Van Gogh's Ear
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3,0 • 1 note
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- 8,99 €
Description de l’éditeur
BOOK OF THE WEEK ON BBC RADIO 4
PRIMETIME BBC2 DOCUMENTARY WITH JEREMY PAXMAN
On a dark night in Provence in December 1888 Vincent van Gogh cut off his ear. It is an act that has come to define him. Yet for more than a century biographers and historians seeking definitive facts about what happened that night have been left with more questions than answers.
In Van Gogh’s Ear Bernadette Murphy sets out to discover exactly what happened that night in Arles. Why would an artist at the height of his powers commit such a brutal act? Who was the mysterious ‘Rachel’ to whom he presented his macabre gift? Was it just his lobe, or did Van Gogh really cut off his entire ear? Her investigation takes us from major museums to the dusty contents of forgotten archives, vividly reconstructing the world in which Van Gogh moved – the madams and prostitutes, café patrons and police inspectors, his beloved brother Theo and his fellow artist and house-guest Paul Gauguin. With exclusive revelations and new research about the ear and about ‘Rachel’, Bernadette Murphy proposes a bold new hypothesis about what was occurring in Van Gogh’s heart and mind as he made a mysterious delivery to her doorstep that fateful night.
Van Gogh’s Ear is a compelling detective story and a journey of discovery. It is also a portrait of a painter creating his most iconic and revolutionary work, pushing himself ever closer to greatness even as he edged towards madness – and one fateful sweep of the blade that would resonate through the ages.
Avis d’utilisateurs
Excellent book let down by poor French
This is a great story of a huge piece of research performed by Bernadette Murphy. The pace of the narrative and the detail are excellent and the author describes Arles, Van High’s life there and his paintings in vivid detail.
If only the narrator had made an effort to pronounce the many French words not as she thought they might sound right in a French accent but actually to ask a French person how they are pronounced and then to approximate that - we would have not had to suffer the butchering of “Arlésienne” as “arlsien” etc. Almost every French word and name is mispronounced. Pity.