want to make sure you're prepared, and more importantly, organized. To help out, we rounded up ten must-haves for those students heading off to campuses worldwide.

Get Ready and Get Organized for Back-To-School!

1. Urbio Happy Family Kit 2. Poppin Super Stacked Bundle 3. Golden Ratio Finder by Parsons and Charlesworth for Areaware 4. LED Task Lamp from Modern by Dwell Magazine 5. Colorblock Gel Pen Set by Poketo 6. Pantone Chip Drive USB Flash Drive 7. 2018 Leather Ardium Light Planner 8. To-Do Adhesive Notes by Russell and Hazel 9. Rundle Backpack from Herschel Supply Company 10. Black White Grid Laptop Sleeve by Beautiful Homes for Society6


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The Island of the Colors Blind by Sanne de Wilde



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The Island of the Colors Blind by Sanne de Wilde
// Fubiz

During a trip in Micronesia, to the Pingelap and Pohnpei islands, Sanne De Wilde shot a colorless world. Indeed, after a natural catastrophe, only the king and some inhabitants staid alive. However, the king was affected by a rare illness called achromatopsia. Since he had a lot of children, he transmitted this characteristic to a large part of the population. Achromatopsia consists in a difficulty to distinguish colors. De Wilde explores this strange world by using shadows and infrared lights creating a surprising and poetic project.


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Wednesday, August 23, 2017

Gauguin’s Stirring First-Hand Account of What Actually Happened the Night Van Gogh Cut off His Own Ear



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Gauguin's Stirring First-Hand Account of What Actually Happened the Night Van Gogh Cut off His Own Ear
// Brain Pickings

"Between two such beings as he and I, the one a perfect volcano, the other boiling too, inwardly, a sort of struggle was preparing."


Gauguin's Stirring First-Hand Account of What Actually Happened the Night Van Gogh Cut off His Own Ear

Certain relationships are charged with an intensity of feeling that incinerates the walls we habitually erect between platonic friendship, romantic attraction, and intellectual-creative infatuation. One of the most dramatic of those superfriendships unfolded between the artists Paul Gauguin (June 7, 1848–May 8, 1903) and Vincent van Gogh (March 30, 1853–July 29, 1890), whose relationship was animated by an acuity of emotion so lacerating that it led to the famous and infamously mythologized incident in which Van Gogh cut off his own ear — an incident that marks the extreme end of what Sir Thomas Browne contemplated, two centuries earlier, as the divine heartbreak of romantic friendship.

Vincent van Gogh, "Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear," 1889

In February of 1888, a decade after Van Gogh found his purpose, he moved to the town of Arles in the South of France. There, he exploded into a period of immense creative fertility, completing more than two hundred paintings, one hundred watercolors and sketches, and his famous Sunflowers series. But he also lived in extreme poverty and endured incessant inner turmoil, much of which related to his preoccupation with enticing Gauguin — whom he admired with unparalleled ardor ("I find my artistic ideas extremely commonplace in comparison with yours," Van Gogh wrote) and who at the time was living and working in Brittany — to come live and paint with him. This coveted cohabitation, Van Gogh hoped, would be the beginning of a larger art colony that would serve as "a shelter and a refuge" for Post-Impressionist painters as they pioneered an entirely novel, and therefore subject to spirited criticism, aesthetic of art. Van Gogh wrote to Gauguin in early October of 1888:

I'd like to see you taking a very large share in this belief that we'll be relatively successful in founding something lasting.

Despite his destitution, Van Gogh spent whatever money he had on two beds, which he set up in the same small bedroom. Seeking to make his modest sleeping quarters "as nice as possible, like a woman's boudoir, really artistic," he resolved to paint a set of giant yellow sunflowers onto its white walls. He wrote beseeching letters to Gauguin, and when the French artist sent him a self-portrait as part of their exchange of canvases, Van Gogh excitedly showed it around town as the likeness of a beloved friend who was about to come visit.

Gauguin finally agreed and arrived in Arles in mid-October, where he was to spend about two months, culminating with the dramatic ear incident.

In Paul Gauguin's Intimate Journals (public library), the French painter provides the only first-hand account of the strange, almost surreal circumstances that led to Van Gogh's legendary self-mutilation — circumstances chronically mis-reported by most biographers and the many lay myth-weavers of popular culture, all removed from the facts of the incident by space, time, and many degrees of intimacy.

