My InVincible Van Gogh

Vincent van Gogh has been an important part of my life ever since I read Irving Stone's heart-pounding Lust for Life while a somewhat callow undergraduate music and literature student at Eastern Michigan University in the early 60's.


While plowing through those fiery pages each morning over coffee at Roy's Squeeze Inn, a boxy little diner just off the edge of campus, I got to know both the fabled, quixotic artist and the sometimes colorful, sometimes brooding blue collar laborers who hopped up onto those red vinyl stools and shared fragments of their labor-intensive lives with me.

One of Vincent van Gogh's more than 

40 self portraits -- a tour de force of 

emotional intensity. His weariness glows

like two hot coals from within the 

lined and darkened caverns of his eyes.

Over the weeks that it took me to finish Stone's novel -- while not doing research or working toward proficiency as a musician -- I could be seen trudging around campus with my dog-eared Lust for Life under one arm, a corn-cob pipe in my mouth and, on my shaggy head of hair, a wide-brimmed straw hat that could have been snatched from van Gogh's head as he dozed in a field on the outskirts of Arles after another of his incendiary confrontations with paint and canvas.


Later, as the fruits of my tree of life ripened and I gained perspective on the world  beyond the disturbingly obtuse walls of academia, I came to understand that those humble, unpretentious people, with their gnarled, work-stained hands and furrowed brows, would more than a century ago have been the very lifeblood of Van Gogh's passionate convictions about what is phony and what is genuine about humankind.


All of the truths of the man were brought home to me yet again on the 18th of March, when I drove down to Newburyport, Massachusetts and attended Doug Brendel's masterful performance of Leonard "Star Trek" Nimoy's full length play, VINCENT.


On the tiny, makeshift stage on the second floor of the Newburyport Art Association, the star-struck life and monumental accomplishments of the Dutchman came vividly and movingly to life. In the words of Van Gogh's younger brother, Theo -- and then the words of Vincent himself -- we were reminded in the most elegant and moving way of the almost superhuman strength and resolve of this emotionally scarred artist. How any man or woman could have managed to create such a stunningly beautiful oeuvre of masterworks, while in the throes of such daunting physical and emotional trauma, defies logic and begs an explanation for the mysteries of the human spirit. His end-of-life output, painting by phenomenal painting, was beyond prolific and miraculously brilliant.


And his portraits of himself and others had the very essence of what it means to be human -- to be born, to exhult in life's beauty, to suffer unjustifiably, and then to die -- pouring out of their magnificently rendered eyes. David Hockney, the fabled British semi-abstractionist, who knew his Van Goghs and his Sargents as well as anyone in the Arts, saw the same inimitable greatness in those paintings. " I would go around the corner [of the gallery], and there's a Van Gogh portrait, and you just think, well, this is another level. A higher level, actually. I love the Sargent, but it's not the level of Van Gogh."


We all know by now a great many details about Van Gogh's life -- his life-long struggle to please his cruelly judgmental parents, his enormous insecurities, his failure to find a lasting love, and his untimely death at the age of 37.


Vincent Van Gogh paid an exhorbitant price for his hard-won understanding of the worst propensities of people. As Don McClean wrote so eloquently in his magnificent song, Starry Starry Night, This world was never meant for one as beautiful as [him]." Let those lyrics stand as a paeon to a supremely gifted but deeply troubled poet of the brush and the palette:

Couple Walking in Evening
by Vincent Van Gogh

Starry starry night, paint your palette blue and grey,
Look out on a summer's day, with eyes that know the darkness in my soul.

Shadows on the hills, sketch the trees and the daffodils,
Catch the breeze and the winter chills, in colors on the snowy linen land.

Now I understand what you tried to say to me --
How you suffered for you sanity how you tried to set them free!

They would not listen -- they did not know how -- perhaps they'll listen now.


Starry starry night, flaming flowers that brightly blaze,
Swirling clouds in violet haze reflect in Vincent's eyes of china blue.

