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Artist Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) is famous in the world. He is also celebrated in Taiwan. How had his image as an artist been constructed? For example, he was (portrayed as) very committed to art but misunderstood by others, and that poverty did not stop him from becoming an artist. Why is the Western artist so welcome and even taken as a ‘paradigm’ in a different cultural context? I used two books published in traditional Chinese on Van Gogh as case study. First, Yu, Guang-zhong's translation of Irving Stone’s Lust for Life (first published in 1957, with the 2009 revision being the most well-circulated). Second, Chiang, Hsun's Van Gogh Rediscovered by Chiang Hsun (2007). While analyzing the two publications, I also examined a 2009 blockbuster exhibition on Van Gogh to formulate how the image of the artist had been created. In addition, I also discovered how such an image was used by the exhibition to promote cultural consumption. The research method adopted here is "content analysis. " I will read, organize, interpret, and analyze the text carefully. The analytical tool is the theory of “Cultural Industry” by Theodor Adorno (1903-1969) and the Frankfurt School. This study found that both Yu, Guang-zhong and Chiang, Hsun have profound literary and aesthetic backgrounds, so that they emphasized Van Gogh's “moral” achievement and promoted his “virtues”, making the artist a paradigm of "elite culture" that could cultivate one’s temperament. This study also argued that the later exhibition exploited that “elite culture” and produced a "popular culture" out of it. Additionally, this thesis discovered that during the process in which publishers and publications shaped the image of Van Gogh, they also achieved what Adorno called "cultural control" and "transfer of cultural subjectivity". In view of this, this study advocates that readers should take a more cautious approach to any art-related subjects broadcast by the media in order to avoid the narrowing down of one’s thinking and what Adorno calls "pseudo-individualism."
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