SupremePunk #058

Alone in this World
This Punk is inspired by CryptoPunk #385 and artworks of Matisse. This paper is about the place of artists among people and their place in society. The problem is that truly brilliant people do not find their place in society and feel lonely in this world. And even recognition and fame do not help to fill this gaping void in the soul. As a rule, people whose uniqueness and talent are recognized as genius or insanity find themselves in a situation where they have to make sacrifices in order to nurture the tree of their genius. They have to give up women (Gogol), friends (Van Gogh), their homeland (Tarkovsky), sanity (Goya, Van Gogh), wealth (Gauguin) and other pleasures of life. This renunciation is not always something official and formal, like a vow, it may be a way of life itself, qualities which they were not able to develop and suffered from it. Of course, genius does not follow from the rejection of society and vice versa, too. However, it is important to note the plight of a very large number of both socially accepted and rejected artists, inventors and scientists. This Punk took a piece of Van Gogh's soul, Gauguin's soul, their fates, and lived them through these tragic and difficult stories, and came out of them empty. But this emptiness contains such a power of emotion, a cry of the soul, a cry from loneliness, a cry that grows into a call for help, that it cannot be expressed in color or any form.

Pablo Picasso — Femme nue 1, 1902
The Punk itself is a symbol of loneliness and emptiness. It is done in only one color and with only one brush. This minimalism of tools and palette reinforces the effect that he is completely alone on the entire canvas. The background itself is also monochromatic. It turns out that, in a technical sense, the number one is associated with this Punk everywhere. The idea and content of Punk is filled with misunderstanding and rejection of the artists, which causes them to feel hopeless loneliness and emptiness in the soul.
Some similarities are present in the works of Pablo Picasso of the so-called "blue period" (1901 - 1904). During this period, he painted predominantly monochrome works, in cold, dark tones. The reason for these moods was the death of his closest friend, after which Picasso felt lonely and abandoned by the closest person, thinking about the place of man in life, its meaning. The work "Femme nue", 1902 is indicative. Here, too, a single shade was used and the woman herself is painted with only one dark outline. She is empty inside, because the color is the same as the background, just as the world was empty for Picasso.

Paul Gauguin — When Will You Marry?, 1892
One striking example of the rejection of available benefits is the fate of Paul Gauguin. Gauguin had every opportunity to succeed in the usual sense of the word. He got a job as an intermediary stockbroker and quickly achieved considerable success, he had a loving wife and children. But the vocation for painting made itself felt - he began to draw and gave his free time to art: he turned into a "sunday painter". Soon his hobby grew into a passion and a life's work, because of which Gauguin abandoned his lucrative job. For lack of money, his wife left him, taking the children. Because of his heavy character and impulsiveness he broke up and quarreled with almost all the people who supported him (his quarrel with Van Gogh, at whose house he lived and worked for some time, had a particularly heavy effect on him).

Reconstructed House of Joy
Disillusioned with civilization and society, Gauguin left everything he had and went to live in Tahiti. Here he had to stay forever because of his illness and complete lack of money. In addition, his relations with the Catholic clergy and the colonial authorities of the island deteriorated sharply. Gauguin made an unsuccessful suicide attempt. A few years later he decided to separate himself even more from people and moved to the island of Hiva Oa (Dominica) and settled in the remote village of Atuona. Gauguin's spirits were high here.

Vincent Van Gogh — The Potato Eaters, 1885
One of the most famous artists, Vincent van Gogh, had an equally tragic fate. Vincent was a very sensitive and reverent soul, which also explains his vulnerability and emotional behavior. Van Gogh was rejected by almost everyone - a lot of artists he respected didn't accept his style, exhibitions rejected him, collectors wouldn't buy his work, and people around him thought he was crazy. In the only place where he felt comfortable, the yellow house in Arles, people soon wrote a petition asking Van Gogh to be evicted from Arles. Over the course of his artistic career, he became close to several artists he considered friends, among them Paul Gauguin and Van Rappard. Both of these friendships ended badly enough for Vincent. He fell out with Rappard after Rappard criticized his painting The Potato Eaters. He wrote a letter to Rappard: "I'm even sorry to have lost you as a friend as you were in that exceptional period when I found you changed and improved. With Paul Gauguin, for whom he felt a special affection because he was one of the few who remained to work with him in the Yellow House, especially at a time when Van Gogh's health began to deteriorate and his need for someone close to him increased, his parting was even more tragic.

Vincent van Gogh — Vincent's House in Arles (The Yellow House), 1888
Unlike Van Gogh, who was drawn to Gauguin and desired mutual friendship with all his heart, Paul Gauguin was less attached to society and had already resigned himself to the fate of an outcast and lonely man. So he kept his distance from Van Gogh and often argued with him about art and criticized his paintings. After another of Gauguin's criticisms, there was a quarrel between them, as a result of which Gauguin left Van Gogh, while the latter, wishing to bring him back and show how dear he was to him, cut off his ear and tried to pass it on to him. This did not bring his friend back, but only convinced the people around him of Van Gogh's madness. Because of this incident, he was put in a psychiatric hospital, where his particularly disturbing works were painted. He ended up being left all but alone, the exception being his brother Theo.
But Theo had recently married, and in January 1890 he had a son. So Vincent worried that he might lose much of his brother's emotional and financial support because of his wife and infant. The family did cause him to become somewhat estranged from his brother, although he never stopped sending him small sums of money - hardly enough to feed himself - and writing him letters. In one such letter Van Gogh wrote to his brother, "All I need is courage, and it often fails me. And also the fact that after my illness, when I am in the field, I am overcome by a sense of loneliness to such an awful degree that I avoid going out. But that will change over time anyway. It's only when I'm standing with a painting in front of my easel that I feel a little alive. No matter, that will change too, for now my health is so good that I suppose the physical part of me will prevail."
Letters to his brother played a special role for him - the artist was very lonely and letters for him became a way to communicate with people close to him. And despite the reciprocal friendship, the feeling of loneliness did not leave the artist. In his correspondence he often raised the theme of his loneliness: "Loneliness is quite a big misfortune, something like a prison. What it will lead me to - it is now anyhow impossible to say definitely. In fact, you don't know it yourself." Van Gogh ended his hard and lonely life by shooting himself in the stomach. He did not receive recognition and fame until years after his death.

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CryptoPunk #385 that has been taken as a base

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