Ambition and fame
Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from Arles, 17 September 1888
Oh - the exhibition at the Revue Independante - good, but once and for all, we are too good smokers to put the wrong end of the cigar into our mouths. We shall be forced to try to sell in order to do the things we sell over again, and better. That's because we are in a bad trade, but let's try something different from the fun of the fair that's the pest of the house.
This afternoon I had a select public - four or five hooligans and a dozen street arabs, who were especially interested in seeing the paint come out of the tubes. Well, that same public - it meant fame, or rather I mean to laugh at ambition and fame, as I do at those street arabs, and at the loafers on the banks of the Rhone and in the Rue du Pont d'Arles.
Letter 539
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
Back to The Way of Vincent: Making art no matter what
Oh - the exhibition at the Revue Independante - good, but once and for all, we are too good smokers to put the wrong end of the cigar into our mouths. We shall be forced to try to sell in order to do the things we sell over again, and better. That's because we are in a bad trade, but let's try something different from the fun of the fair that's the pest of the house.
This afternoon I had a select public - four or five hooligans and a dozen street arabs, who were especially interested in seeing the paint come out of the tubes. Well, that same public - it meant fame, or rather I mean to laugh at ambition and fame, as I do at those street arabs, and at the loafers on the banks of the Rhone and in the Rue du Pont d'Arles.
Letter 539
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
Back to The Way of Vincent: Making art no matter what
1 Comments:
In 1886 the journal Révue Indépendante, under the management of Édouard Dujardin and Félix Fénéon, began holding small exhibitions in its offices. Gauguin received an invitation from Dujardin to exhibit there in 1889 (the year after this letter), but refused the invitation because of a bad review he'd received from Fénéon in the Révue.
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