Customer Reviews

Vincent Van Gogh: A Self-Portrait in Art and Letters

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I was so pleased to find this book in the library and after readint it I had to own it. I have many Van Gogh books. This one is espeically interesting since the editor minimized her words on the first page of every chapter. The words after that are Van Gogh's words taken from his letters to Theo and various others. I find it extremelly intersting to read what he wrote about his works as he did them. This is a terrific book.

This is most useful to students of van gogh because it focuses so on the drawings and the whole range of development in van gogh's artistry. The match of his lyrical descriptive writing with his specific creations is a window into the inspiration of visual artistry. Notes with the pictures that would match the text of the letters would have helped a lot. Seeing the drawn studies for some of the more famous paintings sometimes without the paintings themselves was a refreshing visual treatment of the reality of Vincent's process of creation. Then the drawings that never got painted take on a life of their own in our imagination. And the study drawings and letter sketches give the experience of the process. The book is more useful to those who want to understand van gogh the painter than vincent the man. In the very first chapter entry Suh makes a false distinction between Vincent's spiritual religion and his love of nature. She mistakes his renunciation of the God of his father for a rejection of religious belief. This misses a whole layer of intellectual and spiritual development that should be understood as an element of his art, not as distinct from it. Van gogh reveals the evolution of modern spirituality as a painter. This aspect Suh leaves in the shadows.

It is a pleasure to see Van Gogh's original handwriting in his letters, accompanied by drawings and skecthes. Highly recommended.

I am a lover of Van Gogh and he has greatly influenced my work. I saw a book at the book store that detailed letters and the art that he was writing about. I really liked the book. I decided to buy it online and noticed this book with a very similar description. The price was very good on this book so I gave it a try. I was rather disappointed in this book. It seemed to put many of the letters that contained little sketches in the book. Occasionally it included the finished painting but not usually. Often times it included a painting from the same period or of the same subject but not the one referenced in the letter. Many times the painting was one or two pages from the text. This was all very disappointing to me. I wanted the letter, any sketches and the painting all to be there. Only on a few occasions did this occur. The other book on the subject is MUCH better. I would have gladly paid the difference for the other book had I known.