Gendering in Vincent Van Gogh’s Portraiture
York University art history professor Carol Zemel’s overall project with respect to Vincent Van Gogh is an ambitious one, as she suggests that (among other sub-theses) Van Gogh was a somewhat pragmatic, business-oriented artist in complete, even distancing, control of his artistic product until the final few months of his life, a view that usurps his mythology. In the chapter of her 1997 book, Van Gogh’s Progress: Utopia and Modernity in Late-Nineteenth-Century Art titled “Modern Citizens: Configurations of Gender in Van Gogh’s Portraiture,” Zemel further identifies Van Gogh’s strategies and seems to suggest that external factors – the changing role of women in society, the conflict between burgeoning modern life and Van Gogh’s concept of agrarian utopia, and the shift of identifiable classed and gendered roles in general – contributed more greatly to Van Gogh’s ultimate breakdown than underlying biological mental illness.
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