SHORTLY after Paul Gauguin came to live with Vincent van Gogh in Arles in October 1888, the two men went to paint in a Roman cemetery called Les Alyscamps. Van Gogh's picture shows a chapel at the end of an avenue of poplars and tombs; along this avenue, from the chapel towards the viewer, stroll a soldier and a woman; to the left of them behind the poplars is a big factory, smoke spewing from its chimneys. This, according to Martin Gayford, is ?a symbolic narrative': "The lovers walk away from the religious past towards the busy, secular present."

While this painting portrays European society towards the end of the 19th century, its scope can be enlarged.

Little more than a 100 years later, our civilisation is in manifest decline, and the history of art demonstrates this. Juxtaposing a Cranach or a Dürer, say, with a Picasso or a Kandinsky, we see that five centuries have brought immeasurable change, that order has broken down, that man is now fragmented and fragmenting. Many say the jettisoning of Christianity is good; others, that this is the very root of all current ills. In Pierre Kalachinsky - his mechanised humanoids, his iron soul, his glorified cogwheels - we see how spiritually barren industrialisation has left us.

Van Gogh and Gauguin retained vestiges of Christianity. Prior to co-habiting in Arles, the two exchanged self-portraits. Gauguin's, entitled after Hugo's Les Misérables, presented him as a martyr-saint like Jean Valjean, and, in florid wallpaper behind him, spoke of the "artistic virginity" of experimental painters who, in Gayford's words, "responded to suffering - in a Christ-like manner - by doing good". Van Gogh's self-portrait, he himself wrote, "aimed at a simple bonze worshipping the eternal Buddha", suggesting his was a tranquil, meditative life, which it wasn't. He eschewed the strict Protestantism of his upbringing, but hankered still after inner calm.

Van Gogh's ?Yellow House', Gayford tells us, "was to be a miniature monastic community dedicated to producing the art of the future". Van Gogh and Gauguin believed that together they could do great work, and they did.

Gayford gives us an excellent account of their nine-week collaboration. His book comprises many strands. It is dayby-day biography illuminated by the past - and future - of the two men; it is a cultural and social history detailing the influence on them of literature, other artists and current affairs; it is a powerful reconstruction of their working methods - one sees, feels, smells the paint being applied.

Best of all are its magnificent readings of the pictures: transcending ?factual' scholarship, Gayford is electrically alive to emotion, penetrates deep into meaning, and sends images rushing back beyond their maker into the world from which they came. He proves Impressionist art is much more than pretty, he gives a sense of painting not as end product, but as dynamic process of mind and body - a rare treat. In 1999 he journeyed in van Gogh's footsteps from the Netherlands to Arles via Paris, and has since mastered an extensive bibliography. His text is both readable and accessible, scholarly but mercifully free of footnotes, one in the avuncular tradition of EH Gombrich's Story Of Art, written for the enjoyment of all, not the prejudices of a few.

For van Gogh and Gauguin art was the new Christianity. 'The Yellow House' was to bring forth a wonderful artistic and spiritual rebirth. Van Gogh, according to �?mile Bernard, longed for "a future filled with goodness and love"; van Gogh himself spoke of "a new world, an immense renaissance of art - the next generation will succeed in living in peace". The more Gauguin listened to his housemate, the more he shared his beliefs. Sadly, though, van Gogh and Gauguin could not live in peace with each other even for nine weeks. Envy, jealousy, rivalry all took their toll, and Gauguin soon felt bound to leave.

However "monastic" the Yellow House was, its rule was lax. Van Gogh and Gauguin were both given to drinking and whoring. Van Gogh's previous love affairs had ended in disaster; Gauguin was estranged from his wife: the only intimacy they could tolerate was brief, cheap and exploitative. Ideals for humanity they may have had, but people they found difficult to deal with.

Gauguin's departure precipitated van Gogh's infamous ear-slashing. This led to ongoing hospitalisation and suicide.

The experiment had failed; the new world was not to be; the artistic renaissance would never come. What value then art? Undoubtedly, our world is all the better for van Gogh's fascinating and felt creations. Did he pay too high a price, though? Do we?

The Yellow House is a marvellous study, assuredly deserving the widest readership, and - dare I suggest it? - a place on school and college curricula.