Among my current readings, Van Gogh's letters to his brother Theo move my heart most. To be a true artist, you have to be a sincere and true man first.
"In short, I want to progress so far that people will say of my work, He feels deeply, he feels tenderly--notwithstanding my so-called roughness, perhaps even because of it.
It seems pretentious to talk like this way now, but this is the reason why I want to push on with all my strength.
What am I in most people's eyes? A nonentity, or an eccentric and disagreeable man--somebody who has no position in society and never will have, in short, the lowest of the low. Very well, even if this were true, then I should want my work to show what is in the heart of such an eccentric, of such a nobody.
This is my ambition, which is, in spite of everything, founded less on anger than on love, more on serenity than on passion. It is true that I am often in the greatest misery, but still there is calm pure harmony and music inside me. I see drawings and pictures in the poorest huts, in the dirtiest corner. And my mind is drawn toward these things by an irresistible force.
More and more other things lose their interest, and the more I get rid of them, the quicker my eyes grasps the picturesque things. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and continuous observation. By persistent, I mean not only continuous work, but also giving up your opinion at the bidding of such and such a person."
"Of the drawings which I shall show you now, I think only this: I hope they will prove to you that my work does not remain stationary, but progresses in a reasonable direction. As to the money value of my work, I do not pretend to anything less than that it would greatly astonish me if in time my work did not become just as salable as that of others. Of course I cannot tell whether that will happen now or later, but I think the surest way, which cannot fail, is to work from nature faithfully and energetically. Sooner or later feeling and love for nature meet a response from people who are interested in art. It is the painter's duty to be entirely absorbed by nature and to use all his intelligence to express sentiment in his work so that it becomes intelligible to other people. In my opinion working for the market is not exactly the right way; on the contrary, it means fooling art lovers. The true painters have not done this; the sympathy they eventually received was the result of their sincerity. That's all I know about it, and I don't think I need to know more. Of course it is a different thing to try to find people who like your work, and who will love it--of course this is permitted. But it must not become speculation; it would perhaps turn out wrong and would certainly cause one to lose time that ought to be spent on the work itself."
This Van Gogh, who would spend the little money his brother sent him every month on his painting materials first and sometimes had nothing left for food for days, painted ferverishly for the next eight years and died penniless and relatively unknown.
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Originally Posted by Hugo Zhang
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