22.10.2025

11 am – 11:10 am

INTRODUCTION
Adriano Pedrosa, Artistic Director, MASP
 

11:10 am – 1 pm

Round table

LAURA PRINS

The Risks of Being an Artist: Vincent van Gogh and the Idea of the Mad Genius in the Nineteenth Century
After the shocking ear-incident, Van Gogh believed he had probably “a simple artist’s bout of craziness” – it was just part of the job. In the nineteenth century, it was commonplace to believe that genius and madness were related. But exactly what that relationship meant varied. Medical doctors (the psychiatrists avant la lettre) have wanted to research the nature of genius and sought to determine whether genius could be associated with mental illness, what role the imagination has, and if there is even a direct cause-and-effect relationship between creative brilliance and mental health. Artists, on the other hand, who were striving to become geniuses, wondered how much they should suffer for their art and how they could deal with the pressures of their work. This lecture will explore how Van Gogh himself perceived his struggles between work and wellbeing and coped with them, compared to the existing ideas in his time about the assumed relationship between genius and madness.

ALLISON PERELMAN

The Mind’s Eye: Van Gogh’s Reminiscence of Brabant Series
In March–April 1890, Vincent van Gogh painted three canvases that he called Reminiscence of Brabant (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam; Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia; private collection). Composed from his imagination and youthful memories, this series marked the culmination of a years-long debate between the artist and his peers on the issue of painting “de tête” (from the mind) as opposed to direct observation. Having passionately argued both sides and experimented with both techniques, with these works, Van Gogh finally achieved a personally satisfying interpretation of this avant-garde concern by evoking a locale he associated with comfort and stability. Remarkably, this accomplishment immediately followed his longest-lasting mental health episode—as he claimed “while my illness was at its worst”—and the series attests to his renewed confidence and persistent creative experimentation. Reminiscence of Brabant demonstrates Van Gogh’s efforts to self-fashion in terms of his artistic identity, national identity, and social identity as a capable, healthy individual.
 

SIMON KELLY

Van Gogh’s Last Doctor
This talk looks at the relationship between Vincent van Gogh and his last doctor, Paul Gachet, who treated him in the final two months of his life at Auvers. It explores the doctor’s history of treating mental illness and publishing on melancholy and places his approach to treatment within the context of wider attitudes to mental illness in the late nineteenth century. How did Gachet’s background inform his treatment of Van Gogh, and what do we know of his diagnoses of and prescriptions for Van Gogh? Can Gachet be considered responsible in any way for Van Gogh’s suicide? The paper examines the repeated meetings or sessions between the two men and reflects on Van Gogh’s images of Dr. Gachet, as well as Gachet’s daughter, Marguerite, and the doctor’s house and garden. The talk draws on research into the Gachet papers, housed in the Wildenstein Plattner Institute.

Mediated by: Fernando Oliva

1 pm – 2:30 pm

Break
 

2:30 pm – 4 pm

Round table

RENSKE COHEN TERVAERT AND BENNO TEMPEL

Van Gogh: Invisible Forces Visualized
The reflections presented in this paper will focus on Vincent van Gogh’s painting technique in relation to the climate and weather typical of Provence. Weather conditions like the intense summer heat and the mistral (a cold, dry katabatic wind from the north/north-west, which blows in the Rhône valley and the coastal regions of south-east France) have profound effects on the well-being of the people living in this region. In his letters, Van Gogh mentions the effect these conditions have on his mood and how they are challenging him as an outdoor painter. Nevertheless, from his work it is evident that he uses natural forces artistically to his advantage. The delirious lines and colors that have been connected to his madness can be interpreted as visualizing these invisible forces, like vibrations in the air, turbulence, etc.
 

MARTIN BAILEY

Van Gogh at the Asylum

What was life like for Van Gogh at the asylum of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole – and how did it impact his art? A little-studied 19th-century register of inmates gives a unique insight into his fellow “companions in misfortune,” as he put it. And what effect did his environment and his mental state have on his art? For roughly a third of his time, he was recovering from severe mental crises. For another third, he made painted versions of prints by other artists and then his “memories of the North.” But for the remaining period, he completed some of his finest landscapes, along with still lifes and portraits. How does his art during that year compare with what came before and after?

