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Vincent Van Gogh: Chemicals, Crisis, and Creativity
by Wilfred N. Arnold. Birkhauser,
Boston MA, U.S.A., 1992. ISBN 0-8176-3616-1.
Reviewed by Roy R. Behrens,
2022 X Avenue, Dysart,
IA 52224-9767,
U.S.A.
ballast@netins.net
According to an old saying, the journey is more important than the destination,
the process more gratifying than the product. In some ways, this book
is a model of that. Its explicit purpose is to find the chemical, biological,
and medical factors that caused or in some way contributed to the tragic
self-destructive plight of Vincent van Gogh. Why did he cut off a portion
of his ear? Why did he shoot himself? Was his ?madness? in some way contributive
to the gestural style and pictorial content of his paintings? The answers
offered by this book are both fascinating and persuasive (far more convincing
than those of other authors, whose range of explanations include epilepsy,
alcoholism, manic-depression, schizophrenia, syphillis, and so on). The
artist was not insane, concludes this author, who is a biochemist at the
University of Kansas Medical Center, but rather he probably ?suffered
from an inherited, debilitating disease [called acute intermittent porphyria
(or AIP)], which was unrecognized in his day. His life style [excessive
drinking, malnutrition] provoked symptoms, exacerbated his condition,
precipitated acute attacks, and shortened his life.? That said, the most
riveting part of the book is not its conclusions, but the spellbinding
process by which they are reached. More than anything else, it is its
elegant line of questioning, an exemplar of scientific reasoning, that
is the real subject of this book. If all this sounds daunting to a non-scientist,
it really should not. The author is a skilled writer with a delightfully
dry sense of humor. Despite the technical nature of its subject matter,
it is a highly accessible book that reads more like a well-written mystery
than a medical diagnosis.
(Reprinted by permission from Ballast Quarterly Review 17, No. 1, Fall
2001.)
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