Who Killed Vincent van Gogh?

CBS sent notice last week that is would be airing a Vincent van Gogh story on 60 Minutes last night, so I tuned in out of curiosity. Essentially, the story involved not only Vincent, but the new 976-page biography Van Gogh by co-authors Steven Naifeh and Greg Smith, who won the Pulitzer Prize for their 1989 book Jackson Pollock: An American Saga. So before we go any further, please know that Naifeh and Smith already had serious research creds and spent 10 years doing the same for Van Gogh. All set? Great.

Well, the 60 Minutes piece concerned itself with a synopsis of Vincent's life, a confirmation of Dr. Felix Rey's diagnosis (temporal lobe epilepsy, which had only recently been identified in 1890), and then lingered long on his death -- by suicide, we have believed for over a century. Ah, but! Not so fast, say Naifeh and Smith. I don't want to give away too much (you really should view the videos for yourself), but the authors do not feel that Vincent took his own life. And I have to say, seeing the one mile trek from the wheat field outside of Auvers back to his rented room ... it is rather hard to imagine walking that far, over such bumpy terrain while losing blood after being gut-shot. If their theory holds true, it will come as something of a relief; it has always bothered me that poor Vincent, after a lifetime of batting 1.000 in the failure category, even managed to bungle his own suicide.

One last thought. Morley Safer intoned that this would "upend art history." I disagree. History is wondrously accommodating when it comes to new evidence.

View "The Life and Death of Vincent van Gogh"

• Part 1 (12:56)
• Part 2 (13:16)
• Transcript

Image Credit:

Vincent van Gogh (Dutch, 1853-1890)
Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear and Pipe, January, 1889
Oil on canvas
51 x 45 cm (20 x 17 11/16 in.)
Niarchos Collection, Athens, Greece