Late Sunday evening December 23, 1888, Vincent Van Gogh, then 35 years old, cut off the lower half of his left ear and took it to a brothel, where he asked for a prostitute named Rachel and handed the ear to her, asking her to "keep this object carefully."
Ohhh! My favorite interpretations of this:
Van Gogh was influenced by bullfights he had seen in Aries. In such events the matador is given the ear of the bull as an award, displays his prize to the crowd, and then gives it to the lady of his choice. The proponent of this interpretation, J. Oliver (in Lubin, 1972) says: "I am absolutely convinced that Van Gogh was deeply impressed by this practice... Van Gogh cut off his ear, his own ear, as if he were at the same time the vanquished bull and the victorious matador. A confusion in the mind of one person between the vanquished and the vanquisher" (p. 158). Then, like the matador, Van Gogh presented the ear to a lady of his choice.
Van Gogh had a great sympathy for prostitutes and identified with their status as social outcasts. One suggestion is that this self mutilation was a reflection of this identification. "In June, just a few months before butchering his ear, he had written that 'the whore is like meat in a butcher shop'" when he treated his own body as 'meat in a butcher's shop,' he reversed their roles, identified himself with the whore, and showed his sympathy for her." (Lubin, 1972, p. 169).
Why Did Van Gogh Cut Off His Ear?
The Problem of Alternative Explanations in Psychobiography
William McKinley Runyan
University of California, Berkeley
Living like a true artist... sickeningly beautiful.
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