Experience Virtual Myanmar

TAKE A VIRTUAL MYANMAR TOUR

READ FYLLIS HOCKMAN’S ARTICLE: MYANMAR, A COUNTRY OF CONTRASTS: PAGODAS, CULTURE AND CONTROVERSY

Experience a Virtual Great Migration in Serengeti

TAKE A VIRTUAL SERENGETI GREAT MIGRATION TOUR

READ STEVE ROSENFIELD’S SERENGETI: THE GREAT MIGRATION

Experience a Virtual Path of Vincent van Gogh

TAKE A VIRTUAL PATH OF THE VINCENT VAN GOGH TOUR

READ ED BOITANO’S IN THE PATH OF VINCENT VAN GOGH

Experience a Virtual Buddy Guy

WATCH A VIRTUAL BUDDY GUY PERFORMANCE

READ T.E. MATTOX’S ARTICLE ABOUT BUDDY GUY

Experience a Virtual Tour of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West

TAKE A VIRTUAL TALIESIN WEST TOUR

READ SUSAN BRESLOW’S FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT’S TALIESIN WEST

Experience a Virtual World War 2 German U-Boat 995

TAKE A VIRTUAL U-BOAT 995 TOUR

READ JOHN CLAYTON’S POST ON U-BOAT 995

Experience Virtual Irresistible Nashville

TAKE A VIRTUAL NASHVILLE TOUR

READ RICHARD CARROLL’S IRRESISTIBLE NASHVILLE

The post Yes, Even More BEST Virtual Vacations from T-Boy appeared first on Traveling Archive.

Vincent van Gogh’s Final Days in Auvers-sur-Oise

Ask the general populace to name a famous painter, and they’d probably say Dutch painter, Vincent van Gogh. Today his paintings command staggering purchase prices, with his Portrait of Dr. Gachet, painted the last year of his life in Auvers-sur-Oise, selling for 152 million dollars in today’s currency.

I finally caught up with up with  van Gogh in the charming French village of Auvers-sur-Oise, just 16.9 miles by train and a world away from the riveting pulse of Paris. This is where Van Gogh spent the final two-month of his life; a period of intense prolificacy, creating over eighty, almost violent paintings, and 64 sketches.   Many are considered masterpieces, such as Crows over Wheatfield, Portrait of Dr. Gachet and Church at Auvers. I had journeyed there to walk the self-guided Vincent van Gogh Trail.  You simply follow the path where many of his works were painted, and then stop at posted landmarks, which feature a reproduction of one of his paintings, overlooking the exact place where he painted it. It’s mesmerizing; you actually see what he saw when painting one of his many landscapes or village streets. I was surprised that not one of Van Gogh’s original paintings was on display in Auvers-sur-Oise, but you can clearly feel his spiritual presence. You’ll see the modest village houses, the town hall and the church Notre-Dame-de-l’Assomption, pretty much unchanged since van Gogh painted them.

The pilgrimage continued with the much anticipated tour of van Gogh’s modest attic room in Auberge Ravoux where he died from a self-afflicted gunshot wound. Often called The House of Van Gogh, the room has remained vacant since his death; not because it was where van Gogh took his last breath, but due to the French superstition of never renting a room where someone has died. There was a sense of hushed reverence as our small group followed our guide up the sacred stairs. As we quietly assembled in the little room, I felt that I already knew this Spartan-like dwelling from Vincent’s paintings; which along with his quarters in Arles, is one of the most famous rooms in art history. But to see it, smell it and feel it in person moved me to the depths of my soul. Our guide gave a heartfelt account of Vincent’s last two days in the room; so heartfelt, that she actually wept.

A final walk up a little hill leads to the cemetery where the unassuming graves of Vincent and his art dealer brother Theo, who had supported him most of his life, are buried side by side.

