what was van gogh famous for?
Painter
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 One of the most notorious incidents laid to his account is immortalized in the 19th @-@ century painting The Roses of Heliogabalus ( 1888 ) , by the Anglo @-@ Dutch academician Sir Lawrence Alma @-@ Tadema . It shows guests at one of his extravagant dinner parties smothered under a mass of " violets and other flowers " dropped from above . 

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 Considered a madman and failure in his lifetime , Van Gogh 's emotionally charged paintings , spontaneous vivid colours , broad oil brushstrokes and early death have led to his current position in the public imagination as the quintessential misunderstood genius . His widespread critical , commercial and popular success began after his adoption by the early 20th @-@ century German Expressionists and Fauves . His reputation grew steadily during the 20th century ; today he is remembered as an important but tragic painter , whose troubled personality typifies the romantic ideal of the tortured artist . Art historians typically view him as an exceptionally talented , major influential artist whose mental instability inhibited and frustrated his artistic progression . 

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 Vincent van Gogh is one of the most famous artists in the world , despite that he was virtually unrecognized during his lifetime . After his first exhibitions in the late 1880s , his reputation grew slowly but steadily among artists , art critics , dealers and collectors . In 1887 André Antoine installed Van Gogh 's paintings alongside Georges Seurat and Paul Signac , at the Théâtre Libre in Paris some of which were acquired by Julien Tanguy . In 1898 his work was described in " Le Moderniste " by the poet Albert Aurier as characterised by " fire , intensity , sunshine " . 

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 The controversy only ceased when Empress Maria Theresa of Austria sent her personal physician , Gerard van Swieten , to investigate the claims of vampiric entities . He concluded that vampires did not exist and the Empress passed laws prohibiting the opening of graves and desecration of bodies , sounding the end of the vampire epidemics . Despite this condemnation , the vampire lived on in artistic works and in local superstition . 

contradiction
 The 1906 exhibition of Gauguin 's work left Picasso more than ever in this artist 's thrall . Gauguin demonstrated the most disparate types of art — not to speak of elements from metaphysics , ethnology , symbolism , the Bible , classical myths , and much else besides — could be combined into a synthesis that was of its time yet timeless . An artist could also confound conventional notions of beauty , he demonstrated , by harnessing his demons to the dark gods ( not necessarily Tahitian ones ) and tapping a new source of divine energy . 