"Paul Gauguin (Man in a Red Beret)" by Vincent van Gogh, 1888 (Van Gogh Museum)

Gauguin recalls that he resisted Van Gogh's insistent invitations for quite some time. "A vague instinct forewarned me of something abnormal," he writes. But he was "finally overborne by Vincent's sincere, friendly enthusiasm." He arrived late into the night and, not wanting to wake Van Gogh, awaited dawn in a town café. The owner instantly recognized him as the friend whose likeness Van Gogh had been proudly introducing as the anticipated friend.

After Gauguin settled in, Van Gogh set out to show him the beauty and beauties of Arles, though Gauguin found that he "could not get up much enthusiasm" for the local women. By the following day, they had begun work. Gauguin marveled at Van Gogh's clarity of purpose. "I don't admire the painting but I admire the man," he wrote. "He so confident, so calm. I so uncertain, so uneasy." Gauguin foreshadows the tumult to come:

Between two such beings as he and I, the one a perfect volcano, the other boiling too, inwardly, a sort of struggle was preparing. In the first place, everywhere and in everything I found a disorder that shocked me. His colour-box could hardly contain all those tubes, crowded together and never closed. In spite of all this disorder, this mess, something shone out of his canvases and out of his talk, too…. He possessed the greatest tenderness, or rather the altruism of the Gospel.

Soon, the two men merged their finances, which succumbed to the same sort of disorder. They began sharing household duties — Van Gogh secured their provisions and Gauguin cooked — and lived together for what Gauguin would later recall as an eternity. (In reality, it was nine weeks.) From the distance of years, he reflects on the experience in his journal:

In spite of the swiftness with which the catastrophe approached, in spite of the fever of work that had seized me, the time seemed to me a century.

Though the public had no suspicion of it, two men were performing there a colossal work that was useful to them both. Perhaps to others? There are some things that bear fruit.

"The Painter of Sunflowers (Portrait of Vincent van Gogh)" by Paul Gauguin, 1888 (Van Gogh Museum)

Despite the frenzied enthusiasm and work ethic with which Van Gogh approached his paintings, Gauguin saw them as "nothing but the mildest of incomplete and monotonous harmonies." So he set out to do what Van Gogh had invited him there to do — serve as mentor and master. (Gauguin was the only person whom Van Gogh ever addressed as "Master.") He found the younger artist hearteningly receptive to criticism:

Like all original natures that are marked with the stamp of personality, Vincent had no fear of the other man and was not stubborn.

From that day on, Gauguin recounts, Van Gogh — "my Van Gogh" — began making "astonishing progress," found his voice as an artist and came into his own style, cultivating the singular sense of color and light for which he is now remembered. But then something shifted — having found his angels, Van Gogh had also uncovered his demons. Gauguin recounts the tempestuous emotional climates that seemed to sweep over Van Gogh unpredictably — the beginning of his descent into the metal illness that would be termed bipolar disorder a century later:

During the latter days of my stay, Vincent would become excessively rough and noisy, and then silent. On several nights I surprised him in the act of getting up and coming over to my bed. To what can I attribute my awakening just at that moment?

At all events, it was enough for me to say to him, quite sternly, "What's the matter with you, Vincent?" for him to go back to bed without a word and fall into a heavy sleep.

Van Gogh soon completed a self-portrait he considered to be a painting of himself "gone mad." That evening, the two men headed to the local café. Gauguin recounts the astounding scene that followed, equal parts theatrical and full of sincere human tragedy:

[Vincent] took a light absinthe. Suddenly he flung the glass and its contents at my head. I avoided the blow and, taking him boldly in my arms, went out of the café, across the Place Victor Hugo. Not many minutes later, Vincent found himself in his bed where, in a few seconds, he was asleep, not to awaken again till morning.

When he awoke, he said to me very calmly, "My dear Gauguin, I have a vague memory that I offended you last evening."

Answer: "I forgive you gladly and with all my heart, but yesterday's scene might occur again and if I were struck I might lose control of myself and give you a choking. So permit me to write to your brother and tell him that I am coming back.

But the previous day's drama was only a tremor of the earthquake to come that fateful evening, two days before Christmas 1888. "My God, what a day!" Gauguin exclaims as he chronicles what happened when he decided to take a solitary walk after dinner to clear his head:

I had almost crossed the Place Victor Hugo when I heard behind me a well-known step, short, quick, irregular. I turned about on the instant as Vincent rushed toward me, an open razor in his hand. My look at the moment must have had great power in it, for he stopped and, lowering his head, set off running towards home.

