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If you've looked at my sig and my profile lately, you've probably noticed I've become obsessed with the paintings of Vincent van Gogh. This is mostly because of a new book by Martin Gayford titled The Yellow House: van Gogh, Gaugin, and Nine Turbulent Weeks in Arles. It's unfortunate that the book only contains black-and-white reproductions of the works the two artists painted during the period when they were living and working together in that small studio in the south of France; but the account of the deteriorating relationship between them, and of van Gogh's descent into madness, is fascinating.

I find myself identifying strongly with van Gogh, even though the circumstances of my life are entirely different. Perhaps it's the poetic impulse in his desire to use certain combinations of colors to capture emotional states in his canvases; or it may be that I find the details of his episodes of irrational and strange behavior somehow familiar, not in their specifics (I've certainly never been driven to cut off my own ear) but in that sense of not being oneself, of being driven by stresses and circumstances both internal and external to behave in ways that are not true to one's own nature. I've felt that way many times in my life, to a lesser degree than van Gogh to be sure, but enough to make me question my own sense and my own judgment.

But ultimately, those considerations are less important than the beauty of the paintings van Gogh produced; their intense vitality, the sense of passionate, vibrant life in even the most seemingly placid of landscapes and portraits, is overwhelming. And while the reproductions in Gayford's book don't come close to doing van Gogh's work justice, because of the lack of color, I was fortunate enough to find a collection of all of van Gogh's known paintings, with the vast majority reproduced in full color, at Barnes & Noble today for a surprisingly low price. The book also contains an extensive text that serves as both a biography of the artist and an analysis of his art; I expect it will occupy me for a long time.