Who cut off Van Gogh's ear?

By GILBERT WONG

Whodunnit? Sliced off Vincent Van Gogh's ear, that is, in perhaps the most famous act of mutilation committed upon an artist. The story goes that Vincent did it himself, courtesy of his cut-throat razor, in a bout of insanity.

The act and the madness that supposedly prompted it are behind the popular prejudice that artists and madness are on more than talking terms.

An author, Rita Wildegans, quoted on the website Arts and Letters Daily, says forget that. She says his fellow painter Paul Gauguin was the culprit. And the weapon was no razor, but Gauguin's foil. As well as a liking for dusky maidens, Gauguin was a keen swordsman.

In the spring of 1888, Van Gogh moved to Arles, in the South of France. He wanted to set up an artists' colony, however Gauguin was the only other member at the time.

They had a drunken quarrel "fuelled by absinthe" and on the morning of Christmas Eve police were called after Van Gogh woke up without his ear or any memory of how he had lost it.

The police relied on Gauguin's account to explain what had happened and that's how Van Gogh's ear entered art history.

Soon after, says Wildegans, Gauguin fled Arles, leaving the flat for a hotel and then moving to Paris. From Paris he wrote asking to have his possessions sent on, including a fencing mask and gloves but no foil.

The theory, though plausible, lacks evidence. On reflection, it does not matter whether Van Gogh mutilated himself or Gauguin mutilated him.

It still does not do much to shore up the idea that artists are as balanced as the rest of us.