
IN THE only article about Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) published in his lifetime, the Symbolist poet Albert Aurier characterised him — in an otherwise complimentary text — as a crazed genius.
This commonly held perception was further dramatised and popularised by the 1956 Hollywood film Lust for Life, which had Van Gogh chopping off his own ear. In fact, the artist only sliced off a sliver during one of his intermittent bouts of mental illness, during which he did not paint, and which only plagued him in the last two years of his short life.
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