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Artists in tension

Van Gogh and Gauguin: The Search for Sacred Art by Deborah Silverman

Deborah Silverman, who holds the University of California President's Chair in Modern European History, Art, and Culture at UCLA, seems to have had every advantage in working on this book: support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the services of a research assistant and a freelance editor. That makes this handsome volume's shortcomings all the more disappointing.