Vincent van Gogh - De brieven: De volledige, geillustreerde en geannoteerde uitgave

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Vincent van Gogh gave the world not just an abundance of remarkable paintings and drawings but also the most intriguing and multifaceted correspondence of an artist ever known. The 902 letters, more than 800 of which are preserved in the Van Gogh Museum, tell the story of his eventful life in a direct, compelling style, detailing his close ties with his brother and confidant Theo, and the evolution of his work. For years now art historians, other interested parties and enthusiasts have been stressing the need for a text edition in which the letters are printed exactly as Van Gogh wrote them, without embellishment, modernisation, adaptation or omission. The Letters Project For the past 15 years the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and the Huygens Institute in The Hague have been working on a new scholarly text edition of this correspondence, an edition that meets the most demanding requirements of quality and scholarship. The result is a complete, modern edition of the correspondence for an international public which reflects the current state of knowledge and will be published both digitally and in book form. The Letters Project is the most ambitious undertaking ever launched by the Van Gogh Museum. It is unique in the breadth and depth of the research and the comprehensiveness with which the results are presented to the reader. The book and web editions will be vital sources for anyone wishing to learn more about Van Gogh. The innovations are as follows: - a new text as close to the original as possible - a full annotation of the letters - reproductions of all the works of art mentioned in the letters - new datings of the letters - a new English translation of the letters - a new French translation of the letters written in Dutch - a completely revised and edited Dutch translation of the letters written in French In the past few years the project has served as the basis for further research on Van Gogh's life and for other activities taking place in and outside the Van Gogh Museum, including several successful exhibitions. In 2007 the editors were responsible for the publication of the exhibition catalogue Vincent van Gogh: Painted with words. The letters to Emile Bernard . The distinguished American author John Updike published an enthusiastic review of this publication in the New York Review of Books, calling it a 'model volume of scholarship'. The book edition The value of the new book edition over and above earlier ones lies first and foremost in the underlying principle of the Letters Project, which is to present Van Gogh's correspondence to the public as faithfully as possible. The 6-volume edition contains all the known letters from and to Vincent van Gogh, and is based on a close reading of the manuscripts. The letters are accompanied by an introduction, an explanation of the topics discussed and new datings. Every single work of art mentioned by Van Gogh is now reproduced in its context for the first time: not only the paintings and drawings that Van Gogh was working on but also those by other artists that he mentions. The book edition makes the letters accessible not only to a specialist readership of art historians and literary scholars but also to admirers of Van Gogh. They are now given the opportunity to read the letters in the correct version and in the proper art-historical context. The web edition There will also be a web edition of the letters. This English-language academic website will comprise all the known letters to and from Van Gogh in the original version, including images of the authentic manuscripts. The web edition differs from the book edition in the greater amount of scholarly information that is made available. The letters The worldwide reputation of Van Gogh's correspondence rests on its great value as a document humain and on its wealth of biographical and art-historical information. The letters tell the story of his eventful life, detailing his close ties with his brother and confidant Theo, and the evolution of his artistic skills, all in a direct, compelling style. The reader is made the witness to his dreams and disappointments, passions and struggles, friendships and arguments, the battle with his illness, and the overriding desire to make art that would stand the test of time. The total correspondence consists of 819 letters written by Van Gogh and 83 addressed to him. By far the majority were written to his brother Theo, who provided financial and moral support throughout the ten years of his career as an artist. Van Gogh also corresponded with other members of his family and with artist friends. Those relationships were on another plane from that with his brother, and the letters are consequently different in tone, content and style. The letters are not only an invaluable source of biographical data and information on Van Gogh's ideas about art and the career of an artist. The many sketches of his own works that he made in the letters also create a special relationship between his art and his letters. Those sketches served no aesthetic function. They had but one object - to show Theo or other correspondents the appearance of paintings or drawings that he had completed or was working on. All of these 220 sketches are reproduced in full size in the print edition, and if need be can be viewed as enlargements in the web edition. The letters clearly reveal Van Gogh's sources of inspiration. He admired the most diverse artists, and wrote passionately about their work and ideas. His great role models were Rembrandt, Eugene Delacroix and Jean-Francois Millet, but artists from his immediate circle also provided him with inspiration at various stages in his development, such as Anton Mauve, Emile Bernard and Paul Gauguin. Literary sources of inspiration are also discussed. Van Gogh read a great deal, and reflected on what he had read. The letters contain an account of a fascinating voyage of discovery through literature, from the Bible to Emile Zola, who deeply influenced his views and his art. The fact that the letters make such enthralling reading is partly due to the way in which Van Gogh shaped the testimony of his quest for a goal, and to a multifaceted world of ideas. Without highly developed linguistic and writing abilities, the account of his many ups and downs would have amounted to no more than a litany of hope and struggle. He may have wrestled to master the arts of drawing and painting, but he was born with the gift of words. Much of what he says in his letters is about art, but he also explores metaphysical and ethical questions and ponders on human behaviour and social developments. His writing on these subjects is infectious, and he immediately draws the reader into his world of ideas and action. His language is imaginative and apt; a strong personality is speaking. Rightly or wrongly he often felt underrated or let down by those around him, feelings many a reader will recognise, along with recurring topics like shortage of money, loneliness and a need for love. It seems paradoxical, but Van Gogh's highly personal correspondence transcends the individual, giving it a universality that great literature has. The annotations The purpose of the annotations is to supplement the letters with all the information that present and future generations could need in order to understand what Van Gogh and his correspondents meant and what subjects they were referring to. For the most part this entails identifying individuals, works of art by Van Gogh and others, books and magazines. Wherever possible the source is given of allusions to or quotations from novels and poems, the Bible, publications of art criticism or art history, and of other reading matter, such as newspapers and magazines. There are also explanations of contemporary situations and events - biographical, cultural, art-historical, and so on - which were familiar or obvious to the correspondents but whose background would be obscure to third parties, let alone to readers of more than a century later. The illustrations For the first time, every single work of art referred to by Van Gogh is reproduced. They could be those that he was working on at the time, or others that he had seen, and thought and wrote about. In all, more than 2,000 works are illustrated, including more than 600 paintings and drawings by Van Gogh himself, and 1,400 by artists who inspired him, among them the seventeenth-century masters Rembrandt, Rubens and Frans Hals, and nineteenth-century predecessors and contemporaries like Millet, Daubigny, Corot, Gauguin, Signac and Pissarro. The works are illustrated not just when they are first mentioned. The reader will also find a smaller reproduction accompanying repeated references. More than 4,000 repeat illustrations will bring Van Gogh's visual world to life for the reader of the letters. All the letters containing sketches are reproduced full size, and can also be enlarged in the web edition. The English translation The first reason for this new translation of Van Gogh's correspondence is the new transcription, which has corrected many misreadings in the previous Dutch and French editions on which The complete letters of Vincent van Gogh of 1958 was based, and has restored numerous omissions. At the same time there was dissatisfaction with that English translation because it 'prettified' Van Gogh's words and did not accurately reflect what he actually wrote. It failed, in other words, to do justice to his idiosyncratic voice, which was a disservice to both him and the reader. Absolute fidelity to the original is the fundamental principle underlying this new translation. It reproduces Van Gogh's words as closely as possible, consistent with readability. That in itself was a considerable challenge, for as a translator of one section of the correspondence noted back in 1936, 'van Gogh's peculiar style...is all but untranslatable'. The translation was carried out by a select group of leading translators under the editorship of Michael Hoyle. Details * Contains the complete correspondence * 819 letters by Van Gogh * 83 letters written to Van Gogh by Paul Gauguin, Th...