Before long, they were bringing us stacks of folders, offered with a smile and a few encouraging words, such as “We thought you might find these interesting, too.” We spent weeks copying file after file, many of which contained documents only in Dutch, which we would later have to have translated. Nevertheless, the two archivists, Fieke Pabst and Monique Hageman, welcomed us warmly. Who were we? For starters, Pulitzer Prize or no, we spoke not a word of Dutch. We had been warned to expect a chilly reception. The archives occupy an old town house next door to the Van Gogh Museum. (Spoiler alert: Vincent was most definitively straight.) Preposterous as this was, we didn’t want to go through the gauntlet again. They even argued that we had brought out the pink in Pollock because we were gay, on some sort of posthumous recruitment drive. The evidence was overwhelmingly convincing how could we not address it? Nevertheless, some critics denounced “the accusation” as an outrageous slur. Our 1998 biography of Jackson Pollock had drawn a lot of flak for its conclusion that the legendarily macho painter had homosexual yearnings (on which he occasionally acted). Lust for Life was conceived in 1934 by the popular pseudo-biographer Irving Stone and captured on film in 1956 by the Oscar-winning director Vincente Minnelli, with the charismatic Kirk Douglas in the principal role. It’s a great scene, the stuff of legend: the death of the world’s most beloved artist, the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh. “The End” appears against a mosaic of famous paintings and a climactic crash of cymbals. The sudden report of a gun startles a passing cart driver. Cut to a long shot of the wheat field churning in the storm. I see no way out.” Gritting his teeth in torment, he reaches into his pocket. He goes to a tree and scribbles a note: “I am desperate. When he looks up, his eyes bug out with madness. As the wind whips the wheat into a frenzy, he races to add the ominous clouds to his canvas. He sets up his kit and begins to paint furiously, rushing to capture the scene of the swirling wheat as a storm approaches. He carries a canvas, an easel, a bag of paints, and a pained grimace. By DeAgostini/Getty Images.Ī lone figure tramps toward a field of golden wheat.
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