The Surf Guru by Doug Dorst

Author:Doug Dorst
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2010-06-24T04:00:00+00:00

11. Dr. Gachet, with the heartbroken expression of our time [#2] (September 1890)

Instead of a mirror, he uses the first portrait to guide him. It is a rare gift, he thinks, to be able to paint oneself as one has been seen most truthfully—distilled, by a great artist, down to one’s very essence. With a strong and sure slap of blue, he begins his work—another Gachet in Tasso’s pose, at once homage, memoir, collaboration. His mind whirls and he paints, artist and subject in the purest senses.

Changes: softer sky, a less-jagged blue rain. Remove the Goncourt brothers’ books—those cadmium yellow blocks—a distraction, a xanthopsic redundancy—for is not the essence of brotherliness already concentrated in this very act of creation, this self-portrait of portrait? The foxglove must remain, though—yes, those sprigs of Digitalis purpurea, those twinned stems of indigo teardrops—it remains—remains—as does all the world’s melancholy, always bearing down—

Outside the sun sinks, and the shadows in the room deepen. At one point, his brush hand shakes and tingles so badly that he has to pause to fetch a fresh bottle of Elixir. It is night when he finds himself watching himself from above, watching in the guttering lamplight as his hand, firm and steady, signs the canvas Vincent, watching as his body collapses into a chair, watching as this one iteration of him falls into a long, deep, holy sleep.

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