PISA – Leaning Bell Tower of Pisa

Yes, it really does lean. In fact, it started to lean during construction in 1178, before builders had even reached its third story. Over the next 800 years, it became clear that the 180 ft. white-marble cylinder wasn’t just learning, but was actually falling at a rate of 3 ft. per year. This was due to an unstable foundation of shifting soft soil, fine sand and shells – an engineering debacle flawed from the beginning – which could not properly support the structure’s weight. To compensate for the tilt, the next eight-stories were built slightly taller on the short side in an attempt to compensate for the lean. However, the weight of the extra floors caused the Romanesque-style tower to sink further and lean more. Because of this, the tower is curved. Numerous efforts throughout time have been made to restore the bell tower to a vertical symmetry. In 1964, the Italian government insisted on retaining the current tilt, due to the money-making role that the Tower played in promoting tourism to Pisa.  Today, only groups of 30 are allowed inside at once, and are welcome to scale the 251 steps from the bottom to the top of the Pisa Tower. The Tower’s bells have long been silenced as their movements could worsen the lean of the bell tower further.

Throughout the years, we’ve all seen endless photos of the Leaning Tower, but to witness it in person was a monumental occasions. I was unaware that the Tower stands on a pristine green-expanse inside the medieval walls of the Square of Miracles. The piazza is also shared by the white marbled Cathedral of Pisa, the Baptistery – famous for its acoustics, demonstrated by singers daily – and Capuano Monumental Cemetery, made with 53 shiploads of earth brought back from the Hill of Calvary in Jerusalem.

Princess Grace in Monaco

In 1956, Monaco’s Prince Rainier III married Hollywood Royalty in the name of 26-year-old Grace Patricia Kelly.   Her acting career and striking refined beauty had already made the daughter of a wealthy Philadelphia socialite family an international household name. She had appeared in John Ford’s Mogambo;  The Country Girl, for which her deglamorized performance earned her an Academy Award for Best Actress in the otherwise dismal film;  High Noon;  and three Alfred Hitchcock masterpieces, Dial M for Murder, Rear Window and To Catch a Thief. Prince Rainier, always desperate for money, met with billionaire shipping tycoon, Aristotle Onassis,  who suggested the prince find a Hollywood beauty to marry. Aristotle believed the added media publicity would attract more investment opportunities and make the principality a greater alluring destination for tourists. Rainier jumped at the idea. His first choice was Marilyn Monroe, who  laughed at the thought, but did jokingly say, “Give me two-days alone with him and of course he’ll want to marry me.” A meeting was arranged with Kelly while she was in the Riviera filming the last stages of To Catch a Thief. It wasn’t love at first sight for Kelly, but the prince was relentless, initiating a long correspondence by mail, which eventually led to their marriage. Rainier received a two-million dowry  from Kelly’s family for the union to proceed, insisted that Kelly take a fertility test, give up acting and banned the screening of all her movies in Monaco. The marriage was described as the wedding of the century. Following a long honeymoon cruise, Her Serene Highness Princess Grace devoted her life to raising three-children, and then founded the World Association of Friends of Children, based on her vision that every child, whatever their social, religious or cultural origins are, would have the capacity to live in dignity and security;  and the Princess Grace Foundation, to support local artists and craftsmen. In 1982, tragedy struck when Princess Grace was driving her Range Rover down a steep road and suffered a minor stroke. She lost control of the vehicle which violently plunged 120 feet off a cliff.

Princess Grace passed away the next night. Her death was a shock to the entire world, and her funeral, like that of Princess Diana, was watched by millions of people around the globe. With the death of Rainier in 2005, Prince Albert II assured the succession of the over 700-year-old House of Grimaldi.

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Ask the general populace to name a famous painter, and they’d probably say Dutch painter, Vincent van Gogh. Today his paintings command staggering purchase prices, with his Portrait of Dr. Gachet, painted the last year of his life in Auvers-sur-Oise, selling for 152 million dollars in today’s currency.

During his ten short years as a painter, he only sold one painting, and that was to his young art dealer brother, Theo van Gogh, who supported Vincent financially throughout most of his life. His years have been well-documented in films: Vincente Minnelli’s Lust for Life (which Kirk Douglas called his favorite film role); Alain Resnais’ short documentary, Van Gogh;, Robert Altman’s Vincent & Theo; Maurice Pialat’s Van Gogh; and avant garde painter Julian Schnabel’s At Eternity’s Gate with  Willem Dafoe in the title role. Van Gogh is also well represented in print. For an immediate read, visit Vincent van Gogh: The Letters, where all his written correspondence is presented in a web edition.

