The Friday Essay: Van Gogh

When I do it all over again I will start in London.

I will spend the night at the Connaught then rise early and walk down Piccadilly to the National Gallery. Maybe I will detour through Green Park and past Buckingham Palace, and perhaps stop for a coffee on the fringes of Trafalgar Square before marching up the museum steps to seek out, on that wing off the second floor reserved for artists living between 1700-1900, the works of Vincent Van Gogh.

Van Gogh's soulful use of color and his three-dimensional strokes of brush and palette knife speak to me. A mere print is, literally, a pale imitation. Van Gogh's brilliance must be seen in person to be believed.

Thus, in the dead of winter, I flew to Europe with the goal of seeing the world's three premier Van Gogh collections in three days: Paris's Musee d'Orsay, Amsterdam's Van Gogh Museum, and London's National Gallery. My aim was a museum and a city per day. No more, no less. Twining the slightest touch of adventure to the artistic, I made no advance reservations for museum tickets, hotel rooms, or transportation.

So it was that on the third day of my journey, in the predawn blackness of a bitter February morning, I was the last passenger on a short yellow train approaching the Hook of Holland, the port from which I would catch the channel ferry to Britain. I had been told that the ship left a little past seven. Upon the train's arrival, I would have fifteen minutes to run from the train to the ferry station, purchase a ticket and then climb on board. I hoped to find a quiet corner belowdecks and read up on Van Gogh, or perhaps just stare out the window at the heaving seas.

The train stopped. The doors slid open. An arctic gust almost knocked me flat as I stepped onto the empty platform. A freezing rain drenched me. The ferry terminal, thankfully, was just two hundred yards off. I walked briskly, trying to convince myself that I was tougher than the cold and rain. When I finally arrived at the terminal I was shivering uncontrollably. The glass doors were locked. A sign informed prospective travelers that the morning ferry had been discontinued.

As my train disappeared into the distance, taking with it all hopes of immediate warmth and transportation, I began repeating the mantra that would see me through the day: When I do it all over again, I will start in London.

Paris: Musee d'Orsay

My journey, however, had begun in Paris. From a transportation point of view it made no sense: London is the ideal starting place to seek out the great Van Gogh collections. From Waterloo Station, it's simply a matter of taking the Eurostar through the Chunnel to Paris, then catching a train from Gare du Nord to Amsterdam. A truly ambitious traveler could do the whole thing in a day.

Yet from an artistic viewpoint, there can be no other launching point than Paris. Vincent Van Gogh lived in the hilly Montmartre section during 1886-87, a time that marked a crucial turning point in his career. He was 33 at the time, an evangelical preacher turned artist just four years earlier. His work until then was filled with dark shades, earth tones and drab scenes of peasant life. But in Paris Van Gogh became fascinated by the Impressionist school of painting, with its emphasis on natural light and color. He befriended famous artists such as Paul Gaugin and Camille Pisarro. Van Gogh was an obsessive and prolific man, constantly pushing himself towards creative excellence. Paris was where he ceased to be just a painter, and began filling his canvases with the uniquely applied dabs and swirls that would become his trademark style. "I am using another language, that of colors, to translate the impressions of light and dark into black and white," he explained to his brother Theo, an art dealer.

How do I know this? I'm not an art historian. What I know of Van Gogh's life I read in books. But a few years back my wife and I hung a rather nice framed Van Gogh print in a hallway at home. "The Church in Auvers-sur-Oise" was meant to be a decoration, nothing more. It was a rather somber image of a lone woman walking past a church that looked, frankly, haunted. I didn't give it much thought.

But while in Paris on business soon after, I did the requisite tourist gig and stopped off at the Musee d'Orsay to view the Impressionist paintings. There, among the walls lined with Monets and Manets, was a room dedicated to Van Gogh. Room 35, on the fifth level, to be precise. And there hung "The Church in Auvers-sur-Oise." Only the real thing wasn't some drab portrait, but a dramatic rendering of a misshapen Gothic cathedral ringed by bubbling moats of lava and wildflowers. The sky wasn't black at all, but an unholy shade of blue that I had only seen in nature. And the paint was applied so thickly that it seemed as if the whole complex image was poised to leap off the canvas. Suddenly, and for the first time in my life, I got art. It had nothing to do with pretty paintings. Rather, it was like a punch in the gut, a sensation so palpable and emotionally charged that I could not look away. I stared at The Church for a very long time that day. This led to a deeper appreciation of not just the Monets and Manets, but also underrated artists like Turner (whose "Rain, Steam and Speed" is a work of pure brilliance) and Pissarro. And, thanks to the visceral power of that painting, I also learned that art is subjective. I like what I like, even if it doesn't match someone else's taste -- and that's OK. It's rather freeing to walk into a museum and stare at a painting that I enjoy, unhindered by concerns over whether or not a more advanced art connoisseur might think me a Philistine.

