THE DREAM OF VAN GOGH Jordi Rodríguez-Amat |
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There was a queue to buy the ticket to the Musée d'Orsay. I had to wait almost ten minutes or more to buy it. It cost me 11 Euros. Today, I still remember when the building was a train station. Later, before being restored and dedicated to a museum, Jean-Louis Barrault, in a very big tent, performed plays. This happened after May of 1968 when he was dismissed from the Odéon theater where, in the middle of the sixties, he directed and acted in different theatrical works. In my memory, it remains alive, among many others, Des journées entières dans les arbres de Marguerite Duras. Another of the pieces that I will remember all my life was Oh les Beaux Jours (Happy days) by Samuel Beckett performed by the great Madeleine Renaud in the Petit Odéon. Today, just as I entered the museum, I found myself in the exact place where the tent was situated. Another piece that still remains alive in my memory is Sous le vent des îles Baléares 4ème Journée du "Soulier de satin" by Paul Claudel. After the performance, Jean-Louis Barrault himself used to have a talk in the hall of this improvised theater with those people who wanted to participate in this colloquium. He, always with a glass of wine Cabernet d'Anjou rosé in his hand, commented and answered our questions. Today, both, Jean-Louis Barrault and Madeleine Renaud have long left us, but the images of all those experiences remain forever in my memory. Now for many years, the Gare d'Orsay has become one of the most important museums in Paris. The old clock of the station is there functioning perfectly. Before starting my tour in the museum, I sat on a bench, not far away from the entrance, with a small brochure in my hand, with the different floors of the entire museum, indicating the works and the artists of each one. So, I was preparing my spirit for the contemplation and delight of the works. I know the museum very well, because I often go to Paris and, every time, I visit this museum in order to be able to enjoy the French art of the nineteenth century one time more. Even in my memory, the images of the old museum called Le Jeu de Paume are still alive, where, during the sixties, I had already seen and admired the works of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist French painters. Now, sitting on a bench of the Gare d'Orsay Museum, I was contemplating the atmosphere that breathed these spaces. After no more than two or three minutes, when a bearded man approached me and, with a trembling voice, speaking a strange French, asked me where we were and what this place was. I looked at him carefully and I thought that his face was exactly the one of the painter Vincent Van Gogh. I was totally shocked and for a moment I thought I was dreaming. I rubbed my eyes and asked him to turn his head. I saw that he had just one ear, the other had been cut off. I looked around to try to find out if people notice this character and see if it seemed also strange to them, but nobody paid any attention. It was as if that character did not exist. I thought I was dreaming. I had read Freud's Dream Interpretation for some time and remembered one of the chapters: Dreaming is a realization of desire. I touched my hands and face and asked this person to shake my hand. No, I wasn’t dreaming, he was there, Vincent Van Gogh. I even came to think that this character had disguised himself as Van Gogh. He saw that I did not know what to say, but after a minute or two, I asked him to sit by my side. In an absolutely unconscious way, I thought again: dreaming or not, I found myself next to a mythical character, although real or not, instinctively, I said to myself, try to start a friendship with him. Such a possibility is not presented every day. To confirm the authenticity of the character I asked him several questions: Is your name Vincent and do you have a brother called Theo? His answer was affirmative and, besides, he asked me how I knew it. Without answering, I asked him if he had been born in Holland. Now he was the one who was stunned. How did you know all this? he asked me again. I, always with a high degree of disbelief, continued to think that the man had disguised himself and let people think that he was Van Gogh. What astonished me up was the fact that people did not pay attention to the character. They did as if they were not seeing him or for them it was an absolutely normal fact to see him in that place. I called him Vincent, because that was his name. He, being astonished, asked me to tell him where we were and what this place was. I cautiously asked him if he knew what a museum was and his answer was affirmative. In Paris, he told me, that he had visited the Louvre museum many times. After explaining to him that many of his paintings were there, I had the feeling that he wanted to go, as if he was afraid. What are my paintings doing here? He asked me again. Vincent, I continued, do you know that you are a very famous painter, one of the greatest creators of modern art? Without being able to speak of stupor, his face, between suspicious and skeptical, was completely transformed. However, his response was forceful: I want to see them. Before all I asked him where he lived here in Paris and he told me he was not living in Paris. A month ago he returned to Auvers-sur-Oise where he had a room rented at the Ravoux hostel. I kept thinking, I am dreaming or he’s making fun of me. I asked him if, before going to see his paintings, we could go to have a coffee and we went to the Café Campana next to the gallery of the Impressionists. I asked for a coffee with milk and a croissant, he asked me to tell the waiter that he wanted a glass of absinthe. He drank it in just one sip and he said that he wanted another. With his eyes, he analyzed everything; the lights, the tables, the people. I did not stop being surprised, because I saw that, despite his face and how he was dressed, no one in the environment paid attention to him. Was I dreaming again? I was constantly asking myself, but no, the coffee with milk, the