The central relationship in Gauguin's life is Vincent van Gogh. Gauguin seems to have treated that Dutchman rather badly.

Yeah.

Can you say anything good about their relationship?

Well, I think they both got something out of it. Certainly Gauguin got the relationship with Theo [van Gogh], the brother [an art dealer]. That was great for Gauguin. That really, really made a huge difference in his career. And I think he certainly learned from Vincent, whose painting style was tremendously creative and rich. Vincent too learned from Gauguin. But Vincent wanted it so badly.

Their relationship wasn't sexual?

Not as far as we know.

But what do you think?

I think not because Gauguin preferred younger, more attractive men. I think he had flirted with both Vincent and Theo, like he did with everybody. Gauguin was wonderfully seductive. Both van Goghs liked him and were drawn to him for that reason -- I think Vincent more sexually, more romantically. [Pause.] Vincent had expectations that Gauguin was not interested in fulfilling. Gauguin made it clear to van Gogh that it was not going to happen. He was not interested. I think that was terrible for Vincent.

Yeah. The guy cut his own ear off.

The ear, you know, too -- an orifice. It seemed symbolic to me.

We can't prove why van Gogh did it, but what do you think?

I think that van Gogh was pretty heartbroken and angry. You get these passages in Gauguin's story about what happened, Gauguin would wake up and Vincent would be standing over his bed looking down at him. I think Vincent pressed it and somehow got Gauguin to lash out at him. I would not be surprised if Gauguin didn't physically strike van Gogh during this time in that sort of abusive way that he had when he got pissed off. Van Gogh was a bit of a masochist. And Gauguin was a bit of a ... whatever.

Sadist?

Yeah. [Sadly] And so I think there was some kind of violence. And Gauguin lashed out at van Gogh and van Gogh was devastated and cut off his ear in some bizarre reaction to all that.

And then left it at Gauguin's hotel ...

I think he took it to the brothel that Gauguin used to inhabit. Maybe he was thinking that Gauguin was there. I don't know. I'm too much of a just-the-facts-ma'am to speculate. I think even though van Gogh was furious about Gauguin leaving him and treating him so badly, he was like an abused wife. He would have taken Gauguin back at any moment. I like the way that van Gogh revisited their time together by copying works that Gauguin had done when they were together.

Was van Gogh copying a Gauguin painting before he blew his brains out?

I don't mean hours before. On July 23, he wrote to his brother talking about a Gauguin landscape that he had seen and he loved. And then on July 27 he shot himself. So it's not like the reason he did it, but that summer he'd been in Paris and it brought back a lot of his feelings and agitation about Gauguin, and the desire to see him again. It is a very tragic story, the relationship between them.

Paris was modern for the time, wasn't it? Was there an open gay culture?

Yeah. I would say it was an open gay culture. And there were some people who wrote about it and their relationships. Although it's hard to reconstruct all of that, there was one. I feel that Gauguin was appealing to that group in writing so openly himself about his attraction to men in the "Noa Noa" stories.

What I'm wondering is, if you're a man who loves other men but have no examples to follow, then you'd have to make it all up yourself as you went along. If van Gogh had had more access to a gay culture, maybe he wouldn't have flipped out so much.

Gosh. I think van Gogh did have access to gay culture. I like to think that that's reflected in the fact that once he moves to Paris, he calls himself impotent. He is no longer interested in women. Of course he doesn't go on to say, "Now that I have discovered gay culture ..." But I think that now that he is in Paris, he has other friends and other ways of looking at things. Would that have helped him if he had been able to say, "Yes. This is what I'd rely like to be able to do. I want to be just in a male society"? Would that have been able to make him deal with the Gauguin situation better? I don't know. I don't know. Now we're really speculating. I do know from his paintings and letters there were several men that van Gogh expressed love for. Whether that means that he had romantic relationships with men, I don't know.

How long did you work on this book?

About 10 years.

You hear about biographers that hate the subjects of their books by the time they finished ...

Oh, do you? [Laughs] I have to say for those 10 years that I was working on him, I felt like it was a black cloud over my head. He was such a worm. Such a weasel. Such a nonhonorable man. It was very difficult to work on someone like that, yet it didn't make me hate his art. I still loved his art. I like it even more because it's incredibly interesting and daring and rich.

Did your disillusionment about the man happen gradually or was there a single moment.

I would pinpoint a moment when I was reading through a letter to his wife and I started reading them in the Paris airport with piles of his letters on my lap and my French dictionary so I could make sure I understood what he was really saying in these letters, and it occurred to me these letters were horrible. This man was the worst bully. The most ungrateful husband. It was the unrelenting criticism of his wife that began to turn my stomach. This is a man you never want to be involved with. He could really do some damage to you.

I see this "Twilight Zone" episode where Gauguin appears in your bedroom and starts hounding you, "Your book is no good. How could you write that about me?"

[Laughs] He's the sort of person who would do that. He would start putting snakes in my mailbox!

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