There is more in human products, perhaps in every single one which derives fully from the creative power of the spirit, than is contained in its forms. This marks off everything that has soul from all that is produced merely mechanically. Here, perhaps, may be found the motivation for the contemporary interest in the art of Van Gogh. In him more than any other painter, one senses a passionate life which swings far beyond the limits of pictorial art. It flows from a unique breadth and depth; that it finds in the painter's talent a channel for its expression seems only accidental, as if it could just as well have given life to practical or religious, to poetic or musical activities. It is primarily this burning life, which can be felt in its immediacy—and which sometimes enters into a destructive contrast with its obvious form—that makes Van Gogh so fascinating.

Georg Simmel, on individuality and social…, loc. 853