I returned to the Musee d'Orsay on a gray afternoon. It is a former train station located on the banks of the Seine, just a short walk from the more famous and traditional Louvre. The massive open spaces of the bottom floors are given to statuary and oversized paintings. I took the escalator up to that fifth level, where the Impressionists are displayed. In my hand was a map of the museum, showing the rooms where specific works of art could be seen. But I wanted to be surprised, and so did not consult it. I wanted to see if the Van Gogh paintings would exert that same raw emotional tug when I chanced upon them.

Cezanne was the first artist on display. His pale, literal pastels would prove to be a warm-up for the bright blues and vivid yellows favored by Van Gogh. I wandered from room to room, not studying every painting in-depth (there were just too many), focusing only on those which caught my eye. Soon I was in Room 35, a rectangular space perhaps thirty by forty feet. The walls were beige and gray, as was the floor. Natural light filtered in from skylights. The Van Gogh's didn't disappoint. (It would have been horrible if they had -- traveling all that way to relive a memory, only to find out that it was just an invention created by time). There were sixteen on display, though just two were painted during his years in Paris. The room was jammed with school kids and tourists. More than one spectator was holding their camera phone up close to a painting to take a quick photo. I moved slowly from painting to painting. My personal favorite on this trip was the work often abbreviated as just "The Siesta." It featured a man and wife napping in the shadow of a haystack following the harvest. Maybe it was the colors, maybe it was the way I felt transported to a sunny pasture somewhere in the south of France, but it was mesmerizing.

I lingered for another few hours in the Musee d'Orsay, then wandered over to the Louvre, where I spent the rest of the afternoon.

That night I ate a dinner of omelet and salad in a smoky cafe in lively Montmarte, then found a room in a small artist's hotel where a fat furry cat slept on the front desk and I paid extra for a room with a shower. Symbolically, at least, my journey in search of Van Gogh's work was off to a fine start.

Amsterdam: The Van Gogh Museum

The train from Paris to Amsterdam took just four hours. The farmland in between was surprisingly green and there was no snow. It was late afternoon when I arrived, so I quickly hustled over to the Van Gogh Museum. Van Gogh was born in the Netherlands, but Amsterdam was not a central city in his life. Nevertheless, he is treated with as much reverence in his native land as Rembrandt. The Van Gogh Museum is a case in point. A large, airy space situated next to the Rijksmuseum (the nation's largest museum, featuring a wide collection of Dutch masters such as Rembrandt and Vermeer, and more than one million objects of painting and sculpture), it's gray geometric shape is somewhat ironic considering Van Gogh's penchant for blurring perspective and creating motion through wavy lines. There were no right angles to Van Gogh.

The museum was crowded, even on a midweek February afternoon, which tells me that it must be quite the tourist draw in the summer. But there are certain attractions one must visit in the world's major cities -- say, the Empire State Building when traveling to New York. In Amsterdam, the Van Gogh Museum is such a place (I would suggest that the nearby Heineken Brewery is not far behind). There are more Van Gogh's inside that space than anywhere else in the world. Elaborate signs in English and Dutch explain where each work was painted, and their significance in Van Gogh's life. They are arranged chronologically, making it possible to see his transition from fledgling artist to creative visionary. The paintings done between 1888 and 1890 show a freedom and experimentation, but also a sense of melancholy. Van Gogh was slowly slipping into depression, and it seems as if he was in a hurry to paint as many canvases as possible before losing his faculties. Indeed, during that time he was often painting a new work each day.

What struck me was how Van Gogh used other artists as a constant source of inspiration. He often practiced by painting reproductions of famous works by Delacroix and Rembrandt. Back when I first decided on becoming a writer, I had no idea that I would find inspiration from an artist other than a writer. Van Gogh proved that wrong. But to look at those paintings created between 1888-90 made me wonder at the cost of his devotion to the creative process. Those paintings were almost all done when he was confined to an insane asylum (thanks to a misdiagnosed case of epilepsy), and this was when he so famously chopped off part of his ear.

The Van Gogh Museum is inspirational, and there is a calming aesthetic to wandering through the large galleries in an unhurried fashion. But it is also impossible to take in its four floors without being slightly unsettled. I found myself wondering about that curious place a man inhabits in the artistic realm -- one foot in the world's reality and the other in that place of artistic creation that dares to let the mind run wild.

I walked around Amsterdam for a couple hours after that, over cobbled streets and canal bridges. The city was clean and the mood bohemian. The next stop on my short tour was London and the National Gallery, but after the full immersion of the Van Gogh Museum, it felt like my journey into the life and works of Vincent Van Gogh had already come to an end.

