Everybody wants to get on the Van Gogh Boat. There is no trip so horrible that someone won't take it. Nobody wants to miss the Van Gogh Boat. The idea of the unrecognized genius slaving away in a garret is a deliciously foolish one. We must credit the life of Vincent van Gogh for really sending that myth into orbit. How many pictures did he sell. One. He couldn't give them away. Almost no one could bear his work, even among the most modern of his colleagues. In the movie Lust For Life there is a scene of Kirk Douglas (as van Gogh) in front of La Grande Jatte being treated rudely by Georges Seurat. When I went to the Art Institute of Chicago to see the Grande Jatte, it was having a hard time competing with the white walls of the gallery. This habit of putting old pictures up against the white walls is deadly, the walls reflecting more light than the picture, but van Gogh's Bedroom at Arles was on the opposite wall and it was screaming at my back and I turned around and I listened. He has to be the most modern artist, still. Van Gogh's don't crack. But everybody hated them. We're so ashamed of his life that the rest of art history will be retribution for van Gogh's neglect. No one wants to be part of a generation that ignores another van Gogh. And yet looking at art history we see that these other guys were pros. They started when they were kids. They sold their work. They worked on commission. There is no great artist in all art history who was as ignored as van Gogh, yet people are still afraid of missing the Van Gogh Boat.
-From The Radiant Child by Rene Ricard
