Michel Fustier
VAN GOGH AND THE AUCTIONEER
Van Gogh was already twenty-seven years old when he realized that he was cut
out to be a painter. He then learned to paint on his own, against all the rules.
Nevertheless he had a kind of genius which allowed him to surmount his awkwardness.
He painted more than eight hundred canvasses… Unfortunately, he was so
sensitive that he frequently underwent deep breakdowns and, at the age of thirty
seven, he committed suicide. He is now universally recognised and admired.
CHARACTERS
The auctioneer, Van Gogh:
Van Gogh's father, Théo, Van Gogh's brother
Gauguin the painter, The police superintendant
(…On one side of the stage, the auctioneer addresses the audience while
showing Van Gogh's canvasses.
On the other, the other characters. At the end Van Gogh addresses the auctioneer
directly.)
-1-
THE AUCTIONEER – Here is one of the most famous paintings of Vincent Van
Gogh : The Sunflowers or, more simply, The Suns. The greatest museums in the
world have fought over it… Opening bid twenty million.
FATHER - It is time for you to earn a living.
VAN GOGH - I've absolutely no intention of earning a living.
FATHER - Really! You'll die in poverty.
VAN GOGH – I love poverty immensely, it's my natural condition. Why should
I live better than the poorest of the poor?
FATHER - Leave the poor out of this… You are already twenty-seven and
you know nothing about painting.
VAN GOGH - I'll do my best to learn, I'll work hard.
FATHER - I'm sorry to tell you that you have absolutely no talent.
VAN GOGH - I don't need talent, I hate talent.
FATHER - You are as insolent as ever… Nobody will ever look at your paintings.
VAN GOGH - I don't care about my paintings being looked at. I just want to do
what I have to do, what is written in me.
FATHER - Then, go and do it elsewhere. Neither your mother nor I will have you
here any longer.
AUCTIONEER - Once again look at this painting and admire it. It is a kind of
sacred object. Have you taken this into account? … Here sixty… and
there sixty-two… Who says more? The Sunflowers, one of the masterpieces
of the world of painting, by the man who had absolutely no talent… Going,
going, gone for sixty-two million.
-2-
AUCTIONEER - And now, an early work of the painter. The Potato Eaters…
Exceptional! Opening bid two million yen.
VAN GOGH - It's necessary to fight against oneself, to improve, to renew one's
energy… How hard it is to learn at my age, when the fingers and the brain
have already stiffened up.
THEO - You are my brother and, as far as I am concerned, I will never abandon
you
VAN GOGH - Once I wanted to evangelise the poor… They refused me! And
now I believe that there is another way to reach God: drawing! Maybe drawing
will help me to quench my thirst for God.
THEO - We are two brothers, but we are as one. It's very important for me that
you fulfil your calling. I will help you.
VAN GOGH - I am learning and working as if I were mad… I don't yet dare
to draw faces, it's too difficult, but I draw figures. I'm slowly improving
THEO - I'll send you money every month so that you can eat a little better and
above all buy canvasses, colours… It's expensive. I'll pay and you'll
paint. In this way I'll be able to help you.
AUCTIONEER - This painting is a work of what is ironically called the Potato
Period. Van Gogh, lives at this time in one of the most miserable of provincial
villages, painting still more miserable peasants... Who is the bidder? Four
million yen! Going, going, gone… You'll not be sorry .
-3-
AUCTIONEER - And now a self-portrait… Van Gogh was so eager to paint –he
left more than eight hundred canvasses- that, when he could find no other subject,
he used to paint himself.
VAN GOGH - Now, after two years in Paris, I have left to go to Arles and I find
myself in possession of all my powers. I have tamed the light and I am picking
it from the sky of the South of France… I am painting wheat-fields, sunflowers,
the drawbridge, the yellow house where I live, the room which I have fitted
out for myself… I am painting portraits also… I am wild about painting…
I paint whatever comes to hand.
GAUGUIN - Come on, come on, you are a dead loss! You have not been able to sell
even one of your works. I am ready to give you advice, but on the condition
that you follow it.
VAN GOGH - You Gauguin, why do you speak to me so? You aren't my father, nor
my brother…
GAUGUIN - But I've got experience, I am familiar with financial matters, and
I know how to paint… I have decided to come and live with you and I'm
going to take up your case.
VAN GOGH - No, certainly not! Let me be myself … (he makes a threatening
gesture with a knife)
GAUGUIN - What is happening to you? You don't want to… Why do you refuse
my offer? (he runs away)
VAN GOGH - (falling down) I am but a poor wretch… He wanted to do me good.
