He has been anointed—and travestied—as the ideal of the modern artist, even by those for whom art, modern or otherwise, is at best a diversion and at worst a scam. Everybody knows about the cutting of his ear, or cracks cruel jokes about it. His name is as famous as that of Picasso, but Picasso has been mythologized as a monster of control, whereas van Gogh, it is agreed, lay at the mercy of the uncontrollable.