Vincent Van Gogh

Vincent Van Gogh is one of the biggest pop culture artists known posthumously. From bookmarks to an episode of Doctor Who to shoes ,his work has dominated so much of the art scene post-1890, but much of his fame can be attributed to his family. His brother, Theo, held an exhibit in his honor a week after his death, which can be cited as the catalyst for his fame. Jo, Theo’s widow, took some lasting letters between the brothers and published them 24 years after their deaths, similar to what Jane Austen’s nephew did to her and her sister’s letters, but much of the problem is like a diary. Yes, we get to see into the artist’s mind but do we deserve it? Would we appreciate their art in life if they had lived longer? I believe they wouldn’t. It’s a cruel joke that death is the factor society deemed to make some people’s lives and works have worth.

Sheldon Pearce from the New Yorker uses a different example with the same effect: “The unfinished project has become a common issue in rap, a genre that is seeing many of its young and talented artists die, leaving caches of uncurated, crude, and deferred music in their wake. The process of producing these albums comes down to the decision-making—who gets to make those decisions and why? What is the aim? And is the record label or the producer in charge asking the most important question: Should this album even be released?” The goal of “putting art first” is often just spitting in the face of that artist as their work never reached their full potential in life. Putting their art first would be appreciating them in life, this is why these posthumous publications are so much worse when it’s family because they know intimately who they were, and if they didn’t then they didn’t fully recognize who they were.

We can also take into account taking advantage of the dead and the mentally ill. By publishing these letters and allowing so much personal information to be known about him we know every gory detail of his mental health struggle, such as Sylvia Plath’s. We do not deserve to know all of these things, death does not equate to an open door in someone’s life. A study on Springer Open found that “Several previously suggested diagnoses could be excluded as being highly unlikely, while other diagnoses could be classified as more or less likely.” What is the purpose of this? He is dead. Is this so that people can more easily relate to him? Is it to prove others wrong or right? The dead will never disappoint but they sure can become beaten to death over and over.