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Rating: Biographers and modern critics have often labeled a multitude of more or less "disturbed" personalities as "cursed artists": schizophrenics, troubled, antisocial individuals, critics of their period, detractors of their cultural era, madmen, unbalanced, sadistic, masochistic, and so on. In the presence of such individuals, the biased historiography has almost distorted the essence of their works and creations, inevitably mixing the exegesis of the latter with their personal stories and, in particular, creating inextricable links between the alleged mental insanities and the style used. And so it is that one easily analyzes the painting of the drunken painter, the technique of the violent artist who is a jailbird remnant, the work of the cataleptic and/or epileptic, the colors of the narcoleptic: a quick pseudo-scientific diagnosis is enough to justify the artist and his choices, one does not perceive the necessity to delve into the more enigmatic moral and unconscious components, into the chest of memories and passions from whose lack of rationality and empiricism one tends to flee.
Lust for Life is, on the contrary, an artist's biography—albeit in the form of a novel—which succeeds in downplaying the biased prosiness meant to describe the "curse" inherent in the protagonist. Irving Stone, a noted novelist-biographer of the past century, introduces the life and works of Vincent Van Gogh, a precursor of twentieth-century Expressionism and a bridge between realism, impressionism, and modern avant-gardes, starting from his apprenticeship as a sales clerk of art prints at Goupil in London, delving into his failed attempt to embrace the clerical robe, and finally meticulously outlining his artistic maturity through the rural and urban realities of Belgium, the Netherlands, and France. Stone's Van Gogh is a passionate individual, spiritually rich, determined in his desires, yet so weak and defenseless in front of a reality still distrustful of so-called "cultural revolutionaries." In the heart of industrialized Europe, a step away from the deadly squalor of mines and miners, Vincent refuses to conform to the canons and hypocrisy of the dominant classical ideology, thus paving his own path towards isolation and social marginalization: youthful loves languish, work is an utterly inadequate panacea. The choice to venture onto the seemingly comfortable highways of religion, embracing Christian charity and putting it at the service of the outcast miners of the infernal Borinage, proves to be a massive disaster as well as yet another demonstration of how the hypocrisy of the "great" and the "notable" can destroy excellent intentions and goodwill.
From the murky waters of mysticism, Van Gogh resurfaces in the rich forest of art, the last tool capable of satisfying and gracing a tormented and humiliated soul. Vincent, morally and financially supported by his mentor and savior, his beloved brother Theo, produces sketches, studies of objects and bodies that fail to break through the rough and harmonious classicist tastes of established critics and artists, who accuse him of semi-incompetence, dissuade him from pursuing further, drain him to the brink, humiliate him. From the green and pristine Netherlands, Vincent moves to Paris and is literally enchanted by the impressionist "follies" of the refusés. Cezanne, Gauguin, Seurat, Rousseau, and Toulouse-Lautrec, rejected by the academic Salons and confined in the picturesque Montmartre of the dissidents, transform into true masters of the new style, of impression and vibrant light, heated by the vapors of absinthe and comforted by the beautiful Ladies of the approach. Yet, Impressionism and the destruction of rigor and lines are not enough to satiate the turbulent Fleming, determined to be consumed alive by the mischievous Provençal sun of Arles and the "madness" that overtakes him almost suddenly. Interned in a madhouse in Saint Remy en Provence, Van Gogh ends his days in Auvers sur Oise with the inevitable annulment of his being in front of the adored Theo.
The story of Van Gogh is the story of a misunderstood revolutionary, a pariah guilty of expressing his own inner vibrations on canvas, disregarding rigor and tradition. The biography outlined by Stone is perfectly capable of capturing the spiritual and creative essence of such a restless and unhappy character and not of an unbalanced person who accidentally disrupted the balances of the past: wounded by missed loves, desirous of finding affection and passion in the most marginalized corners of society (prostitutes, street women, beggars, paupers), convinced that human genuineness can transcend any canon imposed by third parties, Vincent unites in his works the realism of the land, the impression of light, and the expression given by the pulsations of the ego into a unity of reality and unreality, of material and immaterial, of grandeur and misery, of life and death.
Perfect for delving into the life of one of the artists most inflated by historiography's stereotypes, Lust for Life is a masterpiece of its kind, as well as an extraordinary fictionalized biography capable of delving into the psyche of a great man without liberating itself from the rigor of historical sources.
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