Vincent van Gogh bedroom inside a French monastery to receive psychological treatment

Van Gogh bedroom inside the French cloister

The French monastery of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole, where artist Vincent van Gogh created many of his masterpieces while receiving psychiatric treatment, still operates and treats patients with mental health illnesses through an art therapy program, where the works they create are displayed in the monastery. An annual exhibition, hosted in partnership with the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in New York, which continues to attract thousands of visitors each year, according to news.artnet.

The Abbey of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole has been located in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence for a thousand years. By the time Van Gogh voluntarily entered the facility in May 1889, it served as an asylum for people considered “insane.” The artist chose to remain in Saint-Paul-de-Mausole after suffering from He had several mental health crises, especially after the famous incident in which he cut off part of his ear. He was accompanied to the hospital by Father Frédéric Salles, a Protestant cleric from the nearby town of Arles.

Theo van Gogh, the artist's brother, was crucial to his ability to paint during this time. While the staff were supportive of the artist and allowed him to paint as part of his treatment, and provided him with studio space on the hospital grounds, Theo financed his materials and regularly sent him supplies during his long stay. for a year.

Jean-Marc Boulogne, a psychiatrist and current medical director of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole, wrote in a document provided to visitors that van Gogh was “mesmerized by the quality of light and the beauty of the countryside” and eventually produced more than 100 drawings and 150 paintings before leaving in May 1890, but he died of a gunshot wound. Nari two months after his release.

The hospital's arts center is run by the Valetodo Society, which works to promote cultural development and medical research at the hospital. While the site's cloister still serves as a treatment facility, it is open to the public and includes a reconstruction of the room in which Van Gogh stayed. The cloisters serve as a gallery to display works. Performed by hospital residents and SVA University students.

Carol Fabricatori, an SVA alumna and current faculty member, said she feels “honored” to be one of the artists selected by the school to exhibit their work in 2019, 2022 and 2023, and said she was personally influenced by Van Gogh’s ink and color drawings.

Vincent Willem van Gogh 30 March 1853 – 29 July 1890 was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who is among the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art. In just over a decade, he created approximately 2100 artworks, including around 860 oil paintings, most of them in the last two years of his life. His oeuvre includes landscapes, still lifes, portraits, and self-portraits, most of which are characterized by bold colors and dramatic brushwork that contributed to the rise of expressionism in modern art. Van Gogh's work was beginning to gain critical attention before he died from a self-inflicted gunshot at age 37. During his lifetime, only one of Van Gogh's paintings, The Red Vineyard, was sold.

Born into an upper-middle-class family, Van Gogh drew as a child and was serious, quiet and thoughtful, but showed signs of mental instability. As a young man, he worked as an art dealer, often travelling, but became depressed after he was transferred to London. He turned to religion and spent time as a missionary in southern Belgium. Later he drifted into ill-health and solitude. He was keenly aware of modernist trends in art and, while back with his parents, took up painting in 1881. His younger brother, Theo, supported him financially, and the two of them maintained a long correspondence.

Fourteen Sunflowers, August 1888. National Gallery, London

Memory of the Garden at Etten, 1888. Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg

Enclosed Wheat Field with Rising Sun, May 1889, Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

Van Gogh's early works consist of mostly still lifes and depictions of peasant laborers. In 1886, he moved to Paris, where he met members of the artistic avant-garde, including Émile Bernard and Paul Gauguin, who were seeking new paths beyond Impressionism. Frustrated in Paris and inspired by a growing spirit of artistic change and collaboration, in February 1888, Van Gogh moved to Arles in southern France to establish an artistic retreat and commune. Once there, Van Gogh's art changed. His paintings grew brighter and he turned his attention to the natural world, depicting local olive groves, wheat fields and sunflowers. Van Gogh invited Gauguin to join him in Arles and eagerly anticipated Gauguin's arrival in the fall of 1888.

Van Gogh suffered from psychotic episodes and delusions. Though he worried about his mental stability, he often neglected his physical health, did not eat properly and drank heavily. His friendship with Gauguin ended after a confrontation with a razor when, in a rage, he severed his left ear. Van Gogh spent time in psychiatric hospitals, including a period at Saint-Rémy. After he discharged himself and moved to the Auberge Ravoux in Auvers-sur-Oise near Paris, he came under the care of the homeopathic doctor Paul Gachet. His depression persisted, and on 27 July 1890, Van Gogh is believed to have shot himself in the chest with a revolver, dying from his injuries two days later.

Van Gogh's work began to attract critical artistic attention in the last year of his life. After his death, Van Gogh's art and life story captured public imagination as an emblem of misunderstood genius, due in large part to the efforts of his widowed sister-in-law Johanna van Gogh-Bonger. His bold use of color, expressive line and thick application of paint inspired avant-garde artistic groups like the Fauves and German Expressionists in the early 20th century. Van Gogh's work gained widespread critical and commercial success in the following decades, and he has become a lasting icon of the romantic ideal of the tortured artist. Today, Van Gogh's works are among the world's most expensive paintings ever sold. His legacy is honored and celebrated by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, which holds the world's largest collection of his paintings and drawings.