An exhibition at the Neue Galerie in New York offers a vivid opportunity to do just that. It also serves as a reminder that culture tends to move forward by creative misunderstanding. The truth is that Van Gogh can hardly be considered an Expressionist. As curator Jill Lloyd writes in her catalog essay, there was "a certain irony" in Van Gogh's status as a trailblazer for artists "who turned their backs on recording their sensations of nature in favor of pouring out their innermost feelings and emotions." Throughout his life, Van Gogh considered himself a realist, and whatever extremes of technique he embraced were meant to record as faithfully as possible his response to the visible world. There's an even bigger gap of temperament, however, between Van Gogh and his followers. For while they embraced the image (fueled by dealers and art critics) of Van Gogh as a painter "maudit," tragically brought down by incomprehension and madness, Van Gogh himself aspired to serenity and happiness. "Under Van Gogh's nail," Antonin Artaud wrote, "landscapes show their hostile flesh." But surely nothing could be less hostile than Field With Flowers Near Arles, painted in 1888, at a time when Van Gogh was already suffering from the seizure disorder and hallucinations, exacerbated by alcohol and probably syphilis as well, that would drive him to suicide.