Yes, I know that the American pronunciation of Van Gogh as "Van Go" is annoying to all right-thinking people, but it makes a nice header for the post. Besides, "our" version as "Van Goff" is only marginally closer to the actual Dutch, probably for reasons of decorum. I mean, seriously? Can you imagine a seminar in which all three versions are in competition, or worse, a roomful of English-speaking pedants all using the correct, throat-clearing version? Hilarious. There's a Monty Python sketch right there.
Anyway, on Thursday I went to see the Van Gogh blockbuster currently at the National Gallery, Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers. Quite why the National chose that curious "poets and lovers" tag for this show is a bit of curatorial hand-waving not really worth exploring. Basically, they have assembled a lot of Van Gogh's paintings and drawings from the astonishingly creative two-year period spent in Arles, spread generously over six large rooms. Sixty-one, in fact, borrowed from galleries and private collections worldwide, of which by my count just five came from Amsterdam's Van Gogh Museum, which apparently holds 200 paintings and about 500 drawings. It seems there is rather more Van Gogh out there than I, at least, had imagined.
I was accompanied by two old friends of school-days vintage who, conveniently for me, have married each other, which makes staying in touch so much easier. We met in Trafalgar Square at 1:30 pm for a 2:30 booking, forewarned by a blogger who should know that the queues were horrendous: up to an hour at popular times. But in the event there was no queue at all, and we were waved through a whole hour early.
Security has been tightened since Just Stop Oil activists bafflingly decided to attract attention to their (worthy) cause by throwing soup over one of the paintings. Liquids are now banned inside the gallery, bags are searched, and everyone must pass through an airport-style metal-detector gate, although thankfully without removing shoes, belts, and loose change, which might make you suspect it isn't actually plugged in. Also, I'd forgotten to empty a half-full bottle of water inside my shoulder-bag, and it was only on the train home that I realised this had been missed – or possibly allowed through? – by the bag searcher. Well, at least it wasn't soup or superglue.
All blockbuster exhibitions are exhausting, I find, particularly when they feature an overwhelming quantity of work by just one blockbuster artist, some of whose blockbuster pictures are so familiar – from posters, coasters, postcards, tea towels, key fobs, fridge magnets, and whatever other gift-shop tat can carry a reproduction of an image – that they have ceased being works of art and become a blockbuster brand, even recognisable by people who don't care about "art" at all. To be honest, I'd rather come across a few deservedly famous paintings when walking through a gallery, like bumping into old friends on the street, than navigate whole roomfuls of major and minor masterpieces which, however thoughtfully curated, is always more like attending a reunion or a wedding, where the meeting-with-people quotient of a "high-functioning introvert" like me gets stretched a little thin. "Hello, 'Trunk of a Tree', I believe you know 'View of Arles', we were at Montmajour together in 1888? Oh, do excuse me, but I've just spotted 'The Yellow House' talking to 'The Bedroom', and I must have a word..."
There's also the problem that the rooms become so crowded that actually getting to see the paintings is a contest of sharp elbows and strength of will, especially once the afternoon sessions pile in. At times, it can feel less like an exhibition and more like the mid-session interval of some large assembly, where people are passing the time before reconvening by admiring some pictures that happen to be on the wall. So, rather than join the slow clockwise shuffle from picture to picture, I always make a swift pass through all the rooms, noting where the points of interest are, and then circling back, looking for opportunities to get in front of a genuine piece of Awesome. I will then stand there, and actually look at the gorgeous thing: up and down, side to side, for as long as it takes, searching for some of the secrets of its awesomeness, and ignoring the seething annoyance of the phone-snappers you can feel on the back of your neck. How dare you get in the way of my photograph? How inconsiderate, to be standing there, just looking! Honestly, I do wonder whether it is time all photography was banned in popular exhibitions, the way it used to be? I wouldn't object, and I don't see why anyone else should, either.
Blockbuster exhaustion is a pleasant sort of exhaustion, though – one of my companions was positively giddy with a mild case of Stendhal Syndrome – mostly felt as an ache in the feet and the small of the back, plus a certain light-headedness; you simply know when you've been arted out, and it's time to find a cup of tea. Later, I was surprised to discover that my phone app had recorded 8,334 steps that day, roughly 3.3 miles: that's a lot of gallery floor covered and stairs climbed, given that the walk from Waterloo station to Trafalgar Square and back is barely two miles. I'm beginning to wonder whether gallery visiting ought to be be recommended as a pleasant exercise regime. [1]
As for Vincent van Gogh (oops, sorry! Here, use my napkin), what is there to say, without lapsing into gushy "Starry, Starry Night" mode? A troubled man who probably only ever sold a single painting in his lifetime is posthumously recognised as a visionary genius and catapulted into the TOP TEN ARTISTS EVER! super-league? Improbable, romantic, sad, infuriating, but true. Highest recent auction price: USD 117,180,000 (that's well over 90.5 million pounds sterling) for "Verger avec cyprès", a pleasant-enough painting of impeccable provenance, sold at Christie's in 2022. [2] Life simply isn't fair, is it?
1. I'm reminded of my experience of the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, swarmed by seemingly endless throngs of confused-looking elderly Chinese. See the post Hermitageous.
2. How far any painting is truly worth 90.5 million pounds is an interesting question. Had the purchaser taken it out onto the street and set fire to it (rather than putting it into a Swiss vault or hanging it over their fireplace), how impoverished would the culture really be? What if, instead, they had donated their £90.5 million to an art school or public gallery, or endowed some new "genius award" for artists with difficult to pronounce names? Discuss...