Gauguin laments that in the years since, he has been frequently bedeviled by the regret that he didn't chase Van Gogh down and disarm him. Instead, he checked into a local hotel and went to bed, but he found himself so agitated that he couldn't fall asleep until the small hours of the morning. Upon rising at half past seven, he headed into town, where he was met with an improbable scene:

Reaching the square, I saw a great crowd collected. Near our house there were some gendarmes and a little gentleman in a melon-shaped hat who was the superintendent of police.

This is what had happened.

Van Gogh had gone back to the house and had immediately cut off his ear close to the head. He must have taken some time to stop the flow of blood, for the day after there were a lot of wet towels lying about on the flag-stones in the two lower rooms. The blood had stained the two rooms and the little stairway that led up to our bedroom.

When he was in a condition to go out, with his head enveloped in a Basque beret which he had pulled far down, he went straight to a certain house where for want of a fellow-countrywoman one can pick up an acquaintance, and gave the manager his ear, carefully washed and placed in an envelope. "Here is a souvenir of me," he said.

That "certain house" was, of course, the brothel Van Gogh frequented, where he had found some of his models. After handing the madam his ear, he ran back home and went straight to sleep, shutting the blinds and setting a lamp on the table by the window. A crowd of townspeople gathered below within minutes, discomfited and abuzz with speculation about what had happened. Gauguin writes:

I had no faintest suspicion of all this when I presented myself at the door of our house and the gentleman in the melon-shaped hat said to me abruptly and in a tone that was more than severe, "What have you done to your comrade, Monsieur?"

"I don't know…"

"Oh, yes… you know very well… he is dead."

I could never wish anyone such a moment, and it took me a long time to get my wits together and control the beating of my heart.

Anger, indignation, grief, as well as shame at all these glances that were tearing my person to pieces, suffocated me, and I answered, stammeringly: "All right, Monsieur, let me go upstairs. We can explain ourselves there."

Then in a low voice I said to the police superintendent: "Be kind enough, Monsieur, to awaken this man with great care, and if he asks for me tell him I have left for Paris; the sight of me might prove fatal to him."

I must own that from this moment the police superintendent was as reasonable as possible and intelligently sent for a doctor and a cab.

Once awake, Vincent asked for his comrade, his pipe and his tobacco; he even thought of asking for the box that was downstairs and contained our money, — a suspicion, I dare say! But I had already been through too much suffering to be troubled by that.

Vincent was taken to a hospital where, as soon as he had arrived, his brain began to rave again.

All the rest everyone knows who has any interest in knowing it, and it would be useless to talk about it were it not for that great suffering of a man who, confined in a madhouse, at monthly intervals recovered his reason enough to understand his condition and furiously paint the admirable pictures we know.

Newspaper report from December 30, 1888: 'Last Sunday night at half past eleven a painter named Vincent Van Gogh, appeared at the maison de tolérance No 1, asked for a girl called Rachel, and handed her … his ear with these words: 'Keep this object like a treasure.' Then he disappeared. The police, informed of these events, which could only be the work of an unfortunate madman, looked the next morning for this individual, whom they found in bed with scarcely a sign of life. The poor man was taken to hospital without delay.'

With pressure from alarmed neighbors and local police, Van Gogh was soon committed into an insane asylum. From there, he wrote to Gauguin about the sundering tension between his desire to return to painting and his sense that his mental illness was incurable, but then added: "Aren't we all mad?"

Seventeen months later, he took his own life — a tragedy Gauguin recounts with the tenderness of one who has loved the lost:

He sent a revolved shot into his stomach, and it was only a few hours later that he died, lying in his bed and smoking his pipe, having complete possession of his mind, full of the love of his art and without hatred for others.

Complement this particular portion of the forgotten treasure Paul Gauguin's Intimate Journals with astrophysicist Janna Levin on madness and genius, poet Robert Lowell on what it's like to be bipolar, and neuropsychiatrist Nancy Andreasen on the relationship between creativity and mental illness, then revisit Gauguin's advice on overcoming rejection and Van Gogh on love and art, how relationships refine us, and his never-before-revealed sketchbooks.


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