The shrieks of mad women assault visitors entering the Musee d’Orsay’s new exhibit on Vincent Van Gogh, an arresting look at the painter’s work as seen through the eyes of the late avant-garde French theatre director and playwright Antonin Artaud.
“The Man Driven to Suicide by Society”, opening on Tuesday in Paris, is a fitting title for a display of 55 Van Gogh works using Artaud’s own commentary to see them in a new light.
Artaud — one of the great theorizers about the stage, renowned for his short but seminal 1938 tract “The Theatre of Cruelty” — was, like Van Gogh, tormented throughout his life by hallucinations and hospitalized in psychiatric asylums.
In the exhibition space, a kaleidoscope of violent phrases culled from Artaud’s 1947 analysis of Van Gogh is projected on the floor — “anguish”, “delirium”, “bad blood”.
Recorded shrieks set the tone as four of Van Gogh’s self-portraits stare back at the viewer.
With thick brushstrokes of blue and green underlining the piercing blue eyes and a wary, proud expression, Van Gogh challenges us to say whether it is him, or society, that is mad, Reuters informs.
