Van Gogh

100 years after becoming the first U.S. museum to buy a work by the Post-Impressionist, the Detroit Institute of Arts' new Van Gogh retrospective (one of ...

The 1956 film version of "Lust for Life," starring Kirk Douglas as the artist, intensified Americans' fascination with Van Gogh – and his inner demons. In 1926, the Art Institute of Chicago became home to several Van Gogh works, including "The Bedroom" (1889). Van Gogh died in 1890 at age 37, after working as an artist for only ten years. It wasn't until 1922 that the Detroit Institute of Arts, or DIA, became the first museum in the country to buy a Van Gogh work, his 1887 "Self-Portrait." Shaw considers Van Gogh to be the artist whose work is most beloved by Americans. In 1934 Americans became entranced with Irving Stone's bestselling "Lust for Life," a loosely biographical novel about Van Gogh.