In the attic of a small Café, Café de la Gare, in Arles France, a pair of Vincent Van Gogh’s pants were discovered. In the back pocket was a partially written letter to Theo that dates the pants at 1888.
Vincent’s chords are coffee with cream brown, wide chords with pleat, not hemmed. On the pants the following substances were identified:
urine
mud
a hair from Vincent’s head
paint
cocoa
something unidentifiable (substance unknown-food item)
turpentine
mayonnaise
ink
dirt
something unidentifiable (substance unknown-body fluid)
tobacco
body fluid-semin (DNA match with hair)
mustard
smeared goat cheese
ear wax
something unidentifiable (substance unknown)
espresso
The fabric on the bottom of both legs are worn out due to worn out boot heels.
Letter to be released at a later date.
Vincent Van Gogh’s Dining Receipt
A dining receipt of Vincent Van Gogh’s was discovered among a bundle of papers left in the wall of Moulin de la Galette in Northern Paris. Who the papers belonged to is unknown. All of the papers concern different people and are dated between May 1885 and June 1887. Among the papers were train tickets, rental agreements, doctor’s prescriptions, grocery receipts, a love letter and Vincent Van Gogh’s dining receipt. The receipt reads as follows:
Mai 23 1885
Monsieur Van Gogh 9pm
water
salad with tomato
boiled potatoes
steamed fish
8 ff
A letter to Theo corresponds with the night of the dining receipt:
Theo, last tonight I dined at Café Rue Moi. I had steamed fish as my dish and wish I had haddock or haring with bread instead. Then I was off to Les Femmes Cuisses where I had two shots of Whisky side by side. Then I slept with Celine. Theo, she said my beard was too rough. Upon returning home, I shaved my beard off and went to bed. When I awoke this morning, the beard had fully grown back. It seems as if a close shaven or beardless Vincent is not possible. Last week a little boy in the street called me “Beardy.”
Theo, how is your beard?
Today I went to buy new pants. Nothing fit. Either too long in the legs and just right in the waist or waist too small, legs just right. The gentleman helping me told me I was both "thick and thin.” He called me a “complicated stature.“ I ended up buying a stack of patches instead. Mariam will sew them on my pants where needed. One of the patches has a little Bee stitched into it. I’ve always wanted to paint a little bee.
Lederhosen 1883
Dear Theo, mother and father are worried about me. I can see it in their unpainted eyes. Momma looks sad and broken and father deeply troubled when I enter the room. Momma said I should clean myself up and father said I should stand up tall…or taller. Momma offered to buy me new clothes. I said OK because I knew it would make the clean Dutch linen in her head happy. When I awoke the next day, she had brightly painted, wood clogs, leather Lederhosen and a pressed Dutch cap laid out for me. Lederhosen! Theo, she is the one who is mad. Not me. I wore the Dutch cap for two days and then used it to wipe my mouth after eating pannokakens. I need a break in life and a break from life. Lederhosen!?!
Forever your loving brother
Vincent
PS. The Lederhosen were too small.
Gauguin's Tahitian Kid
Paul Gauguin had 7 lovely children. He abandoned them all…”sacrificed them for his painting.” He left his loving and loyal wife, Mette, for the wide open world of willing and available women, but mostly it was so that he could paint. He had countless, one night encounters with prostitutes and numerous affairs with young girls in Tahiti. Gauguin was a handsome, charming man with a huge sexual appetite. In the end, it was his sexual appetite that killed him: a high end version of syphilis brought him down.
Mette GuaguinBut throughout his life, he missed his children and loved his wife even though they were separated and later divorced. He wrote telling her how much he loved his children, and, as odd as it seems, loved her until the day he died. Not acceptable and commendable behavior by today's standards, but considering the time and context of then, maybe not so deplorable. Abandoning your children, cheating on your wife and sleeping with underaged Tahitian youth is not a big crowd pleaser by today's standards. Nobody wins Man of the Year for that today, but an 1880’s perspective sees the world differently.
Gauguin's last son was born in 1902 to one of the Tahitian models that used to "pose" for him. Needless to say, they were doing way more than posing and painting. Enter Emile Marae Tai Gauguin: Paul Gauguin's final son.
Emile was a jolly, rotund little boy who perfected the skill of sitting in a hammock for prolonged periods of time. Extended durations of inactivity in the hammock and huge quantities of empty caloric intake, our final Gauguin became wider than he was tall. At age 6 he weighed in at a plump and tumble 140 lbs. There were accounts of him eating coconuts whole on the beach. He would bite the coconut in half, guzzle the coconut water and then eat the shell and the meat all at once; loud crunching could be heard. His smile was broad and bright...his teeth speckled with coconut fragments.
A few years on Emile Gauguin grew into a hugely overweight teenager. By age 16, he had become massive...350 lbs. He would walk around the village in Hawaiian print shirts made from bed sheets, wore custom made, extra-wide flip-flops and a red, terry cloth headband. Now way too big to climb coconut trees, he would harness a rope around the top of the tree and powerfully pull the bending tree into arm's reach, so he could grab hold of the coconuts. On one occasion, the rope snapped and he accidentally catapulted a tree monkey 80 yards.
Eventually he became an enormous young man with a Sumo wrestler presence. He wore a custom made moomoo and walked around barefooted because his feet had become abnormally wide and too fat for footware. But he was still recognized and adored as being Paul Gauguin’s son. Up until his mid-fifties, he would pose with art-loving, Paul Gauguin admiring, tourists from around the world. When he was among tourists, his mantra was, "Yeah mon, Gauguin me dod."
And he looked exactly like Paul Gauguin but ten times bigger. He was huge.
He became a heavy drinker and a formidable bar brawler. He was a two fisted drinker (a beer in each hand), and once brawled with four men at once while continuing to drink his two beers. His big saying at the time was, "I tink we drink in good time. I tink we drink in bad time. And I tink we drink in between da good and da bad time, mon"
In 1932, a very drunk Emile Gauguin used his brute weight, massive mid-section and manly might to roll a tipped over school bus full of Tahitian children back onto its wheels. All the children cheered, "Go Gan! Go Gan! Go Gan!" Emile let out a loud roar and a powerful grunt and the bus was back on its wheels and ready to drive away.
A few years later he dragged a stranded, beached whale by the tail back into the ocean and set it free. All the onlookers chanted, "Go Gan! Go Gan! Go Gan!
In the 1960's, a French journalist, met Gauguin and became worried about his size and health. She convinced Emile Gauguin to move to New York where she would slim him down, get him off the bottle and introduce him to the paint brush. She took him on long walks through Central Park, fed him green salads and started having Emile paint daily. And paint he did. Two or three paintings a day is what he produced. And it was in his genes. He turned out to be an incredibly good artist. While showing his work at art galleries, he used to say, "I tink doddy be proud me, mon."
Emile Gauguin's work
Emile Gauguin died at age 71 while laying on the beach in Florida, surrounded by young, naked women. And, yes, his doddy be proud, mon.
In 1993, marlon brando told larry king on CNN that he owned almost all of Emile gauguin’s work and that sometimes, when he’s away from hollywood on his island, in a hammock with a half dozen native women, he is visited by the ghost of the great Paul Gauguin. Brando told of the time that he invited Emile Gauguin to his Island. Emile showed up 11 days late with 3 beautiful Polynesian woman at his side. Apparently, emile spent 11 enjoyable days on the wrong island. Go Gan! Go Gan! Go Gan!
Brando waiting for Gauguin
