Impressionism and Post-Impressionism

Van Gogh and Gauguin became stereotypes of what a Great Modern Artist needed to be willing to sacrifice in order to realize their genius — Van Gogh with his poverty, madness and apparent suicide; Gauguin with his abandonment of the comforts and traditions of Western Civilization for the “primitive” environment of Tahiti. While generations of artists emulated their examples, many recent commentators have accused them and their followers of romanticizing mental illness and colonialist exploitation respectively, and claim that their melodramatic lives had nothing to do with the power of their art. In a brief post, make an argument for one side or the other.

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