Colors changing hue, morning fields of amber grain.
Weathered faces lined in pain are soothed beneath the artist's loving hand

Chorus:
For they could not love you, but still your love was true.

And when no hope was left in sight, on that starry starry night,
You took your life as lovers often do --

But I could have told you, Vincent,
This world was never meant for one as beautiful as you!

Starry, starry night, portraits hung in empty halls,
Frameless heads on nameless walls with eyes that watch the world and can't forget.

Like the stranger that you've met, the ragged man in ragged clothes,
The silver thorn of bloody rose, lie crushed and broken on the virgin snow.

Now I think I know what you tried to say to me --
How you suffered for you sanity, ow you tried to set them free.

They would not listen -- they're not listening still!
Perhaps they never will.


(Song by Don McLean)


                                                                 -- Commentary by Ross Bachelder
                                                                     Berwick, Maine
                                                                     March 21, 2012

A Line or Two about LITTER: Why on This Earth is It Happening?

St. Patrick's Day, 2012: I once made an assemblage comprised nearly entirely of litter, culled from a depressing but calculated one-day walking tour of 13 rain-soaked towns from Portsmouth, New Hampshire to Alfred, Maine. 


The Face of Litter I created and exhibited in various galleries -- a found object sculpture of sorts -- was built using a 100 year old handled, Protestant collection basket as its armature. My face's topography consisted of shards of glass, cigarette butts, scraps of candy bar labels, soft drink lids and other discarded items too numerous to catalogue in this commentary. I'm sure you could have just as easily filled out that face with your own often-seen litter, whose tasteless, senseless, ever-growing accumulation so ignomineously blankets Mother Earth from pole to pole and gutter to shrine, everywhere we travel.

Soft Drink Lid and Cigarette Butt, dumped in the
Parking Lot of Panera Breads in Dover, New Hampshire

The soft drink lid, straw and cigarette butt seen here came from the parking lot of Panera Breads in Dover, New Hampshre. Because of its friendly employees, beautiful architecture, fine food and classical music, Panera has become my favorite home-away-from-home destination.


And yet each morning, as I exit my Subaru and cut across the parking lot to sit and have my tea and toast over the New York Times, I'm inevitably annoyed, then angry, then  recurringly depressed to see evidence everywhere that not everyone who visits this establishment shares my deep appreciation for the beauty and utility of the Panera Bread facility.


How does one begin to explain the proliferation of litter in American culture? What are these litterers thinking when they so blithely toss their trash out the window of their car, then saunter into their store of choice with nary a twinge of guilt or social responsibility to becloud their sunny day?


As a country, we've become so innured to the ubiquitous presence of litter that even if we're offended at the sight of it, we ignore it. Perhaps that's because we know that the moment we pick up a fast-food wrapper or cigarette butt from the grounds of a school or church or convenience store, it will quickly and inevitably be replaced by something as bad or even worse than what offended us in the beginning.


Like the vast majority of business establishments we frequent as a necessary part of our days, Panera Bread appears not to have a plan to gather up the litter in their lot and discard it in a more responsible way. Like most of us, they're hardened to the reality of its presence on their property, so they appear to have given up. Perhaps they've joined the masses and have decided that what they've just stumbled over or gotten on their shoes was only an apparition -- and someone else's problem.


My answer to this scourge of contempt for the beauty and serenity of our surroundings has been more empirical than philosophical. Each time I visit Panera Bread, I stoop down and pick up one or two pieces of litter, then drop them into a trash container, either outside or within the facility.


Sure, it doesn't begin to match the dedication of that lonely traveler in Dover who for the past two decades has tramped around downtown Dover, picking up vast quantities of litter, putting them in his trash bag, and taking them away, leaving hard-won beauty and a certain environmental integrity in their place. This man is worth 50 do-nothing politicians and municipal employees who don't seem to give a damn about the relentless disrespect for and diminution of the beauty of their community.


