Vincent and the car

In his entire life, Vincent sold only one painting. And even then, it was for a pittance. 

He told me so himself. Or rather, his animated portrait, which visitors can view at the end of the interactive exhibition ‘zwischen Wahn und Wunder’ (between illusion and wonder), which I visited last weekend in Berlin. While I wasn't really surprised by his answer, the question of whether he had any idea that one day his works would be worth a fortune was the one that came to me spontaneously to test the AI that brought him back to life. I must admit that I was under influence after examining some of Van Gogh's most famous works – I imagine you recognised them – accompanied by their estimated value. 

I don't know how much 400 Belgian francs from 1890 would be worth today, but that is the sum that Anna Boch – herself a painter and collector – agreed to pay for ‘The Red Vineyard’ at the annual exhibition of Les XX in Brussels. In any case, this is undoubtedly a far cry from the 70 to 80 million euros at which many of the works by the Dutch painter and draughtsman, who left us 860 paintings and more than 1,100 drawings, are valued today. It is also somewhat paradoxical that what constituted a form of belated recognition when he was 37 years old came just a few months before he took his own life. But as his electronic avatar confirmed to me, he would never have imagined that nearly 150 years later, his most valuable work would be estimated at between €130 and €140 million. 

€135 million is precisely the price at which another object was sold, the alter ego of which I recently had the opportunity to admire in a museum in Stuttgart. Many of you will have guessed that I am referring to what became, on 5 May 2022, the most expensive vehicle in the history of land transport: the 300 SLR Coupé ‘Uhlenhaut’. A car which, contrary to what its name suggests, was not derived from the 300SL, from which it nevertheless took its famous gullwing doors, but from the W196 single-seater that enabled Juan Manuel Fangio to win the World Drivers' Championship in 1954 and 1955. With its fabulous 2,982 cc inline 8-cylinder engine delivering 310 horsepower capable of taking it to 280 km/h, and its gearbox intruding into the passenger compartment, forcing the driver to drive with his legs apart to reach the pedals on either side of the transmission tunnel, the 300 SLR was nothing less than a Formula 1 car disguised as a road car. 

Fortunately, I write for a publication dedicated to cars. Because anywhere else, I would probably be vilified for daring to suggest even a parallel between the work of a universally recognised artist and a ‘vulgar’ motor car. Even if I will refrain from going any further with Marinetti, who stated in the first Futurist Manifesto that ‘a racing car is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace’. Not so much because of the sentence itself, whose iconoclastic content I might not dislike, but because of its author, who later adopted the despicable fascist ideology. Be that as it may, the simple comparison between a machine and the work of someone who is now recognised as an absolute genius is enough to provoke an outcry. 

But if we always had to listen to the complaints of the outraged virgins, many debates would be over before they even began. Such as the debate over whether or not a motor car can be considered a work of art. Let us obviously leave aside the response of the French administration, which has already ruled in this regard, provided that the vehicle in question is over 30 years old, was produced in limited quantities and has historical, industrial, sporting or societal significance. What interests us here is the ‘conceptual’ aspect of the discussion. In short, you have four hours and I have the rest of this column. 

So let's return to Vincent, whose disappearance did not cause the price of his paintings to skyrocket, but rather a book. It was by bringing to the attention of the general public the 652 letters exchanged between Vincent and his brother Theo, whose widow she was, that Johanna Van Gogh-Boger associated a moving story with a work that had previously been ignored. From then on, the paintings hanging on the walls of the boarding house she had opened shortly after her husband's death, whose guests did not appreciate the colours they considered garish, aroused an interest that would never wane. Today, we would call it storytelling or marketing. But what Johanna wanted above all was to honour the promise she had made to her Theo, whom fate had allowed her so little time to love, to make her brother's work known to the world. While Theo had enabled her to devote herself to her art by buying the paintings that no one else wanted, it was a young woman who had only met him twice who made Vincent famous. 

In a way, the record value achieved by the 300 SLR Coupé is an anomaly. Usually, it is cars with a pedigree acquired on the racetrack that cause bidders to lose their minds, as was the case with the Ferrari 250 GTO with chassis number 4153GT, sold for £50 million in a private transaction in 2018. This car can boast a 4th place finish in its class at the 1963 Le Mans 24 Hours, but above all a victory in the 1964 Tour de France Automobile, driven by Lucien Bianchi and Georges Berger. However, the value of what is now the second most expensive car in the world is ‘only’ half the amount paid for the 300 SLR coupé. 

Yet the latter never raced. It should have done so in 1956, had another 300 SLR with an open body, driven by Pierre Levegh, not crashed at full speed into the wall along the pit straight during the previous year's 24 Hours of Le Mans, causing what remains to this day the greatest disaster in the history of motor racing. Detached from the chassis by the force of the impact, its engine ploughed a deadly furrow through the dense crowd gathered in the stands, killing 82 spectators and injuring more than 120. This tragedy led to the withdrawal of the brand with the three-pointed star logo from motor racing for three decades and the early retirement of the two 300 SLR coupés. One of them was adopted as a company car by Rudolf Uhlenhaut, the sporting director of the brand that had designed it, whose name remained attached to the model. It must be said that during the test sessions in which he willingly participated, wheel in hand, our man regularly achieved lap times that were enough to upset many renowned drivers, which obviously contributed to forging his legend. It is, in fact, the model that Mercedes has kept and that I had the opportunity to admire at the brand's museum. 

What a strange fate for this beautiful car, marked by a tragedy that was not even its own. What would have happened if Levegh had kept control of his barquette and finished the race? Would he have overtaken Castelloti and Maglioli's Ferraris, which were ahead of him, to take third place in the final standings? How many races would the coupés, which would not have been condemned to inaction, have won the following season? These are questions to which we will never have the answers, any more than we will to the question of how a different story might have affected their value. Even if we are entitled to imagine that what constitutes a kind of Freudian slip giving rise to all kinds of speculation is undoubtedly a factor in the amount of money paid to acquire one of them. 

The parallel may seem curious, but it was also tragedy that presided over Vincent's destiny, to the point of literally shaping his art. Admittedly, he refrained from painting during the bouts of madness that afflicted him during his stay at the asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence between 1889 and 1890. But he worked relentlessly the rest of the time. It is impossible not to imagine that in the luminous works of this period of his life – not all of them were luminous – he found a form of release from the torments of his soul. 

A car built for speed but which never raced, the creations of an exceptional artist who knew only suffering in return for recognition throughout his life, for which wealthy aesthetes are now paying tens of millions of euros – does this make sense, and if so, how? Does a car, whatever its history, “deserve” such a sum? Are others, less highly rated, not worth as much as the 300 SLR? How many artists has history forgotten, whose works, like those of Vincent, would have been worthy of our recognition? 

On reflection, I think you can put down your pens. No one will be collecting any marks today, as these questions will remain unanswered. It doesn't matter anyway, because whatever objects we are given to admire in museums or elsewhere, their true value undoubtedly lies in the emotions they evoke in us. And from that point of view, don't count on me to establish any hierarchy between Vincent and the car.