Dali House

Vincent is showing two of his works at the month-long fifth Salon des Indépendants — “Irises” and “Starry Night on the Rhône” — and the reaction has been very encouraging for him. Monet and Pisarro have expressed their admiration, and so
has the influential critic Albert Aurier.

Not exactly the first subject that springs to mind when you’re designing a hot-air balloon, but the end result is quite … uh, well, it’s pretty bizarre, actually.

The good ship Vincent Van Gogh has been rendering friendly skies around the world a little more startling since March 30, 2003, when it was inflated for the first time in Zundert, the Netherlands.

Professional balloonist Hans Zoet is usually, if not always, the pilot, on behalf of the Dutch brewery Bavaria, a bottler that’s even older than Vincent would be if he were still around to see his head floating monstrously if harmlessly through space wearing an advertising banner around his neck.

The photos here come from various sources, including Airliners.net, which seems a bit of a stretch, and different shutterbugs in New Zealand and Australia.

In the latter country the 30-metre-tall Vincent Van Gogh took part in the Canberra Balloon Fiesta. Australia’s quaintly named Liquorland booze chain distributes Bavaria and its sister beer Hollandia.

Vincent is allowed to roam around in the vicinity of the hospital, and he’s doing many paintings. He’s only occasionally depressed, and very productive, doing fine impressionistic work but with sharper colours and accented lines, and with some
extraordinary perspectives.

Everything is shipped to Théo, but he makes copies of the best so he can keep track of his own progress.

Van Gogh here portrays Aries, the constellation of his birth, with the stars uncannily placed in their near-exact positions alongside the moon and Venus. Only the prominent cypress tree, so crucial to the composition, disturbs the astronomical fidelity, separating the two stars at the lower left further than they are in reality.

At right, “Road with Cypresses and Starry Sky” again sets the heavens afire with the shimmering energy of space. “The Noon Rest”, above, is an homage to Millet, while “The Prison Courtyard”, below, gives tribute to Doré, Van Gogh repaying debts of gratitude to the masters of an earlier generation who melded expression and impression, while at the same time aiding his own recovery by re-examining the fundamentals of his art.

Vincent has decided to become a patient at the asylum of St Paul-de-Mausolée. It’s in the ancient abbey of Mausolée des Jules in Saint-Rémy de Provence, 15 miles away. Nostramadus was born in Saint-Rémy nearly 400 years ago, did you know? Franciscan monks have been taking care of the mentally ill there for centuries. It’s nice and secluded and quiet, and there are lovely grounds full of cypress trees and lavender.

Vincent had come home from the Hôtel Dieu after 10 days, and he was feeling well enough — he’d had a letter from Théo, who married his fiancée Johanna on April 17 — but understood that he needed more help than Dr Rey could provide here in Arles. Rev Salles went with him on the train and reports that he was fine all the way and explained his problem to Dr Peyron there quite clearly. Dr Peyron thinks he has an epileptic disorder. They’ll let him rest and give him baths to calm his nerves.

It’s been reckoned up that, since he arrived in Arles, just 15 months ago, Vincent has done about 200 paintings and another hundred drawings.

The 12th-century abbey is still in use today as a mental hospital for women, but visitors, asked to refrain from making loud noise, can view the two adjacent cells with barred windows that Vincent occupied, restored as they were in his time, as well as the central alley, church and cloister and the walled field and olive groves beyond, where he sketched and painted some of his best-known works, including “Irises”, seen below.

For a while during World War I, the theologian, philosopher and 1952 Nobel Peace Prize winner Albert Schweitzer, a German, was interned here by the French authorities, and later reported having awakened one night with “odd feelings of déjà vu”. He recalled a painting by Van Gogh and, upon inquiring, learned that he was in the same hospital where Vincent had stayed.

Around Saint-Rémy the Office de Tourisme has created a mapped trail illustrated with 21 signposts with reproductions of Van Gogh paintings, all dating from his time here. The tour begins near the asylum and ends at the Hôtel Estrine in Passage Blain in the old town, which hosts the Centre d’Art Presence Van Gogh.

Vincent is in the hospital again, only this time it’s his mind that’s wounded. Three days ago some of the neighbours panicked because he was acting so strangely. They’re fed up with his drinking and whoring.

They actually sent a petition around begging the authorities to have him put away. Fou roux, they called him, the red-headed madman. The police even ordered the Yellow House closed because they felt it was an unhealthy place. Vincent said he was hearing voices and wondered if someone was trying to poison him.

Dr Rey is treating him and says he’s now mostly quite calm. The painter Paul Signac, who was travelling to Cassis and who long ago convinced Vincent to try pointillism, which was after all such a big influence on him, has been to visit and found him in good cheer under the circumstances.