Vincent van Gogh’s Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear and Pipe, January 1889 emerges like a vaguely familiar, climactic apparition about a third of the way through the new blockbuster exhibition at the Fondation Louis Vuitton (FLV) in Paris. Here, we find “poor Vincent,” as he is occasionally referred to in the exhibition catalog, smoking a pipe, an activity he associated with calm contemplation. Behind him, swaths of orange and red form a bold contrast to his green jacket and matching green eyes, which steadily look back at us. As the painting’s title notes, we see the artist with his left ear in a white dressing; the work is one of two self-portraits he made after cutting off his earlobe following a fight with Paul Gauguin.