i’m beginning to love abuse

Vincent van Gogh’s fame may owe as much to a legendary act of self-harm, as it does to his self-portraits. But, 119 years after his death, the tortured post-Impressionist’s bloody ear is at the centre of a new controversy, after two historians suggested that the painter did not hack off his own lobe but was attacked by his friend, the French artist Paul Gauguin.

According to official versions, the disturbed Dutch painter cut off his ear with a razor after a row with Gauguin in 1888. Bleeding heavily, Van Gogh then walked to a brothel and presented the severed ear to an astonished prostitute called Rachel before going home to sleep in a blood-drenched bed.

But two German art historians, who have spent 10 years reviewing the police investigations, witness accounts and the artists’ letters, argue that Gauguin, a fencing ace, most likely sliced off the ear with his sword during a fight, and the two artists agreed to hush up the truth.

In Van Gogh’s Ear: Paul Gauguin and the Pact of Silence, published in Germany, Hamburg-based academics Hans Kaufmann and Rita Wildegans argue that the official version of events, based largely on Gauguin’s accounts, contain inconsistencies and that both artists hinted that the truth was more complex.

Van Gogh and Gauguin’s troubled friendship was legendary. In 1888, Van Gogh persuaded him to come to Arles in the south of France to live with him in the Yellow House he had set up as a “studio of the south”. They spent the autumn painting together before things soured. Just before Christmas, they fell out. Van Gogh, seized by an attack of a metabolic disease became aggressive and was apparently crushed when Gauguin said he was leaving for good.

Kaufmann told the Guardian: “Near the brothel, about 300 metres from the Yellow House, there was a final encounter between them: Vincent might have attacked him, Gauguin wanted to defend himself and to get rid of this ‘madman’. He drew his weapon, made some movement in the direction of Vincent and by that cut off his left ear.” Kaufmann said it was not clear if it was an accident or an aimed hit.

While curators at the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam stand by the theory of self-mutilation, Kaufmann argues that Van Gogh dropped hints in letters to his brother, Theo, once commenting : “Luckily Gauguin … is not yet armed with machine guns and other dangerous war weapons.”

i thought this was sorta interesting

INFP – “Questor”. High capacity for caring. Calm and pleasant face to the world. High sense of honor derived from internal values. 4.4% of total population.

Take Free Myers-Briggs Personality Test

hope for all

this will always give me hope that those who doubt us will be proved wrong.
That loving her will be proved only a sin when unrecognized.

How Art saved the world

it’s the end of paralysis

skinny love by bon iver

” now all you love is wasted and then who the hell was i?”

waking up to your curved spine warm against my crooked smile

there’s something in my chest

and it’s growing now

but the light’s not on and your not home

it’s just how i learned to be in this together and alone

these little death’s  long awaited

i held my breath now it’s outdated

somnolent with her scent

i can smell the tears on her breath

but she is sick with this mutiny of self

that her hearts joy may still be sung

rests peacefully on this tongue

she will be the distance inbetween

what is and what might have been

For the girl with a storm in her teacup

i was a breath to you

necessary and vital

for but a moment

you were the best stolen moment

i think Emily Dickinson said it best..

I had no time to hate, because
The grave would hinder me,
And life was not so ample I
Could finish enmity.

 

Nor had I time to love, but since
Some industry must be,
The little toil of love, I thought,
Was large enough for me.

 

Maybe it’s time to forgive.

meet the new pet i want!!

this shall be my new pet!

it’s affectionately known as the freddie kruger frog!

Confuse a cat