I am currently staying around the corner from here. You keep walking down this street, past the cafe about twenty feet, turn left, then another block, and that’s where I am right now. It’s of course called La Cafe Nuit and Cafe Van Gogh now – not its original name – and they’ve since restored it to the way it used to be, so it’s not the original decor. But my, people do like to take pictures of it.
Speaking of, once I can upload photos here, I will show you my photo…
Today, walking around in the Southern light, soon to see the Rhone and many other places you painted, as well as the hospital they sent you to when the incident of the ear occurred; now called L’Espace Van Gogh.
You wouldn’t believe it if you saw it, Vincent.
Then again, you are probably laughing at it from somewhere up in the stars.
Tags: Arles, life, light, start, Travel, YellowEurope
I am about to leave for Arles from Northern Spain. I am very happy that this is my last stop because this is where you really found yourself, Vincent. It is also where I believe you lost yourself.
It is there you painted Starry Night over the Rhone, there you painted the night cafe, there you met the sun of the south, discovered your Japan as you called it, and set yourself free in paint.
Instead of everything ending at your grave, it ends with light.
And color.
Tags: Arles, death, life, light, start, Travel, YellowEurope
I have so very many photos, I think I will have to parse them out in little packages of stories and share them with you all that way when I get back.
But for now, I wanted to show you the church at Auvers-sur-Oise, because it seriously might be my favorite place of worship in the world. Last week, I saw the painting first, at Musee d’Orsay. I can’t possibly capture this radiant blue, but here maybe you can catch a few of the details, and what an incredible painting it is. Very interesting is the length of the church’s shadow in contrast to the sky – it leaves the time of day a bit “flexible”…
Although I still think it was probably done midday, and the sky was just too brilliant to ignore.
I love the detail of this figure, making the church the every day building it is.
The following day, I was lucky enough to see the real thing, and it took my breath away.
They are doing work to restore it, obviously, but this is the angle from which he painted it. They have signs all over Auvers marking where and what he painted…
It was in Auvers where Vincent lived out the last 70 days of his life, creating over 70 paintings during those days. At the end, he shot himself in the chest, in a nearby field of wheat. Unfortunately, he missed his heart, and it took him a day and a half to die. He passed this church on his way to the fields, on his way stumbling back into town, and then in his coffin on the way to his grave.
At the cemetery, I was devastated. I have made you so alive, so a part of my life, Vincent, that I was stunned by your grave. It was the loss of a loved one. I could not leave right away nor could I stay in the cemetery, so I went and sat alongside the church and cried for some time. The exquisite light of dusk kept me company, and the cool breeze wrapped around me in an embrace.
Thank you. I needed that.
Tags: Auvers, beauty, change, church, death, europe, Travel, YellowEurope