Van Gogh and vertigo

I’ve been thinking about Vincent van Gogh lately. Mostly, while relegated to the couch waiting for another attack of vertigo to pass. When the world is spinning, there’s not much one can do. Thinking is about as good as it gets.

But why van Gogh? I’d read recently that researchers studying his life now believed he suffered, not from epilepsy as was widely thought, but Ménière’s disease. Ménière’s! As an artist, van Gogh has always held a special place in my heart. Discovering that he too experienced this strange condition—my condition—while also creating brilliant art, was particularly inspiring to me. Until lately, I knew little about van Gogh’s life beyond his paintings, only extraneous bits of trivia I’d picked up over the years—he was tormented by madness to the point he cut off his own ear; his passions ranged from simple pleasures to frantic self-indulgence. Now, I learned, that some of the most revealing knowledge we have of van Gogh’s life actually came from his own writings.

In the six years prior to his death, van Gogh wrote nearly 800 letters to family and friends. Within that vast body of correspondence, which comprise not only his passionate words, but a treasure trove of informal drawings and sketches, he recounted repeated attacks of disabling vertigo that lasted for days. Ironically, he also claimed he could go several months at a time with no symptoms at all.

For anyone living with Ménière’s, this sounds all too familiar.

Van Gogh himself believed he suffered from epilepsy, a seizure disorder. So troubled he was by his condition, in 1889, he voluntarily committed himself to Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum in St. Remy, France. There, van Gogh was allowed to paint, which he did prodigiously. Trees in the asylum garden, Garden of Saint-Paul Hospital, Irises, Cypresses, and The Starry Night, among others, were all painted that same year, wherein his use of vibrant colors comes to the fore. Van Gogh took maximum advantage of his lucid periods, though it seemed that his illness was never far from his thoughts. “I put my heart and soul into my work, and have lost my mind in the process,” he said of himself. Inevitably, his illness would return and he would again be plagued by vertigo, along with nightmares and hallucinations, followed by periods of complete prostration and depression.

Throughout his life, van Gogh enjoyed being close to nature. He chose to live in the country because it spoke to his heart and, possibly, to get away from the distractions, sounds, and other stimuli that aggravated his condition. Like many Impressionists of his time, van Gogh’s works emphasized natural light. He developed a habit of painting in the outdoors. “I experience a period of frightening clarity in those moments when nature is so beautiful,” he said of these experiences. “I am no longer sure of myself, and the paintings appear as in a dream.”

Whether van Gogh’s illness influenced his style of painting, we’ll never know. When I look at The Starry Night, with its vibrant swirls and heavy brushwork—the juxtaposition of blue and yellow—I get a sense that it must have played a part. The swirls in particular, what became prominent in that period of his life, produce in me sense of instability, that the sky is moving uncontrollably and my body along with it. Van Gogh’s creative expression could have been, to some extent, a reflection of his own distorted view of the world as experienced through bouts of vertigo, dizziness, and blurred vision.

During the last months of his life, van Gogh’s letters indicated a period of great despondency. When he died in July 1890, at the age of 37—the cause, an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to the stomach—the world would be left to speculate on his mysterious health ailments for decades to come. Questions remain to this day as to whether his death was actually by suicide or something more nefarious. Former surgeon and author, I. Kaufman Arenberg, MD, posits a provocative theory in a non-fiction murder mystery, Killing Vincent: The Man, The Myth, and The Murder (2018).

Van Gogh sold only one painting during his life, The Red Vineyards of Arles. It seems that profiting from his work mattered little to him compared with the need to express himself artistically, whenever he could. “I try more and more to be myself, caring relatively little whether people approve or disapprove,” he said in his later years. But up to the last, despite the setbacks, he maintained a fidelity to his greatest passion, believing he would overcome the demons that chased him and push forward to expand his craft.

“I am always doing what I cannot do yet, in order to learn how to do it.”

We can all learn from that.