the death of Van Gogh.

I recently finished reading a collection of Van Gogh's letters to his friends & family (mostly to his generous brother & patron Theo). My main purpose was to see if there were any obvious suicidal thoughts toward the end of his life and correspondence. And I really didn't see it. He made a reference to conditional suicide in an April 1889 letter.. saying if he lost his friendship with Theo, it could drive him to suicide. But it feels to me, more like a melodramatic what if.. What I found much more in his letters, was in spite of his mental health suffering, he was an optimistic creator.

On the day of his 1890 shooting, he had taken his art supplies out with him to paint.. which seems like an act inconsistent with a suicide mission? He came back from his painting field trip with a shot in his lower chest/stomach (also strange for a suicide I assume).. there were no powder burns reported on his hands, and no gun found at the time. But it is clear that Van Gogh claims he did shoot himself.. which established the narrative of his so-called suicide.

Why the Hell would someone take credit for a suicide, that was actually a murder or manslaughter? A pair of authors (Naifeh & Smith) have a well-thought-out explanation in their book Van Gogh:The Life. They report on a group of young (gun toting) kids who liked playing cowboys, and bothering Van Gogh. They lay out a scenario where the kids may have been messing with Van Gogh, and accidentally shot him. Van Gogh didn't want the kids punished, so claimed it was a suicide attempt.. either assuming he'd survive the shot, or not caring if he survived at that point. The scenario is at the very end of their book, & makes sense, but I'm not sure I endorse the authors' act of naming the (long gone) kid by name, since he never had the benefit of a courtroom defense, etc.

I saw in 2020 a forensic pathologist wrote an article calling for an autopsy on Van Gogh.. I guess for some clarification on his death. Not sure how much it matters now, but personally I don't think Van Gogh was attempting suicide that day. Even in his final letter, days before the shooting, he was still planning and talking about his painting. Who knows..

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A tribute illustration to an old Turbografx-16 title..

A preview for interested parties, one of the Nat Rrain pages from Flip City magazine (issue #20). Have more pages coming in upcoming issues. If you enjoy cultural satire, subscribe, or pick up individual issues..

contact: nat.rain@gmail.com

 

Got around to creating some profiles for Greyskull & his band mates.. based on a old sketch..

^ this is the original sketch, with Greyskull, and his then nameless crew. They've been on a nostalgic tour, permanently & blissfully frozen in the late '90s.

If you get a chance, check out Flip City Magazine, I just had a couple pages in issue #20..

Flip City (About Us)

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For interested parties, Flip City (issue #20) published some Nat Rrain art recently. They sell both digital and print subscriptions (link enclosed). It's a publication stylistically similar to MAD.. but focused more on uncensored political satire than celebrity satire (tho most of my comics are apolitical).

https://flip-city-magazine.myshopify.com/collections/flip-city-subscriptions/subscription

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This is a cool hardcover collection of James Dean photos, taken by photographer Dennis Stock, shortly before Dean became famous. And their collaboration has an interesting backstory. Dean and Stock met at a party in LA, and after conversing some, Dean invited Stock to an upcoming test screening of East of Eden. 

Stock liked the movie and Dean's performance, and instinctively realized Dean was going to be a star. So he asked if he could spend a couple days with Dean, photographing his life (and essentially origin story), before Dean broke big.

Stock ended up traveling with Dean back to his Indiana hometown, & around to some of Dean's spots in New York, and constructed a photo album of Dean's life just at the end of its anonymity. There's a good movie that documents the time Stock & Dean spent together getting the photo spread titled Life (not the Eddie Murphy joint, this Life was released 15 years later, but..)

Some of the individual photos are iconic now, and probably recognizable from posters you see in Hollywood Blvd tourist traps, etc. But there are also some great deep cuts in the book. Random photos of Dean walking thru his small home town, and working on his childhood farm. Even setting Dean aside, it's a cultural document of 1950s Middle/rural America.

 

(both images are within the book)

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Some new & old Nat Rrain releases of signs and roadside attractions:

Early 90s Lynnhaven Mall (parking lot) sign, when they were still rockin' a brown tile look.

The day when they mounted the Great American Outlet Mall sign in Virginia Beach, circa mid 8os.

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 Just a quick upload.. A cool, detailed sketch my daughter finished recently, thought I'd share.

contact: nat.rain@gmail.com

 

In the mid 80s, there was a TV pilot for a never-realized series Condor. Set in the near future of 1999, it was based around a human agent (typical '8os cop meme, a maverick who plays by his own obnoxious rules) and his good-looking android partner. The old school agent predictably resents being paired with the new soul-less technology. But over the course of 80 delicious minutes, he learns to respect it..

Condor had a pretty good cast, including Fresh Prince's Uncle Phil, and Wendy Kilbourne as the beautiful robot..

An interesting element is 1985 conjecture on how the world would look in the near future.. oversized drones and urban three-wheelers were part of that speculation.. They did a pretty good job balancing potential progress with factors of daily life that don't change much. And this to me, is the most disappointing aspect of Condor not making it.. missing out on more of the futuristic aesthetic, because they seemed to put effort in to this part of the pilot. There are couple places now to stream Condor, and it is a cool cultural artifact of how some foresaw the start of the 21st century..

Part Maxwell Smart, part Dean Ween.. Christopher Proctor (a TV icon that could've been).

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It's common to hear about negative encounters with celebrities.. so for the sake of balance I wanna share a positive (throwback) celebrity experience I had..

Summer of '99 I was working at a sunglass retailer in Ocean City, Maryland. We were right on the boards, so there was a lot of foot traffic at night. And one night, Foo Fighter Dave Grohl dipped in.. It didn't surprise me, because I was aware he was from the northern Virginia area.. and the DC suburbs produce a lot of Ocean City's tourists. It was an unusually slow night, so I was working solo, and Grohl was the only customer in the shop then. He said he was looking for nighttime shades (I assume to cloak his identity). In the late 9os, as a Nirvana alum and current Foo Fighter, he was easily recognizable.

I didn't mention that I recognized him, and just talked him up like any other anonymous customer. I asked him about this forearm ink.. we talked a little bit about the store's bright yellow paint job. He noted that yellow was perceived as a uniquely unfriendly color for marketing. It was a cool conversation. And after he picked a pair of glasses, and paid.. he gave me a $20 tip, (that he wouldn't let me refuse). Which in that era was probably equal to 4 hours of work. So I was flattered and grateful..

Guess I was just feeling nostalgic, and wanted to show some love for the civilized celebrities. I had mixed encounters with different famous folks after moving to LA. Grohl stands out as decent.

Years ago, I briefly alluded to this chance encounter with Grohl in Natrrain #13.

contact: nat.rain@gmail.com