“How can I be useful, of what service can I be?
There is something inside me, what can it be?”

– Vincent van Gogh

Backstory

Vincent Willem van Gogh (1853 – 1890) was born in the southern Netherlands into an upper middleclass Dutch family; his father a minister of the Dutch Reformed Church. In Dutch, his surname is pronounced ‘vun Khokh.’ Prior to be being a painter, van Gogh had been a junior clerk at an art firm, teacher, bookseller, art student and preacher. His commission as a lay preacher in the Borinage mining region of Belgium was spent helping coal miners in their horrific existence. Vincent lived among the miners and their families, sharing their poverty and sleeping on the floor. He would literally give the very shirt off his own back. His dedication was such that he was nicknamed The Christ of the Coal Mine. With his sloppy attire and unorthodox manner of ‘bringing God down to the miners,’ the ministry’s elders found his style not in the same vein as their dignified, buttoned up theology, and did not renew his contract. At age 30, van Gogh decided to dedicate his life completely to art. After a short stay in The Netherlands, he moved to the town of Arles in the south of France – also a favorite of the Impressionists because of the bright Mediterranean sunshine which created vivid colors and blue skies. He changed his style to impressionistic-influenced bursts of color and rough brush strokes done in thick impasto. His theme eventually focused on nature and brooding self-portraits, mainly due to his lack of money to hire a model.  This is where he created many of his greatest paintings. Every act of his life was of a deeply felt sense of fervency, which transitioned into his art, where every move of his paint brush was done with profound intensity. Regardless of the subject matter, all his work is about himself.

“I dream of painting and then I paint my dream.”

– Vincent van Gogh

For many, Vincent is best known for his mental instability, suffering from psychotic episodes and delusions, which resulted in self-imposed tenures in an asylum under the care of Dr. Gachet, also a painter. A sensationalistic incident where he slashed off his left earlobe with a razor, purportedly after an argument with post-impressionist painter, Paul Gauguin, added to his reputation as ‘the unkempt, mad painter.’ Gauguin had been a stockbroker and Sunday painter under the guidance of impressionist painter, Camille Pissarro. He left his career to take up painting full time, and his family promptly threw him out of the house. Penniless, Theo suggested that he should share a room with van Gogh to save money. It was an arrangement which immensely pleased van Gogh due to his loneliness and attraction of having long discussions about art with another painter. For Gauguin it was the opposite, and he bailed for Tahiti, where he created a body of work, which depicted Polynesian nature and culture, especially pubescent girls, rendered in solid outlines and vivid color. He died at the age of 54 from symptoms related to syphilis. Little did either painter know that their works of art would later sell for unimaginable prices.

Final Days in Auvers-sur-Oise

I finally caught up with van Gogh in the charming French village of Auvers-sur-Oise, just 16.9 miles by train and a world away from the riveting pulse of Paris. This is where Van Gogh spent the last days of his life. His final two-month period was his most intense and prolific, creating over eighty, almost violent paintings, and 64 sketches.   Many are considered masterpieces, such as Crows over Wheatfield, Portrait of Dr. Gachet and Church at Auvers. I had journeyed there to learn more about van Gogh and walk the famous self-guided Vincent van Gogh Trail.  You simply follow the path where many of his works were painted, and then stop at posted landmarks, which feature a reproduction of one of his paintings, overlooking the exact landscape where he painted it. It’s mesmerizing; you actually see what he saw when painting one of his many landscapes or village streets.