Mediated by: Laura Cosendey
 

4 pm – 5:30 pm

Round table

FELIPE MARTINEZ

Portraits as Apparitions: Crisis and Lucidity in Arles and Saint-Rémy

Based on excerpts from Van Gogh’s letters and two of his paintings belonging to the MASP collection, The Schoolboy and L’Arlésienne, the lecture will address the portraits the painter produced during the years he lived in Arles and Saint-Rémy. Throughout this period, the artist faced personal struggles and mental health issues. However, this did not stop him from painting portraits that, as he wrote in a letter to his sister, “a century later showed up to the people of the time like apparitions.” The presentation will show how these works combine intensity and structure to understand Van Gogh’s portraiture as evidence that, even in moments of acute crisis, the artist followed a lucid program of constructing an essentially modern painting.

Mediated by: Isabela Ferreira Loures

ALLISON PERELMAN

Allison Perelman completed her dissertation, “Private Space, Public Self: Studios of the Avant-Garde in Fin-de-Siècle France,” and earned her Ph.D. from Washington University in St. Louis in May 2025. Prior to her graduate studies, Dr. Perelman served as the dedicated research associate for nineteenth-century exhibitions in the Department of Painting and Sculpture of Europe at the Art Institute of Chicago, including Van Gogh’s Bedrooms (2016) and Gauguin: Artist as Alchemist (2017). Her writing has been published by the Art Institute of Chicago, the Musée d’Orsay, the Nelson-Atkins Museum, Oxford University Press, and Thames & Hudson.

BENNO TEMPEL

Benno Tempel is director of the Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, in the Netherlands. Between 2009 and 2023, he was director of the Kunstmuseum Den Haag, which includes The Hague Museum of Photography and KM21, a museum for contemporary art. In 2019, he curated the Dutch Pavilion of the Venice Biennale. Tempel started his career as an assistant curator (1997-2000) at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and returned in 2006-2008 as curator of exhibitions.

FELIPE MARTINEZ

Felipe Martinez holds a Ph.D. in Art History from UNICAMP, with postdoctoral studies at MAC USP and the University of Amsterdam. He is a professor at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, at the postgraduate course at PUC-SP, and at MASP, where he has taught regular courses for over a decade. He is the author ofthe book O Escolar, de Vincent van Gogh, published by EDUSP, and he translated to portugese Cartas a Theo, comprised of Van Gogh’s lettepublished by Editora 34.

LAURA PRINS

Laura Prins, is a lecturer in Art History at Utrecht University and obtained her Ph.D. with a dissertation on the history of the relationship between creativity and mental illness (Amsterdam UMC). Previously, she worked as a curator and researcher in several museums. In 2015-2016, for instance, she was a researcher on the project On the Verge of Insanity: Van Gogh and His Illness at the Van Gogh Museum. Prins publishes regularly about Van Gogh, nineteenth-century art, and crossovers between art and medicine.

MARTIN BAILEY

Martin Bailey is the London-based author of Starry Night: Van Gogh at the Asylum (2018). He has also written separate books on the artist’s period in Arles and Auvers-sur-Oise, along with a book on the Sunflowers and other publications. Bailey writes a weekly blog on Van Gogh for The Art Newspaper, based on fresh research. He has curated exhibitions at London’s Barbican Art Gallery (1992), Compton Verney/National Gallery of Scotland (2006), and Tate Britain (2019).

RENSKE COHEN TERVAERT 

Renske Cohen Tervaert is curator of the Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, in the Netherlands. She holds an M.A. in art history from the University of Amsterdam. She specializes in the visual arts at the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with a specific interest in Vincent van Gogh, the history of collecting, and the international art market. 

SIMON KELLY

Simon Kelly is Curator and Head of Department of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Saint Louis Art Museum. He has written extensively on 19th and early 20th-century French art, particularly Impressionist and Barbizon painting. Kelly is the author or co-author of several exhibition catalogues, including Millet and Modern Art: From Van Gogh to Dalí; Degas, Impressionism and the Paris Millinery Trade; and Impressionist France: Visions of Nation from Le Gray to Monet. Other writings include Théodore Rousseau and the Rise of the Modern Art Market (Bloomsbury Academic) and many scholarly articles, often with a focus on landscape painting and cultural markets.