MEETING VINCENT

There’s something disconcerting about Vincent Van Gogh that has always attracted me, even while I was in no position to understand the depth or the significance of his work.

I might still be not qualified enough to even appreciate him, but what to do; that enigmatic pull has only increased with time…!!!

Is it about his seemingly abandoned brush strokes? His romance with light and shade and withering flowers and earthy humans? Stories of his madness and eventual death under what could best be called mysterious circumstances?

Is it about his stolid, incessant quest for completion so wistfully portrayed in ‘Lust for Life’…a book that my generation was crazy about…!!

Or is it just about those listless monsoon evenings on the stairs of Calcutta University and my dear friend Kunal’s dusky rendition of Don McLeans ‘starry starry nights’…!!!

“Now I understand
What you tried to say to me…
And how you suffered for your sanity
And how you tried to set them free
They would not listen, they did not know how…”

I really don’t know. In all truthfulness I don’t want to know either.

But once in Paris, I knew I had to go meet Vincent…

The quest started with Muse Du Orsey. This was my first view of the museum, on-board a sunset cruise over Seine…

Orsey used to be a Railway station of yesteryear; now it probably houses the single largest collection of impressionist masterpieces.

How can I go meet Vincent without meeting the people who made his mind and shaped his ethos… that didn’t seem right …

Probably one of the rare instances where an artist took so much pain to paint an portrait of his own wife …lucky Ms Monet. The use of light dazzles, and promises a total shift in tradition… the modern era in painting has arrived with its bold strokes …

There are a whole lot of other impressionists from the era, most importantly Renoir and Pissaro; some other day for them, maybe.

For today, let’s track down Vincent, a floor below…

The museum has a separate section for the post-impressionists…Van Gogh, Cezanne, Gauguin and even a unfamiliar Picasso…early phase.

 This room is where Vincent had his famous fight with Gauguin and ended up going crazy …remember the ‘ear’ incident…!!!

This one is “Starry Night – Over the Rhone”.

The one with better recall is at MOMA New York – “The Starry Night”. Will be there someday…

Another masterpiece.

That reminded me…I have to go there to meet Vincent, it’s just 30 odd kms from Paris….

I have a strong feeling I might find him there… lazing around somewhere…

I was, in any case, running behind time…

I had to find time the next day to go meet Vincent.

While my son got busy improving his chess skills at Luxembourg Gardens and my wife and daughter enjoyed the manicured greens and cobbled streets of Paris, I took off for the countryside…

On my way to finding Vincent…I took the RER C line from Saint Michael; the station was walking distance from the airbnb at Latin Quarters where we were staying.

It’s a long way to Auvers Sur Oise…I took the route that would take me to Pontoise, and from there take another train to Auvers. At least that was the plan…

On the surface again, and back to sunshine; I saw a little girl dancing on the platform with casual abandon…

The train didn’t go all the way…dropped me down somewhere in the middle of nowhere. It was a rail-strike day at the land of liberty; I don’t even remember the name of the station…I was so irked.

Took another small train on a small line to another smaller station…still nowhere near my destination Pontoise…

And then a bus that’s connecting the Railway stations to make up for the train strike; with a bored conductor in a grouchy mood because he now has to do double duty…

One man’s trial is another man’s tribulation … but he took me for a ride anyways,

From Pontoise, it was still about 12 kms to Auvers. Another change of bus; the bus-ride there did exalt me with a good view of the French countryside … but since I didn’t know French, had to depend on the driver for directions.

Now that was a mistake…

I might have overestimated the popularity of the Dutch painter in a French countryside. The driver had no inkling of where to drop me off; but I had a gut feeling Vincent was somewhere nearby, and I might have left him a couple of miles back.

So I got down and started walking back…

That road sign was a relief for sure.

I must be closer now; in fact I got down the bus because I thought I had seen this, but one can never be sure unless you see something concrete …

I did collect some maps and booklets from the local tourist office but soon realized I really didn’t need them. The inn where Vincent stayed is merely 300 meters from the train station and its adjoining tourist office.

The maps are for free; no harm taking them, especially if you want to explore far-away spaces like Dr Gachette’s house and the Absynthe Museum.

And this is the inn where he stayed for the final 70 days of his life. Vincent painted over 80 pictures here, some of his best, including the Wheat Fields; they have maintained and conserved the façade just like it was about 120 years back…

That’s the staircase that Vincent might have taken to work every day; looks new, you say!!! But so does his paintings…

That skylight is the only source of light for the room.

Imagine stacking over 60 paintings in this small room with just a skylight…just close your eyes and absorb the smell of wet paint and varnish this room would have had.

That’s me…

I was too overwhelmed to ask for the name of the lady who took that picture…but I do remember her smile; she was from the south of India.

Right outside the inn…the community hall, or the Town Hall as they call it.

Another famous painting subject of Vincent still stands in its original glory. The hall is still active. A marriage was being held there…

I still haven’t met Vincent…for that matter…

After a few self-inflicted misdirection, time for a long walk by the wheat fields…without crows and bare minimum clouds!!! Well, you can’t have everything, can you?

Onto the village graveyard…but this is larger than I expected it to be…

The graveyard has quite a languid feel about it – surrounded by all sides with wheat and corn fields – and loads of open spaces. Nice place to lie down for a lifetime.

Well there he is…with his beloved brother Theo by his side.

Here he is at peace…

On my way back, saw the church again …
Remember the original from the Orsey museum?? That church still stands upright and functional…

On the day I visited, they were undertaking some repair work for a forthcoming festival…

Need to get back to Paris. It’s already late…and there’s just one direct train.

Its evening here in Paris…a city with lengthy summer- time twilight.

The Eiffel tower has started lighting itself up…putting up its best face to cater to the tourists….

For me…I have a pastel sky to carry back home.

And some memories.

“On that starry, starry night
You took your life, as lovers often do
But I could have told you, Vincent
This world was never meant for one
As beautiful as you…”

I feel this post would be incomplete without a flashback into my memories further back.

My friend Kunal Mukherjee is not a trained singer; but he sure can translate passion into tunes, when it comes to Vincent. An excellent painter himself, he always transfixed us with his husky rendition of Starry Nights when we feel the blues and grays in our lives.

To complete this post I asked him to sing again. And he obliged; again.