London: National Gallery

The wonderful thing about travel, however, is that each day offers a fresh start. I was up at 4:30, eager to catch the train from Amsterdam's Centraal Station to the Hook of Holland, there to fulfill a desire to cross the English Channel in the manner used by Van Gogh when he traveled to London: by ship.

It was not to be. With the ferry not scheduled to depart until late afternoon, it would have been impossible to make the National Gallery before closing. I would be unable to meet my three-day travel goal. So when the little yellow train finally made its way back to Hook of Holland, I was waiting on the platform in the freezing rain, eager to make all haste for the airport. I was in London before noon, walking up the steps of the massive National Gallery and into that second floor wing reserved for artists living between 1700-1900. His work, particularly one of his four famous "Sunflower" paintings, hung in a high-ceilinged room filled with Impressionists. It was an appropriate spot, with the transitional feel of a cultural crossfade. Van Gogh was not actually an Impressionist, but an artist who helped bridge the gap between them and later artists such as Picasso.

With that, my Van Gogh grand tour was done. Three days, three cities, three museums, and a resonance that will last a lifetime. Next time, I will start in London. Then again, maybe next time I'll be chasing Turner, or Rembrandt, or some other entirely different artist. And, like the path of the creative process, who knows where that journey will take me.

Keep pushing... always

Comments

[Camille]

Whoa. I'm sitting here with a Van Gogh picture right here next to me on my kitchen wall (part of my collection of prints and books that do NOT do his work justice) and you just named my three favorite artists (three-way tie between Van Gogh, Gaughin and Pissarro) and several others who make me swoon (Turner most definitely), and I had my own head-butt gut punch in that very Amsterdam Van Gogh Museum... this is spooky. My college degree was in Art History but you know more about Van Gogh than I do, and I ate this post up like a decadent dessert after the Austin Marathon... thank you so, so very much for this early morning treat. Sigh, I would need a cigarette now but too bad I don't smoke. I should have known you were an art appreciater from the way you write... it's all clear to me now. Thank you Martin, this is now my Most Favorite dispatch of yours.

[Yvette]

Wow, I am blown away. You have now addressed two topics that for me are inextricably entwined: running and art. I discovered running as a college student spending a year in France and ran not as a form of exercise (at the time I was playing a lot of basketball and skiing) but as a release. I had never been surrounded by such beauty just outside my door. I watched with awe at the nuances of the scenery each season, and my senses were heightened by my exposure to the amazing paintings and sculptures I was encountering in my travels.

Reading your essay this morning reminded me of Proust's madeleine encounter: the Musee D'Orsay and Paris were the setting for a slew of life-changing episodes and thinking back to that time reopened those pages of my life.

Now those experiences are but a memory; my days are filled managing my sweet menagerie of boys. Thank you for transporting me back to a defining, carefree time. It serves as a reminder for me to never stop searching for those sublime moments that cannot be quantified.

[Theresa]

Martin, what a beautiful way to start the day. And it was a total surprise...and I was just reminded of a short trip to Chicago more than 20 years ago, my visit to the Art Museum. And also, the last time my Mother and I did something together in Kansas City. Visiting the Nelson-Atkins Museum for a traveling collection of impressionist work. That was in the 80's, and she died in Dec 89. Thank you so much for this essay.

[Robert Williams]

Beautifully written Martin.

[Robert Hudson]

Just catching up with you again after the TdF, nice to be back! Your writing is stirring. You have probably read M, by the Australian author Peter Robb, but if not, do yourself a favour. It did for me, ref Michelangelo Merisi (aka Carravaggio), what Van Gough did for you. Cheers mate.

[Barbara]

Thanks, Martin... I've been to all three museums to look at Van Goghs over the past 4 years. I was 22 (a very long time ago) when I first laid eyes on an original Van Gogh. All the historical mementos I had seen (Winston Churchill's baby clothes, Napoleon's tomb) failed to move me, but suddenly here I was standing before a painting with tears in my eyes. The wonder never goes away... the only difference is that it no longer surprises me.

[Alexander Barnett]

Since you are interested in Vincent’s life and work, you might want to look at the Notes section on www.theeyesofvangogh.com. I am the writer and director of the new independent film on his life.

[martin p. foster]

You may be interested in my new book "Night Cafe". It is 5 start rated , an interesting topic (VanGogh) and has great art work (By a Disney Artist). Book can be viewed on line with Borders, Barnes and Noble and Amazon.
Thanks,
Martin P. Foster
115 Jodie Dr,
Huntsville, Al 35811
1-256-776-8572
martinpfoster@bellsouth.net