Why am I subject to such crazy fits? Ah! I will punish myself… (he raises
his knife to his face and collapses)
SUPERINTENDANT - (arriving) Well, what has happened? I have been brought a bit
of an ear in a piece of fabric. Ah, here is the man who attempted to cut off
his own ear… The wound has bled all night… Eh, my good fellow, I'm
afraid we are fit for a nice little stay in the hospital. I'll see to it. (exit)
VAN GOGH - Yes, lock me up… My father kept telling me that for so long…
This time I firmly believe that I am really mad.
AUCTIONEER - By chance, this self-portrait is precisely the one he painted just
after he cut off his ear. Not many painters cut off one of their ears to make
pictures. Unfortunately, a man who cuts off his ear is very rare, so it is an
expensive painting… Now, how much for such an authentic tragedy, for this
bloody piece of human misery…? Opening bid twenty million dollars.
4
VAN GOGH - You there, why are you talking nonsense,? Twenty million dollars,
what is that? How much money is that? None of that makes any sense… My
brother sends me up to one hundred and fifty francs a month.
AUCTIONEER - Twenty million dollars, that is about enough to support a painter
of your kind for a hundred thousand years. Or, if you prefer, a hundred thousand
painters for one year.
VAN GOGH - If I weren't already mad, I would become so. My paintings are gifts.
I painted them for nothing, and for all the people.
AUCTIONEER - But, Mr Van Gogh, I can't help it. Everybody is fighting over your
paintings, it's just what you wished for! And although you painted them for
nothing…
VAN GOGH - If this is so, rich people can get hold of one of my paintings and
lock it away in a safe for a entire lifetime…?
AUCTIONEER - Yes, that can happen, they have all the rights of ownership…
And then, if they wait long enough, they earn big profits.
VAN GOGH - What do you mean, profits?
AUCTIONEER - It means that, when they sell it, they can get a higher price than
they paid for it. Possibly they can make one or two million dollars more, after
deducting expenses.
VAN GOGH - I have always hated money… Maybe because I have never had any.
I beg you to note, Mr Auctioneer, that I didn’t make my paintings to be
sold… I made them because I couldn't help but paint. And above all because
I wanted to be able to offer men glimpses of the beauty I had been fortunate
enough to perceive.
AUCTIONEER - What you have just said, Mr Van Gogh, is very moving. I'll let
your view be known… And this will certainly provoke a significant increase
in the selling prices.
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
Vincent Van Gogh was born in a country presbytery of Holland (1853). He received
the name of an elder brother who had died as a baby. He may have been marked
by this transfer, being the one who, so to speak, had taken the place of the
dead. The poverty of his parents obliged him to interrupt his studies at the
age of fifteen and become a salesman for a wholesale art dealer. He worked successively
in Holland, England and France.
However he feels unhappy, resigns his job and pretends that he has, like his
father, the calling of a pastor dedicated to evangelising the poor. He passes
some time with the coal miners of the Borinage (where Zola had collected his
data before writing Germinal), then he decides to live with the peasants in
the north of Holland. However the Church authorities refuse to recognise him.
He is twenty-seven years old. Attracted by painting, which he has never studied,
he then decides that this will be his way to seek God.
His parents do not believe in his quest and reject him… It is true that,
up to this point, he has always proved to be very indecisive. Fortunately his
brother Theo supports him. Together they will act as if they were one person
and Theo accepts that, while he makes the money they need, Vincent will be able
to paint.
First of all Vincent works in The Hague in the great tradition of Rembrandt
and Vermeer. Then In Paris, where he discovers the Impressionists and, though
revealing himself to be quick tempered, full of anxiety and critical, he makes
friends with them… Eventually he has a falling out with them and even
with his brother, in whose house he had been living, and makes up his mind to
go to the south of France where, he has been told, the light is so beautiful.
He ends up, nobody knows why, in Arles, an ancient Roman city, near the delta
of the Rhone river.
The light of the "Midi" is in fact so wonderful that he throws himself
into painting so as to try to grab hold of it. After a few weeks he rents a
little house in which he settles down. He works frantically… But the painter
Gauguin, himself at a loss, comes to Arles to join him and they work together
for some time. But the experience turns out badly and they have arguments. In
his despair Van Gogh cuts off his ear and Gauguin runs away… Victim of
temporary insanity crises, Van Gogh is hospitalised. Then he spends several
months in the hospice of Saint-Rémy de Provence where he works steadily.
Subsequently he goes to Auvert-sur-Oise, near Paris, where Doctor Gachet takes
care of him. He commits suicide a few months later (on July the 29th 1890) at
the age of thirty-seven.
His most famous works (among the eight hundred he painted) are first of all
a series of self-portraits, then The Sunflowers, Boats on the beach of Les Saintes-Maries
de la Mer, portraits of the Postman Roulin and of Doctor Gachet, the Yellow
Room, the Iris, The Church of Auvert…
Non commercial use allowed. Reg. SACD - Michel Fustier, 4 Chambfort, 69 100 Villeurbanne, France. Tel: 00 33 (0)4 78 84 25 28.