This all reminds me of one of the finest public service television advertisements ever created: the poignant, provocative image of a proud American Indian, standing on the crest of a hill, shedding a beautiful but heart-breaking tear at the sight of the trash he sees scattered around the land that he and his people see as sacred -- land desecrated countless times each day by people who are careless, thoughtless and indifferent to the ideal of envrionmental responsibility.


If the litter you see around you each day was left by a teen-ager, one has to wonder: did that teen-ager's parents ever sit down and talk with him or her about the shamelessness of littering? Have you had that same meaningful talk with your children?


And if that same dispicable litter was left by you -- or some other allegedly responsible adult, perhaps even your neighbor -- then for God's sake, I implore you to sit down, turn off your television and think about the contemptible arrogance of what you'd just done! "Not my problem; someone else will clean it up!" is an inexcusable answer to the one question I have for you this morning: Why on this earth -- our one and only home -- do people litter? And why do they feel no guilt when they insult the members of their community in such a thoughtless, indefensible way?


              Ross Bachelder
              Berwick, Maine
              St. Patrick's Day, 2012

The Biennial Game, deCordova Style...

This time around, even though we're in the midst of what almost seems like Spring here in the Seacoast region, I won't try to play Mr. Nice Guy and hide my negative feelings. I'm back fresh from having attended the 2012 Biennial at the deCordova Museum and Sculpture Garden in Lincoln, MA, and as with all of the deCordova's ambitious exhibits, this one certainly did leave its mark on me. Just what kind of mark, and how deep, is the subject of this brief commentary.

Architectural detail of the one-time
home of Julian deCordova, now a
portion of the renowned deCordova
Museum. Photo by Ross 3 6 12.

To begin with, just the WORD "biennial" is irritating.  Few can remember how to spell it, and twice as many don't want to get caught trying to pronounce it at an opening reception where those dispicable  Lords of Political Correctness might be found lurking near the punch bowl and the crackers. The flies that congregate on the gallery cuisine on summer evenings are just a variation on that theme, and one cannot help but wish them and the PC crowd a speedy exuent.


But that's nothing compared to the chaotically unpredictable quality of the biennial itself as a concept. Whatever are the origins of a given biennial, and whatever its success or failure rate in the eyes of critics and the lay public, the biennial is here to stay. I've seen a few in my day here in northern New England, so I suppose that like everyone else, I have a right to my opinion.


Some biennials are supremely well conceived and fabulously successful. The 2011 Biennial at the Portland Museum in Maine was an example of the biennial at its very best: exciting, elegant, playful, more than sufficiently artful and joyfully unpredictable -- as good in both concept and detail, a few duds aside, as anything I've seen in Boston or other major population centers. I went away from that exhibit elated, motivated and fulfilled. Portland has a right to be button-poppingly proud of having created an environment that could bring about  such unimpeachable, across-the-board quality.


Other biennials are more disasterous than the midnight crash of two unwitting locomotives, neither of which appears to have had any idea where it was supposed to be going. A successful biennial may suddenly rise up like a dilectable mushroom in a less than superlative museum, and a real stinker may just as easily materialize in a museum that's nearly always at the top of its game in the matter of the quality of its regularly scheduled exhibits.

A bench at the deCordova Museum
in Lincoln, MA, waiting patiently
for Spring. Photo by Ross 3 6 12

As I see it, those two fated locomotives chose the deCordova as their crash site this time around, and it seems to me to have been an unlikely place for the two to tangle. I've seen many marvelously conceived and beautifully mounted exhibits at the deCordova, which for the past 20 years has been high on my list of must-see museums. Indeed, the Tools as Art exhibit, mounted several years ago at this esteemed museum, was one of the most intelligently designed and artfully mounted exhibits I've ever seen, featuring artists of astonishing inventiveness and consummate skill. I bought the commemorative book for that exhibit, and it continues to be one of my prize possessions.


