[Essay Today] Gogh's Pistol

"A passionate summer with a rapidly fading life has begun. The long days were scorching but blazed up quickly like a burning flag, and after short, hot summer nights came short, hot, rainy nights. Like a dream, swiftly filled with all kinds of shapes, it flared up like a fever and then faded away." (Hermann Hesse)

The delicate and sensitive painter Klingsoer feels the shadow of death visiting him one summer. He gathers all his remaining life to complete his final work. Hermann Hesse’s 1920 novella, Last Summer of Klingsoer, written in just one summer month, overlays the faces of the anguished intellectual Hesse and the painter Vincent van Gogh. Perhaps that is why the most widely read Minumsa edition features van Gogh’s self-portrait wearing a straw hat on its cover.

"Van Gogh was a burning question writhing inside his (Hesse’s) heart. The fleeting glimpses of van Gogh’s face in Klingsoer’s face, and the occasional flashes of Gauguin’s face in the face of Klingsoer’s friend Louis, are because of this. Van Gogh’s rage, lost between madness and artistic spirit while painting his self-portrait with a cut ear, resembles the pain Klingsoer feels while painting his self-portrait." (Jung Yeoul)

We have heard or read how van Gogh’s summer ended. On July 27, 1890, van Gogh shot himself in the chest in a wheat field near Auvers-sur-Oise, France. He did not die instantly but returned bleeding to his lodging, suffering until he passed away two days later. The painting Wheatfield, created the year van Gogh died, is not his last work but is intense enough to evoke the artist’s final moments. The crows in the painting seem startled by the gunshot and take flight all at once.

In 1965, a farmer found a pistol in the fields of Auvers-sur-Oise. It was a 7mm pocket revolver. A revolver is a repeating pistol that uses the rotation of a cylinder. The representative model is the Colt Patterson revolver, introduced in 1836 by American arms manufacturer Samuel Colt, who died on this day in 1862. The revolver found by the farmer was made by the French company Lefaucheux. The pistol passed to the owner of the 'L’Auberge Ravoux' inn where van Gogh stayed and was inherited by descendants, along with the label that it caused van Gogh’s death.

Van Gogh’s death has long been controversial. Some argue it was not suicide. Vincent Di Maio, an American clinical pathologist and gunshot expert, presented various forensic evidence in his 2016 book Reading the Truth, suggesting the possibility of homicide. There is also a claim that children playing in the fields accidentally shot van Gogh. Since it is unclear whether it was suicide or homicide, proving that the pistol found in the fields actually caused van Gogh’s death is even more difficult.

On June 20 last year, "the most famous pistol in art history" was auctioned by the Paris auction house Oxyon Art-Remy Le Fur. When the news broke, criticism flooded in accusing the commercial exploitation of the tragic life of a great painter. Regardless of the controversy, the auction was successful. The Auvers-sur-Oise pistol sold for 162,500 euros (about 214 million won), three times its estimated value. The buyer is known only as an art collector. Perhaps the lonely painter van Gogh’s spirit, through the collector’s hand, has gathered the pistol and all the controversies together.

Heo Jin-seok, poet and professor at Korea National Sport University