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Article: Van Gogh.
- Article from:
- Commonweal
- Article date:
- November 6, 1992
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1992 Commonweal Foundation. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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The late Marvin Mudrick once wrote that "for the mass media...Poe, Van Gogh, and Toulouse-Lautrec are spectacularly visible, they are public images congenial to a visual medium .... Poe's dank tarns and ghoul-haunted baggy eyes, Toulouse-Lautrec's half-sized legs, the piece of Van Gogh's ear that he sliced off and carried as a gift to one of the girls at the brothel .... TV and the movies don't make their choices without a reason."
I wish Mudrick had lived long enough to see Maurice Pialet's Van Gogh. If he had, he might have shaken his head and growled. "Never trust a French director with a public image."
Those public images may be bequests to the ...