Travel by DAR

Provence: In the Footsteps of Van Gogh

(First published in Esquire)

The French pronounce him "Van Gog." The Dutch, who stake an equal claim, "Van Hoch." The Japanese, who in their non-stop party zeal have paid the world's top price of $54 million for one of his paintings, have been known to call him "Van Go-Go." And in this corner, representing Americans, Don McClane feels moved to croon drippy lyrics in his name. First name.

Such has been the fate of the premier postimpres- sionist of the 19th century. Vincent Van Gogh has suffered to lend even his name to the world's common property pile, functioning like a pop Rorschach test to reveal more about the cultures beholding him than the man himself. His life has epitomized the cliche of the miserably misunderstood genius (see "Irony, artistic"): When he was reviled, he was reviled completely; now that he's adored, the adoration is blanket. And no where is this more true than in the environs of the town where he passed the most fecund, tortured period of his life, completing 325 canvasses in fifteen months, Arles in Provence.

Was ever a landscape so transformed by a single vision? To go there now is to feel you're trampling on canvas, as vista after vista springs forth like some hallowed paint-smeared memory. There are the irises, good lord; the very descendants of the ones he immortalized. The hay fields glisten, the sunflowers turn their heads to track the clouds, the cobblestone streets twist as they did when he stepped off the train 104 years ago (he was heading for the Mediterranean but finances stopped him here, an hour north). Following his footsteps to see the sites he painted -- the muddy Rhone and shimmering olive groves, the starry nights and whore houses -- is doubly haunting because not only have they hardly changed, they are disconcertingly close together: Van Gogh simply didn't have the cash to wander far from his lodgings.

Here, too, are the Roman ruins he painted with Gauguin. ("Every time we put shovel to the ground," moans the present day mayor of this archaeologically rich town, "we scratch another sarcophagus; we have to cover it back up until we get the funds to excavate properly.") As are the gypsies he painted with their horse-drawn wagons. (Though the gypsies are more likely, these days, to be pulling Winnebagos behind Saab turbos.) As is the 400 year old sanitarium where he was incarcerated by petition of the townsfolk. (It now houses a Van Gogh exhibit; see "Justice, poetic.") Most unchanging of all is the light: after a blow of the legendary mistral which occurs 265 days a year, the yellow sunlight slanting through rows of poplars becomes: Chartreuse? Saffron? Ochre? It's a light not unlike Southern Cal's, if truth be known, but French painters did not go-go there in the 1880's.

What has changed is the attitude towards Van Gogh. Schoolchildren today sing songs in his honor, where once they threw stones at his back (for a glimpse of what demented monsters they were, see his painting "Les Deux Filletes"). Where once he couldn't get pennies for a single painting with its ecstatic impasto technique, town fathers now eagerly cough up millions just to pay the insurance to get a bunch back for a centennial visit (including the painting of his doctor, which is said to have found contemporary use mending a chicken coop). Speaking of insurance, one local company today promotes its medical coverage with a blow-up of his bandaged ear self-portrait in its front window. "Too bad he didn't have our mental health policy," says the slogan. See "Taste, lousy."

But for a real earful of the old time music, pay a visit to someone who knew him. Yes, knew. Jeanne Calment was 13 when this odd bearded chap walked into her uncle's drapery shop to look over material he could stretch for canvas. She's 114 now (the oldest woman on record; a bona fide birth certificate hangs proudly on her nursing home wall), and when she opens her mouth to speak, it is the voice of 19th century Arles talking. "Ugly! A mad man! Sliced off his ear like a piece of cheese! Painted with too many colors, as if he'd emptied a tube of red on each of his subjects! Spent all his time drinking with prostitutes!" Muscular as a circus performer, with spittle firing from her gums and a knobby grip that stuns the nerve endings in your fingers, Miss Clement is still cheerfully slandering the man a century after he left town.

Compared to her, the rest of the landscape is soft as butter. You can join a tour with the other quarter million annual visitors to have it all pointed out ("Remember the room with the rush-seated chair on the red floor? It took a direct hit from the Allies after Normandy, but it used to be right where that yellow VW is parked"). Or you can strike out on your own to lose yourself among the umbrella pines, the velvety wines, the Provencal bullfights (in which, by contrast to Spanish bullfights, the animal is not killed, merely dis-earred -- psychologists take note).

You can also literally get lost. La Camargue, the Rhone delta that is one of Europe's most desolate spaces, is a vast welands just south of Arles filled with white horses, pink flamingoes, and egrets that make seagulls look dumpy as they hang stationery in the wind. It's out here, in a lonely sweep of salt pools, that no one takes liberties with Van Gogh's name, hellish iconclasm is not made the stuff of commerce, and you appreciate in windy silence how his beloved Provence inspired him to work that is as fresh, 100 years hence, as the hour he poked the paint on.

When he left Provence to return north, Van Gogh was 38. Within two months, he was dead by his own hand, gone to a place more peaceful -- but probably not so pretty by half.