As Coconuts Bangkok reported Wednesday, rock star Haruthai Muangbunsri is convinced that her THB1,000 (US$30) painting is the work of Vincent an Gogh — but it turns out, the Van Gogh Museum still doesn’t buy it.
The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam told BBC Thai that they previously rejected Haruthai’s painting years ago, after the rock star submitted photographs of her tree painting to them.
Every year, the museum receives over 200 submissions from people who want their paintings verified, and each year, the museum only requests about 5 paintings to be shipped over for further inspection.
Haruthai admitted that she has been rejected before, but this time, she believes that the scientific research she has done in the past 3 years will convince the museum.
Haruthai has worked with researchers from the Synchrotron Light Research Institute and Thailand Institute of Nuclear Technology. Their inspection of the painting placed its painting in 1888. If this piece were indeed an authentic Van Gogh, then that timeline would make sense: That was just a year before Van Gogh painted one of his most famous works, “The Starry Night,” and two years before his death.
But in perhaps the cleverest — and most convincing — bit of sleuthing, the research team determined that the red paint used in its creation was linked to Arles, France, where Van Gogh painted late in life.
“We’ve solved the mystery. Everything matches,” Haruthai said.
How did Haruthai come about the potential Van Gogh painting? She said that he found the particular artwork in a pile of paintings at a store in Bangkok six years ago. The store imported antiques from Europe, so who knows?
She said she’s ready for the museum to look at the painting once again and believes her research will solve “the world’s mystery.”
Meanwhile, following the statement from the Van Gogh Museum, Thai netizens have been focusing on a different matter: What about that “Van Gogh ghost” that Haruthai claimed has been haunting her?
“In the Buddhist ways, those who end their own lives would continue to live in misery. Although they’re physically gone, their souls have not been reincarnated. Sometimes he [Van Gogh] would communicate with me,” Haruthai said in an interview with Workpoint on Wednesday.
First off, it’s still debatable whether Van Gogh committed suicide or not. Second, ghosts…well, also debatable.
But — Haruthai insisted not only could she sense the ghost of the legendary post-Impressionist artist.
“One time I went on a medication retreat. I met someone who asked me what I was up to. That person said there was a ghost of a bearded white man with me. At the time I hadn’t revealed my research to the public yet.”
She further said that this “bearded white man” told the witchy person that he was the painter of her tree painting. The apparition also asked her to bestow him with some absinthe — the green booze that Van Gogh famously enjoyed.
Whether or not the encounter happened, as for the painting in question — Haruthai said that she will publicly reveal more information on the scientific research that she has gathered on the painting later today.
