Lust for Life Page #5

For once I agree with you, Durand-Ruel.

Impressionism is not a joke.

It's a cancer and it must be cut out.

Condone anarchism in the arts,

and you seal the doom of France.

What would you do?

Padlock the galleries...

- and ship the painters off to Devil's Island?

- No.

They don't paint.

They load pistols with tubes of paint...

and fire them at the canvas.

And then have the audacity

to sign their names...

Czanne, Signac, Pissarro,

Gauguin, Renoir, Monet.

You know these men.

You handled some of them.

Why didn't you tell me about it?

I wrote you in Antwerp.

Don't you read my letters?

But seeing them, the colors,

and what they've done with light.

- Is that painting?

- The critics and the public don't think so...

nor do my employers at Goupil's.

I can't believe it.

Now, if they're right,

then everything I've done is wrong.

Do they really know what they're doing?

You've got to meet and talk to them,

see what they think.

That's why I wanted you in Paris.

Where can I meet them?

I got so many questions.

- At 2:
00 in the morning?

- Why not?

Listen, take that thing off and settle down.

You live here, you know.

We've got to make a Parisian out of you.

You'll have lots of time

to get your answers.

Tomorrow, we'll start with Pissarro.

It's the problem of translating light

into the language of paint.

Those leaves there,

if they were the only thing in sight...

they'd have one color, their own.

But the shade and reflection

of everything around...

the sky, the earth, the water,

give them more than their own color.

That's why, when you paint from nature,

don't fix your eye on any one spot.

Take in everything at once.

And above all, don't be timid.

Trust your first impression.

Everything you've been doing,

what we've all been doing. ; obsolete...

the whole lot of us

guessing with every brush stroke...

pouring rivers of paint

into haphazard combinations...

when actually, everything we're after

can be achieved mathematically.

What are you talking about? Seurat again?

Do you really think

a painting can be done by formula?

Can be? Is being done, right here in Paris...

through precise, scientific methods.

I don't mix my colors on canvas.

I mix them in the eye of the spectator.

Once you accept the phenomenon of

the duration of light in the human retina...

Excuse me. But this is a sunlit exterior.

Now, why do you paint it indoors

by gaslight?

- I mean, how can you judge your colors?

- Why not?

Come on, Seurat,

put him out of his misery.

- I've tried, but he's still in darkness.

- All right, Bernard. Come here.

Everything I do is worked out in advance...

with mathematical accuracy,

through precise scientific methods.

I know exactly

what colors I'm going to use...

before I pick up my brushes.

And my palette is methodically prepared

in the order of the spectrum.

As you see, blue, blue-violet,

violet, violet-red...

red, red-orange, orange-yellow...

Theo.

- Can't it wait till morning?

- No, please, I need your help.

Here.

- What is it this time?

- Look at this.

Yes, it's coming along.

It's got a very good sense of light.

- What's the matter? You look terrible.

- Will you be able to sell it?

I'll try.

It's hard to sell any of the new painters,

even the ones with some sort of name.

You know how Goupil's begrudges me...

the little space I can get for them

in the back room.

Then why don't you leave Goupil's?

Set up for yourself.

- Why waste time with idiots like that?

- Vincent, don't tell me how to run my life!

It's taken me a long time

to get where I am.

It may not be ideal, but, to me,

what I'm doing seems worthwhile.

And you don't make it any easier.

I haven't had any sleep for six months.

When people come to the house,

you insult them.

Don't I have a right to express my opinion?

This is my home.

You have no right to insult my guests!

Maybe I shouldn't have come to Paris

in the first place.

Vincent, all we've got

is what we can give each other.

You know how much joy it would give me

to sell your paintings.

I show them whenever I get a chance.

But perhaps you should take some

to some other dealer.

The more your work's seen, the better.

Go to Pre Tanguy.

I'll talk to him about you.

- Why should...

- See what he can do for you.

And show him some of your old work,

not just the new stuff.

Is that your way of saying

the new work's no good?

Vincent, I'm not going to argue with you

when you're in this mood.

- What mood? All I'm trying...

- Good night.

- Theo!

- Good night!

Vincent, it's all good, all of it.

The important thing is

that one day it could be sublime.

Between then and now,

there's one thing you could do for me.

A little thing, that's all I ask.

Let me get a night's sleep.

It's still the same. Nothing's changed

since I left here a year ago.

That's right.

You owed us 112 francs then

and you still do!

- Tanguy, remove your wife.

- Get in the back.

This man is absolutely correct, Tanguy.

You cannot handle painters

and woodpeckers, too.

The fact is, my dear friends,

that you are not painters.

You are tattoo artists.

You are chemists with little pots of paint.

You cover canvases with colored fleas.

You are so busy

imitating each other's tricks...

you've forgotten what painting is about.

You all make me sick.

What doesn't make you sick, Paul,

besides your own work?

Would you really like to know? That.

Look at that. The clarity, the calm.

The Japanese paint

as simply as we breathe.

- Maybe they pay for their paints.

- Who is he?

Paul Gauguin.

You have to go halfway around the world

to find something you like?

I don't have to leave this shop.

Look at that. And that.

- And that, and that.

- Czanne.

- Yes. Czanne.

- Yes. Czanne.

King of the unsaleables.

I suppose you call this painting...

Give me that painting!

Yes. It's direct, it's vigorous.

- What's your name?

- Vincent van Gogh.

He has a statement to make

and he makes it. Theo's brother?

Glad to know you. It's honest.

It owes nothing to anybody. Nothing.

Because it has nothing.

No tone, no values...

- No color relations.

- Sense of space.

The little men are at it again.

My friend, will you join me in a drink?

- What about the 112 francs?

- Lady, go back to your kitchen.

Get back.

You see, down there the sun invades you,

gets into your blood.

Not that Martinique was a paradise.

Between hunger and fever,

I was lucky to get out alive.

But if I could, I'd go back there tomorrow.

- How long you been in Paris?

- Over a year.

How can you stand it?

I can't work here. It strangles me.

- Where would you go?

- Brittany.

There's a place up there I can stay.

It's just a hole, but it's all I can afford.

Wouldn't you miss your friends in Paris?

Friends? A woman or two, maybe.

When you start as late as I did,

you find yourself measuring...

who and what you give your time to.

Friends, comforts, family.

If they interfere with your peace to work,

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