I was surprised that not one of Van Gogh’s original paintings was on display in Auvers-sur-Oise, but you can clearly feel his spiritual presence. You’ll see the modest village houses, the town hall and the church Notre-Dame-de-l’Assomption, pretty much unchanged when Van Gogh painted them. Besides negotiating the Vincent van Gogh Trail, you can stroll further through town and visit Dr. Gachet’s house, which is now a museum. The tour showcases the rooms where Dr. Gachet treated van Gogh with homeopathic remedies and where they painted together in his garden. The village itself is a bit of a horizontal sprawl, and a pair of solid walking shoes is essential

On the evening of July 27, 1890, Vincent van Gogh stumbled back to his tiny room at the Auberge Ravoux. Alarmed by his groans, the innkeeper looked in on the artist and found van Gogh doubled over in pain from a gunshot wound to his stomach. The innkeeper summoned the village doctor, and van Gogh requested that Dr. Gachet come as well. After examining the patient, the doctors concurred that it was not possible to remove the bullet. Gachet filled a pipe, lit it and placed it in the artist’s mouth. Van Gogh puffed quietly away, while the doctor sat at his side and painted a canvas of him, at van Gogh’s request. Theo heard the news the next day and rushed to Auvers to be by his brother’s side. Comforted by Theo’s presence, van Gogh told his brother, “I wish I could pass away like this.” He purportedly whispered to Theo that he shot himself in the chest and missed, resulting in the bullet entering his stomach. He apparently passed out, and then was revived when the weather cooled down. His next step was to shoot himself again in a more fatal part of his body, but he could not find the gun. “I would have thought that as I passed out the gun would have remained in my hand: I doubt if I would have thrown it far.” Vincent, however, was unable to find the gun, and staggered home.

“Paintings have a life of their own that derives from the painter’s soul.”

– Vincent van Gogh

The disappearance of the murder weapon resulted in a series of conspiracy theories. There were long debates whether he committed suicide or was shot by an unnamed person. Never popular wherever he lived and painted, villagers often considered him a dangerous madman dressed in rags. Children would mock van Gogh, throwing rocks and dirt clods at him while he painted. Some researchers argue that van Gogh was accidentally shot by two young boys playing with a gun nearby. There is even one theory that he was murdered by Wild Bill Cody (really) when he was visiting Auvers-sur-Oise on the same day.

The mystery finally came to rest when a corroded revolver was discovered, buried in a wheat field, by a farmer in 1965. Lauded as the most famous weapon in art history, an unnamed buyer bought the 7mm caliber Lefaucheux revolver for about $212,000. The gun’s trigger is pulled back, frozen in place, cementing the moment where it would have dropped from Van Gogh’s grasp.

The origin of the gun was investigated by the writer Alain Rohan in his 2012 book, Did We Find the Suicide Weapon? Rohan presents arguments in favor of its authenticity: “Its caliber matches the bullet retrieved from van Gogh’s body, scientific studies show that the gun had been in the ground since the 1890s, and it is a lower-power gun, which could potentially explain the artist’s prolonged death.”

“I put my heart and my soul into my work, and have lost my mind in the process.”

– Vincent van Gogh

A month before his death, he wrote to Theo that his series of painted wheat fields didn’t take much effort to express sadness and extreme loneliness. Van Gogh’s growing sense of distress was exacerbated with news that Theo was experiencing financial problems of his own, which would mean a greater hardship in supporting him. Plus, he was subsiding mainly on coffee, tobacco, and the highly alcoholic beverage, absinth. While Gachet attended to his wounded friend, he still expressed his wish to somehow save him. “Then it has to be done all over again,” replied van Gogh. It is still not exactly clear why van Gogh chose to end his life, but by committing the tragic act so close to the setting of the hauntingly stark Crows over Wheatfield merits much thought.

The journey back in time continued with the much anticipated tour of van Gogh’s modest attic room in Auberge Ravoux where he died. Often called The House of Van Gogh, the room has remained vacant since his death; not because it was where van Gogh took his last breath, but due to the French superstition of never renting a room where someone has died. There was a sense of hushed reverence as our small group followed our guide up the sacred stairs. As we quietly assembled in the little room, I felt that I already knew this spartan-like dwelling from Vincent’s paintings; which along with his quarters in Arles, is one of the most famous rooms in art history. But to see it, smell it and feel it in person moved me to the depths of my soul. Our guide gave a heartfelt account of Vincent’s last two days; so heartfelt, that she actually wept.

“The sadness will last forever.”

– Vincent van Gogh

A final walk up the little hill leads to the cemetery where the unassuming graves of Vincent and Theo rest, buried side by side.

If You Go

Tourist Office of Auvers-sur-Oise

Van Gogh Route in Auvers-sur-Oise

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