That night I ate a dinner of omelet and salad in a smoky café in
lively Montmartre, then found a room in a small artist's hotel
where a fat furry cat slept on the front desk. 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 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 next to the
Rijksmuseum (the nation's largest museum, featuring a wide
collection of Dutch masters such as Rembrandt and Vermeer, and more
than a million objects of painting and sculpture), its 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 Goghs inside that space than anywhere else in the
world. Elaborate signs in English and Dutch explain where each work
was painted and its significance in van Gogh's life. The works are
arranged chronologically, making it possible to see his transition
from fledgling artist to creative visionary. The paintings 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.