Van Gogh and Gauguin forged a deep friendship
during the two years they lived and painted, sharing a place in Arles, in the south of France.
The two had built the town’s reputation as an artistic colony. That dream ended in an angry exchange between the painters on the evening of Dec. 23, 1888.
“The traditional version of what happened there is wrong,” Dr. Kaufmann, a German researcher says.
As that story goes, van Gogh cut off part of his own ear with a straight razor after he and Gauguin parted. But Kaufmann and his colleague, Rita Wildegans, dug through original police records, biographical material and van Gogh’s letters. They concluded that Gauguin, an accomplished fencer, attacked van Gogh with a rapier after van Gogh threw a wine glass at him.
“The traditional version goes back on two reports,” says Kaufmann. “Self-defending or self-protecting propaganda of Paul Gauguin, who himself stressed that Vincent van Gogh was mad, which is not true. [Van Gogh] suffered from these fits, which came [all] of a sudden and which ended suddenly.”
To make that case, Kaufmann cites an earlier retroactive diagnosis by an American molecular biologist, which argued that van Gogh suffered only periodic bouts of volatility and depression as a result of a likely congenital metabolic disorder now known as Acute Intermittent Porphyria, or AIP syndrome.
None of this convinces Louis Van Tilborgh, curator of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

“Well, it’s an interesting opinion, but so far I have not found proof for it,” Van Tilborgh says. “There’s no smoking gun.” Or, in this case, no bloody rapier.
Van Tilborgh characterizes the new book as speculation unsupported by letters from the painter’s brother Theo van Gogh, or any other evidence.

I like expression “Safe Gender Affairs” deployed broadly in AmazonCom tagging-and this definition is surely very much in a place while considering officially heralded legendary friendship between these masters, ended up by a female prostitute.