In Vincent's Footsteps: Van Gogh Slept with Countless Prostitutes and Even Gave His Ear to One. but the Importance of Sex in His Life and Work Has Been Ignored in the Sweetly Mythologised Image of Him as a Sunflower-Painting Saint. Waldemar Januszczak Reveals the Artist's True Colours

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I have this creepy feeling that I've been watching a cult being born. All I have really been doing is following in the footsteps of Vincent Van Gogh for a TV biography on Channel 4. But, at every step of the way, I found myself encountering so much bogus spirituality. People giving themselves to him, as it were. Worshipping him. Preserving his relics. Becoming Van Gogh's disciples. And in order to succeed with this weird sanctifying process, they have had to misunderstand Van Gogh completely. Almost to rebuild him from scratch.

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This is not what the documentary is about: the three films closely follow his life. But the experience of making them was a revelation. What, for instance, are we to make of events in Van Gogh's home town of Zundert? The people there didn't like him much when he was alive, but today he is the subject of an annual flower festival, held in this small Dutch settlement close to the …