And it goes without saying, really, that I will continue to praise the deCordova Museum, champion its cause and encourage my friends to go there and find the same pleasure that I have nearly always found while attending both the museum and its attendant sculpture garden -- a real gem and an accomplishment of which the deCordova family can be justly and eternally proud.


So how does one begin to explain the 2012 Biennial at the deCordova?


This exhibit was embarrassingly shallow and sophomoric. As a whole, it must have come across to many an experienced exhibit-goer as in many respects laughably silly and decidedly narcissistic: the whinings and yearnings of youthful artists with plenty of credentials and high-octane resumes, but little real substance.


Many of the artists in this biennial certainly showed us they've accumulated valuable skills from having spent hour upon hour, late at night, in their studios. But I went away from this exhibit with the gnawing conviction that the exhibit itself had no measurable pulse and no real soul -- that it was hardly half a step above what one might expect from an end-of semester "crit" at some I Wish I Were An Ivy League school. The movie Art School Confidential, that withering, brutally honest analysis of life in the prototypical art school, comes to mind.


Surely the curators must be held accountable. I have to assume that they and their jurors are responsible for the choice of this year's participants. But is not the host museum equally responsible for what comes together and lands on their walls?


I've no problem at all with an exhibit of any sort that doesn't quite come together -- that slips unwittingly beneath an institution's usual level of competence. What strikes me as hard to accept, though, is an exhibit that seems so poorly conceived that it fails on its own merits while embarrassing the museum that agreed to host it.


Why, for instance were nearly all of the participants in this biennial so youthful? Are the jurors working from a presumption that only the young can have vitality and imagination? Is a biennial merely a farm club for privileged undergraduates from prestigious halls of learning, instead of  the blessed showcase for an array of powerful, gifted, intellectually mature visions that it really ought to be?

Staircase to portions of the Sculpture
Garden at the deCordova Museum,
Lincoln, MA. Photo by Ross 3 6 12

 I don't begrudge the young their sometimes precocious accomplishments in the public arena, but the young cannot possibly be the sole source of accomplishment, and accomplishment without maturity of vision is not worth the cheap paper it was printed on.


Where was the evidence in this exhibit of genuine contemplation, borne of years of real-life experience? Where went the wisdom -- the artful ripening -- that one had a right to expect in an exhibit of this "importance," at least in the minds of its creators?


The answer might lie in looking for a way to break the strangle-hold of academia, with all of its reeking pretentions and hidebound ways, on the very idea of the biennial. My ideal would be to seek exhibitors from a broad, invigorating pool of people from all walks of life -- young and old, trained and untrained, conventional and unconventional.  A biennial should be about excellence, not about climbing, with privilege and pedigree as its twin nannies, from fancy school to public imprimature.


Perhaps a lottery system of some sort would engender fresh points of view and result in more evidence of genuine imagination. For me, the 2012 Biennial at the deCordova was a bit like a rather tedious duck-march of copycat aspirants to fame -- fame of the shallow, ephemeral kind that today's schools of art seem to be determined to sell, like some sort of  stimulating drug or designer chair --  instead of the disarmingly fresh and exhuberant display of inventiveness that one wishes a biennial would always be.

Ross Bachelder

Berwick, Maine

March 8th, 2012

Van Gogh in Philly: A Master Struts His Stuff...

When I heard my beloved Vincent Van Gogh was going to have 46 pieces from around the world at the Philadelphia Museum, I knew I just had to go to Philly and pay homage to one of the great visual arts innovators of our time. For this certified vanGoghphile, anything less would be unconscion-able. Besides, given what van Gogh has meant to me for so many years, what credible excuse would I have been able to fabricate for having missed such an event?

Visitors traversing the splendid corridor
just off the Lobby of  the Philadelphia

Museum, with visions of the magical,  
timeless Vincent dancing in their hearts.

