On October 23, 1888, Paul Gauguin, at last, arrived in Arles to stay with his friend Vincent van Gogh, who had moved to the small provincial town in Provence in February of that year. For months Vincent had been writing to Gauguin urging him and his young friend in Brittany, the artist Emile Bernard, to join him in the Midi. Vincent’s dream was to establish in the south a colony of like-minded creative artists working in harmony with each other in the splendid nature and light he had discovered in Arles.

The two months the two artists spent together living and working together in Vincent’s “little yellow house” is the subject of the lecture. The presentation analyzes the personal and artistic relationship between the two masters and how their inner demons, personalities, and deeply held beliefs about what art should be, led to the dramatic clash of December 23 that ended with the celebrated truncation of Vincent’s right earlobe. Despite their disagreements, both artists absorbed much from each other so that the intensity of their artistic and emotional dialogue yielded in the end the styles and artistic attitudes that would in the future have the greatest impact on the evolution of modern art.

Every month, on the third Saturday, Christophe and Anne-Catherine take turn and host a conference, followed by a short Q&A session.

The online lecture is available on replay at the link below:

Credit: Vincent Van Gogh, Portrait de l'artiste. 1889, Huile sur toile. H. 65,0 ; L. 54,2 cm. © Musée d’Orsay, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Patrice Schmidt; Paul Gauguin, Portrait de l'artiste au Christ jaune. Entre 1890 et 1891, Huile sur toile, H. 38,0 ; L. 46,0 cm. © Musée d’Orsay, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Patrice Schmidt.