Why was Vincent Van Gogh a genius?

Question:He was certainly a great painter, but I don't understand why they call him a genius.

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: He was certainly a great painter, but I don't understand why they call him a genius.

i think he was definitely a genius.

definition:
'Extraordinary intellectual and creative power.
A person of extraordinary intellect and talent'

i think that fits, really. he painted so many paintings despite starting his career as an artist late, and stuck by it through his troubles- i admire this a lot, and that he was so passionate. by reading his letters to theo you can tell he was intelligent, and his paintings are just brilliantly amazing- but i guess it depends how you judge what is 'extraodinary'...
but if someone can have so much impact years after he lived, who everybody knows about and most people admire, there must be something about him.
i also like that you can tell easily if a painting is by van Gogh, his style is so distinctively his own

He wasn't.-------he's not even a great painter.

cut your ear and give it to the girl you love

VVG painted some of the world's most famous paintings and that makes him a genius in the same way that Jimi Hendrix is a genius, and not just a good guitar player.

There are different definitions of genius. Try to find the National Geographic series My Brilliant Brain, especially Part 1.

well that depends on what your definition of genius is. If you think creating origional and captivating compositions is the sign of a genius, then he was a genius.

He was though at the end of his life quite insane. He cut off his ear and gave it to a prostitute.
In my opinion he was not a genius. Leonardo de Vinci was a genius, but not Van Gogh.

He was a talented painter but a bad business man, supported by his brother most his life. He was hard to deal with and messed up on Absinthe most his life. So besides the artistic talent, he didn't have much else going so no, not a genius.

Maybe, we'll never know because back in his day they thought he was crazy, but it may have been genius. He was defiantly a great painter with a intuition about color.