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Vincent Van Gogh’s Triumph Over Adversity – Steven Naifeh, Co-Author of Van Gogh: The Life – Love Your Work, Episode 175

April 25 2019 – 07:30am

vincent van gogh podcast

Vincent Van Gogh was a loser and a failure. He failed as an art dealer, and as a preacher. He even got fired and banned from his own family’s business.

On top of it, Van Gogh had terrible health problems. His gums were sore, he was losing weight, and he had a hacking cough. He was also prone to psychotic episodes, during which he was institutionalized for months at a time.

Vincent never really found his place in the world. He died young, at only 37.

I recently read an incredible biography of Van Gogh. By the end, I was left wondering, what can you possibly learn from this tragic life?

Steven Naifeh is co-author if the incredible Van Gogh: The Life (@VanGoghTheLife). It’s a 900-page treasure chronicling the life of an artist who is so revered, tourists bring their relative’s ashes to spread over his gravesite in Auvers, France.

Steven and his co-author and partner Gregory White Smith spent more than a decade compiling Van Gogh’s biography. To do so, they had to sort through mountains of letters and literature from the period of Van Gogh’s life. Since neither of them spoke Dutch, they worked with more than twenty translators and researchers to complete the book.

The result is a Van Gogh biography of unparalleled depth, painting in intricate detail the outer and inner life of Vincent Van Gogh.

In this conversation, you’ll learn:

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Theme music: Dorena “At Sea”, from the album About Everything And More. By Arrangement with Deep Elm Records. Listen on Spotify »

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