A Series of Small Things…
by berberis on Apr.08, 2010, under London, Personal
Thursday, 1st April 2010, Royal Academy of Arts.
The first rule of queuing is don’t do it on an empty stomach. The second rule of queuing is don’t do it on an empty stomach. In the chill of an April morning, standing in an ever-lengthening line of like-minded individuals, shuffling forward no more than a yard or two every ten minutes – envying the half dozen frozen individuals who, having reached the queue’s head, were ushered into the relative warmth of the tented entrance – I realised why everyone else had coffee and nibbles to hand.
By the time I emerged, light-headed and blinking, into the early afternoon, I was famished. In the four hours between, I had the privilege of seeing some of the most wonderful art I have ever set eyes on. Vincent van Gogh, an artist whose work I have admired ever since borrowing a dog-eared paperback copy of the abridged letters from my local library. This was a deeply passionate individual, whose almost compulsively-obsessive attitude to everything he did – his theological studies, his drawing, his painting – was to lead to his increasingly frequent downward spirals into an emotional abyss from which he was, at the end, unable to emerge.
Understanding this, then, quite the most moving exhibit was the unfinished draft of Vincent’s final letter to his brother, Theo. A sheet of yellowing paper on which were several darker stains. The placing of the stains showed how the letter had been folded, presumably tucked in a pocket. On closer inspection, they were clearly not ink, nor water, and nothing similar was present on any of the other letters in the exhibition. A scribbled note, in pencil, written by Theo, indicated that this was the letter found on Vincent the day he shot himself. The stains were blood.
For me, as much as the tiny pencil sketches, the oddly restrained watecolours and the thickly daubed oil on canvas, this small sheet of aging paper with its spidery hand and brown blotches was Vincent van Gogh.
The man himself wrote: “Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.” I’d gone to the RA the day before, deciding against joining the queue when I overheard a guide say the wait was over 2 hours. It was already midday, and I (wrongly) assumed there would be no tickets left by the time I managed to get to the desk. I went earlier on the Thursday. I’m very glad I did. For a man plagued with life-long self-doubt, Vincent was right. Great things…
