Van Gogh and Gauguin [28min]

Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin were two of the greatest painters of the late 19th century. A brief but intense collaboration occurred between the two artists. They met in Paris in the autumn of 1887. Each man tried to learn from the other and admired the other's work. Their collaboration was marked at first by mutual support and dialogue, but there was also competition and friction. The men differed sharply in their views on art: Gauguin favored working from memory and allowing abstract mental processes to shape his images, while Vincent held an unshakeable reverence for the physical reality of the observable world of models and Nature. This is reflected in the very different techniques each artist used. But toward the end of 1888, a series of violent incidents around Christmas Eve brought a dramatic end to their collaboration. This is the story of their personal and professional relationship.