#GuestPost Giuseppe Cafiero, author of “Vincent Van Gogh: The Ambiguity of Insanity”

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Five Things I’d Ask Vincent van Gogh if he Were Alive Today

By Giuseppe Cafiero

Vincent van Gogh died on 29 July 1890, but his enduring legacy will long continue. The historian, academic and acclaimed author Giuseppe Cafiero has studied the painter’s life and times for more than a decade. Here, Cafiero reveals the questions he’d ask van Gogh if he was around today.

In the Hollywood movie, Night at the Museum, the resident docent Rebecca Hutman (played by Carla Gugino) is writing a thesis about Lemhi Shoshone guide, Sacajawea. Hutman’s research is exhaustive but some questions will always remain unanswered unless she had the opportunity of questioning her heroine face-to-face.

In that movie, Hutman’s dream comes true when Sacajawea comes to life. Sadly for me, my own dream of meeting Vincent van Gogh will remain just that – a dream. But should the impossible happen and I had the opportunity of questioning my hero, here’s what I’d ask:

How did you value the light in your paintings and what does light mean to you, if anything?
How did you manage to create that wonderful yellow that appears in the Sunflowers series and in so many more of your paintings?
What emotions did you feel before commencing a new portrait?
How did you feel when you were in the sun of the Midi?
How did you play with the prospects?

And yes, before you ask, I’d also ask him about his ear.

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Title: Vincent Van Gogh: The Ambiguity of Insanity cover

Author: Giuseppe Cafiero

An abrasive itinerary of the presence of women, the landscape and obsession. Such are the internal paradigms that went through the compelling life of the Post-Impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh.

Not flesh and blood women, but the woman as a guide: Mrs. Jones, the woman as a mother; Kee Vos; Christine Hoornik of Siena; Margot Begemann. The Portrait-women such as Augustine Roulin and Madame Ginoux. And then the backgrounds, endless, unforgettable in this genius’s works: Isleworth, Amsterdam, le Borinage, Arles, St. Remy, Auvers-sur-Oise, where Vincent van Gogh spent his life trying to capture the colors, the atmosphere, the light.

The pain of finitude and his obsession with achieving redemption through art, with intimate and stormy religiosity, with brotherly love, with the French noon sun and, in short, with death. A hard-working and unwavering life where art interacted, in a painful gesture, with the iron will of a hand that never lost its way.

The life of a beloved and devoted man, silenced by the anguish and despair of creation, who could only find peacefulness when he found his own death.

Vincent Van Gogh: the Ambiguity of Insanity is a fictionalized biography and gripping novel of the life of the Nineteenth-Century Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh. The author, Giuseppe Cafiero, draws a psychological portrait of the Post-Impressionist painter through the women that marked his life and the cities in which he lived.

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About Giuseppe Cafiero

Giuseppe Cafiero lives in the Tuscan countryside, in Lucignano, in the province of Arezzo, Italy.

Born in Naples, he spent his childhood in several Italian cities. In Bologna he began to attend intellectual circles at Roberto Roversi ‘s renowned bookstore, “Palma Verde”. It was in one of the magazines published by this cultural center, that the first part of “James Joyce – Rome and other stories” was first published.

He later worked for various radio producers, especially Radio Capodistria and the Italian Swiss Radio so he moved to Tuscany. Finally he was able to devote himself to reading and to pursue his literary work.

His main literary influence is Calvin, author of extraordinary literary intellectual subtlety and intelligence. Giuseppe Cafiero continuously reads Borges, another great sublime, inimitable author who also worshiped Joyce.

Giuseppe Cafiero has written renditions, free adaptations, productions for radio and translations from French to Italian. The spectrum of names is extensive, from Shakespeare to O’Neill, from Raspe to Daudet, from Toller to Brecht. He has written for theatre and radio, collaborating also with the RAI, Radio Sveringes and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Cafiero favours the writing style “bio-fiction” and has completed three books in this literary style; James Joyce, Rome and other stories, Vincent van Gogh and The Unwary Shops on the Life and Work of Monsieur Gustave Flaubert, Writer.

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