Who Really Cut Off Kaiji’s Ear?

November 3, 2009 in Funny, Kaiji
Tags: Kaiji, Van Gogh, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Post-Impressionism, Hans Kaufmann, Rita Wildegans, Controversy

Van Gogh Ear Controversy

Vincent van Gogh’s fame may owe as much to a legendary act of self-harm, as it does to his self-portraits. But, 119 years after his death, the tortured post-Impressionist’s bloody ear is at the centre of a new controversy, after two historians suggested that the painter did not hack off his own lobe but was attacked by his friend, the French artist Paul Gauguin.

In Van Gogh’s Ear: Paul Gauguin and the Pact of Silence, published in Germany, Hamburg-based academics Hans Kaufmann and Rita Wildegans argue that the official version of events, based largely on Gauguin’s accounts, contain inconsistencies and that both artists hinted that the truth was more complex.

Art historians claim Van Gogh’s ear ‘cut off by Gauguin’, The Guardian, 4 May 2009