Van Gogh and His Doctors: Projections and Counter-Projections

Abstract

This article analyzes the relationship between Van Gogh and two of his doctors, Dr. Rey and Dr. Gachet, whose portraits he painted, by comparing their rapport with the sick painter and vice versa. Van Gogh the patient/artist—presented here as a case study—enables us to examine not only his projections but the counter-projections of his doctors, whether in writing (Dr. Rey) or in painting (Dr. Gachet), and to explore the psychological and ethical tensions these projections give rise to. Van Gogh's portraits of the two doctors offer two contrastive models: estrangement vis-à-vis “doubling” and symbiosis. Whereas Dr. Rey catered for Van Gogh's maternal needs and misunderstood his artistic needs, Dr. Gachet identified with his patient's talent and drew his face (death mask) after his suicide. The central ethical question that arises from the analysis of Van Gogh's relationship with his two doctors is whether we can extend our moral judgments beyond the cultural bounds of a specific historical context.

Notes

1. Van Gogh to Theo, n.d., in The Complete Letters of Vincent Van Gogh, trans. J. Van Gogh-Bonger and C. de Dood (Geeenwich, CT: New York Graphic Society, 1958), vol. 3, 105.

2. Van Gogh to Aurier, n.d., in The Complete Letters of Vincent Van Gogh, vol. 3, 256.

3. Van Gogh, Memoirs by Serret from Künst und Künstler, 1928, in The Complete Letters of Vincent Van Gogh, vol. 3, 168.

4. Ibid.

5. John Rewald, Post-Impressionism: From Van Gogh to Gauguin (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1978), 366.

6. Van Gogh to Theo, 4 June 1890, in The Complete Letters, vol. 3, 276.

7. Karl Miller, Doubles: Studies in Literary History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 50.

8. Miller, Doubles, 416.

9. The best translation from the German into English is in Wikipedia, “Der Doppelgänger.”

10. Miller, Doubles, 135, 47.

11. Van Gogh to Theo and Jo, n.d., in The Complete Letters, vol. 3, 294.

12. Rewald, Post-Impressionism: From Van Gogh to Gauguin, 366.

13. Van Gogh to Van Gogh's sister, first half of June 1890, in The Complete Letters, vol. 3, 469.

14. Miller, Doubles, 416.

15. Cynthia Saltzman, Portrait of Dr. Gachet: The Story of a Van Gogh Masterpiece: Modernism, Money, Politics, Dealers, Taste, Greed and Loss (New York: Viking, 1998), 15.

16. Rewald, Post-Impressionism: From Van Gogh to Gauguin, 368.

17. Albert Schoop, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner im Thurgau: Die 10 Monate in Kreuzlingn 1917–1918 (Bern: Verlag Kornfeld, 1992).

18. Gilbert Harman, “Moral Relativism Defended,” Philosophical Review 84 (1975): 3–22.