A BIT MORE ABOUT VAN GOGH AND PROSTITUTES

The following was left out of the story because it wasn't quite relevant enough, and the story had already grown so long. It is illuminating information, though, when one considers the "Empathy Model" or the "Jack the Ripper" theory:

In a meandering letter to fellow artist Emile Bernard, Van Gogh did show empathy for working girls. He started out by noting how Degas didn’t really like women, Rubens, on the other hand, “was a handsome man and a good fucker.” Courbet, too. Delacroix “fucked only a little, and had only casual love affairs so as not to filch from the time devoted to his work.” In the context of claiming a certain amount of chastity—in another letter he did advise Bernard to “have a screw from time to time”—would allow for an artist’s virility in painting, Vincent wrote this:

Personally, I find continence is quite good for me. It’s enough for our weak, impressionable artists’ brains to give their essence to the creation of our paintings. Because in thinking, calculating, wearing ourselves out, we expend cerebral activity.

Why exert ourselves in spending all our creative juices when those who pimp for a living and even their simple, well-fed clients work more to the satisfaction of the genital organs of the registered whore in this case than we do? The whore in question has my sympathy more than my compassion.

Being exiled, a social outcast, as artists like you and I surely are, ‘outcasts’ too, she is surely therefore our friend and sister. And finding — in this position — of outcast — the same as us — an independence that isn’t without its advantages — all things considered — let’s not adopt a false position by believing we’re serving her through social rehabilitation, which is in any case impractical and would be fatal for her.

Letter to Emile Bernard, August 5, 1888 (a few months before the arrival of Paul Gauguin to Arles, and over four months before his self-mutilation).