croissant, the waiter and all of the place around me was real. I called the waiter and I asked him: do you know who this man is? What man? was his answer. Now it was me who did not know what to say or what to think. I asked Vincent to touch me. It was clear to me that by my side there was a man and that man was Vincent Van Gogh. I thought that my surprise, filled with stupefaction, was not an obstacle to continue talking with him. After a little while he asked me who I was and what we were doing there. He was surprised that we were dressed the way we were. After another little while, he told me he was leaving his brother’s home, where he had been having dinner with the art critic Albert Aurier and his friend Toulouse Lautrec and that, seeing some machines with four wheels in the streets that ran alone, he entered this place because he was afraid. Did you have to pay the ticket? What is this? He asked me. Nobody sees him, no one realizes it. Am I the only person who sees him? Is he a ghost? In my mind, the memories of the art studies and the knowledge that I had of all the art of Paris at the end of the 19th century, appeared and obviously there was an art critic called Albert Aurier and, without any kind of doubt, Van Gogh knew Toulouse Lautrec. At that moment I remembered the article that Albert Aurier wrote about Vincent Van Gogh at the Mercure de France in January 1890 where, among many other things, he said, ... flamboyant silhouettes ... flamboyant landscapes ... manly temperament ... enemy of bourgeois sobriety ... a giant drunk spell ... a boiling brain ... a terrible and frightened genius ... a dreamer ... living of ideas and dreams ... Unconsciously I looked at my watch: half past eleven, the 6th of July 1890, just the day Van Gogh in Paris found himself in the house of his brother with Aurier and Lautrec. Oh! No! Just three weeks before July 27th, the day when Vincent committed suicide. I was afraid. What can I do? I looked at his forehead. I saw the destiny described on it and I felt that the destiny could not be stopped. Vincent, I said, don’t do it, but neither you nor me can prevent our final destination; I was in front of a dead man. I asked the waiter to come. A glass full of absinthe for me. You still have not drunk the coffee with milk, he told me, and now you want a glass of absinthe? Yes, and very full. Vincent told me; I want another. Waiter, two glasses. Lord, will you take the coffee with milk or not? No, please take it away. And the croissant? You can also take it. The dream is, said Freud, the realization of desire. What do I want? Am I, myself, Vincent Van Gogh, and am I making a kind of metamorphosis from my person in that of Vincent? Will I be transformed into the ghost I have beside me? Will I be myself this individual that nobody, except me, sees? I looked at the top of the table. There were two empty glasses. I had only drunk one of them, the other had been drunk by Vincent. By the way I looked at the waiter and realized that he was looking at me. He must have been thinking that I drank the two glasses but Vincent was there by my side. I asked the waiter to come. I took Vincent's hand and said to the waiter: Please, touch this man’s hand. He did not respond and he left. He talked to a waitress behind the counter and they both stared at me. At the next table there was a couple who, when I spoke with Vincent, did not stop watching me. After a while, the man asked: Who are you talking whit ? I answered him: with Van Gogh. Without saying anything, they got up and left. I have the ability to ignore what others think or do and I continued to talk with Vincent. Now we were friends. I said to myself; I'm talking with a dead man, but Vincent was there by my side and we were talking. After a long time talking to him, I had the feeling that I became his confessor. One of his reflections was: I have voluntarily submitted myself to the economic help of Theo, my brother. My creative effervescence did not allow me to accept any job other than painting and, like my brother did, to make a family life. I cannot live without colors, light, my passion will lead me to suicide. We kept talking and my passionate admiration for him forced me to metamorphosed myself into him. It was at this time when I decided to go to the second floor of the museum, room 71, where my works are. Here, among many other works, are L'église d'Auvers-sur-Oise, the portrait of Dr. Gachet, my room in Arles, one of the self-portraits painted in 1889. At once, the places and the people I had known appeared in my memory. The memory, I thought, is the capacity of reviving images and sensations captured by the senses. I wanted immortality, I was going with a safe step, but the time, I felt, went irretrievably. I looked at my watch again: half past twelve, July 22, 1890. Still five days more. No, I will not do it, I said. Fate, however, is irrevocable. There is a predestination. I cannot even avoid it. My misfortune has no other solution. At times I hate society, the world, myself. God, why do you allow me to suffer? Why do you force me to my destiny? People who love me will suffer. I am a burden to my brother. I cannot accept it. Yes, I know, suicide is a path. Easy or difficult? I do not want to fall into a bourgeois life, but I want to paint. I have passed David, Ingres, even Rembrandt. It was easy for them. I submit myself to the colors: yellow, red, green ... The chromatic accords boost the spirit. Clouds, stars, fields….. love. I want to transform the tones and all the colors into musical notes. Dream in the future, but fate comes close. Dead and buried, I will talk. I will talk with my works to other generations. I have succeeded, I will be immortal. I am the own portrait of myself, of the artist who has dreamed, who has won and who has finally succumbed to his own destiny. The sunflowers .... I'm scared ... The clock: ten in the morning, July 27 ........... I risk my life and my reason half melted....... July 29, half past one at night..............Destiny is fulfilled. Jordi Rodríguez-Amat September 2014 |
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