So off I went by C&J Trailways to Logan Airport, early on the morning of February 21st. From there I caught an economy-class flight out of Boston, with Delta as my carrier. Keeping my costs down meant accepting without complaint the reality of connecting flights at Kennedy International on the way down and at Detroit Metro on the way home. And booking my hotel -- the beautifully re-decorated Wyndham Gardens -- as part of a fly-and-stay package through Orbitz kept the final figure at a respectable $307.00.


This will not be a work-by-work review of the exhibit. I simply wanted to take a moment to share with you my reaction to the exhibit -- how it struck me and what my pilgrimage meant to me.


Some critics couldn't resist panning the exhibit. Critics are humans, too -- I've been one -- and like everyone else, they're subject to predictable prejudices and dark moments. That's not going to change, so one mustn't lose sleep over it.


One prevalent criticism, laced through various newspapers across the country, was that the curators allowed works of lesser sophistication to seep into the exhibit. To me, this is silly and for the most part groundless. 


Seeing a handful of weaker works along with the more succulent fruits of an artist's labors ought to be seen as more a virtue than a vice, at least for those of us who care deeply for an artist of van Gogh's undeniable gifts. It is a reminder to all of us that no human being can possibly be expected to work at a heavenly pace of creativity 100% of the time. And when one loves the works of a particular artist, one can be expected to be intensely interested in -- and thankful for -- whatever works will increase our understanding of that artist's output and its contribution to the history of art.

Van Gogh Up Close,
Philadelphia Museum

So this exhibit, which we were quite understandably not allowed to photograph, was 95% spectacular and 5% perhaps a little shakey. But who can honestly say that those few weaker works -- if indeed they really were "weak" -- somehow sullied the reputation of either the artist or the Philadelphia Museum?


I've nothing but the highest praise for the curators who put this exhibit together. And the Philadelphia Museum -- a fine museum with marvelous masterworks in its collection, presented in a very beautiful setting -- deserves equal praise for hosting an exhibit of such high caliber, an exhibit that allowed people across the country to see 46 extraordinary van Gogh works assembled under one roof and, given the remarkable efficiency of Philly's public transporttion system, really quite easy to get to. 


Need I really say it? Not all of us can get to Amersterdam, especially in tough economic times, so this was a fine opportunity to rub shoulders with an indisputable master, then come away made better and wiser for the encounter.


My one gripe about my tour of Vincent van Gogh Up Close was in no way exclusive to the Philadelphia Museum. On the contrary, it has become a silent scourge of sorts, all across this country and far beyond -- an unavoidable consequence of touring any blockbuster exhibit. I'm talking about the maddening problem of clusters of visitors with headphones, congregating like grazing, self-absorbed cattle, chewing their auditory cuds in front of work after work, oblivious to the fact that they're in the way of others who are just as eager to get near those works but want to worship at the altar without the help of canned commentary.

Downtown Philly, seen from the grand staircase of the
Philadelphia Museum of Art -- Photo by Ross, February, 2012

I strongly suggest that every museum schedule an hour or two of headphone-free viewing every day for those of us who see it as an intrusion on a more meditative way of experiencing art. That way, we can schedule ourselves for an experience more to our liking, without compromising the rights and tastes of those who can't figure out how to enjoy an art exhibit without having someone else tell them what they're seeing.


I'd also like to suggest to those legions of headphone-dependent art lovers that before attending their next blockbuster exhibit, they try reading in some depth about the artist they want so badly to see. It might come as a shock to them that they're capable of viewing an exhibit without that auditory crutch that represents only one particular point of view and implies, somehow, that the viewer couldn't possibly be capable of interpreting the exhibit as he or she sees fit.


Try it sometime. A blockbuster tour sans headphones can be a liberating experience and a reminder that thinking for oneself -- a lost art in these days of easy conformity -- can be a blessed event that leads to greater understanding of the world around us, including the galleries we so revere. I've a hunch our beloved Vincent would appreciate the courtesy, too.


                                                                                                 -- Ross Bachelder
                                                                                                    Berwick, Maine
                                                                                                     March 8, 2012