For about 10 years in eight or nine different apartments in six states, one particular painting was on one of my walls.
It was a picture I had loved for a lot longer, ever since I heard Don McLean’s song “Vincent” and I visited the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
“The Starry Night” is considered Vincent Van Gogh’s greatest work and is one of the most recognizable paintings in the world. It was painted in the last year of Van Gogh’s life, after he had voluntarily committed himself to a lunatic asylum.
I never read Irving Stone’s 1934 novel “Lust for Life,” and I haven’t seen Kirk Douglas as Van Gogh in the 1956 film of the same name. But I have been enjoying myself tremendously working my way through series after series of the amazing BBC sci-fi show “Doctor Who,” and today I saw the brilliant 2010 episode “Vincent and the Doctor.”
The Doctor and Amy are in Provence in 1890 and meeting up with a desperately unhappy Van Gogh. He has no idea he will one day be in the pantheon of the world’s greatest artists.
Spoiler alert …
The show ends with one of the most wonderfully poignant moments I’ve seen on television. After defeating the episode’s monster/villain and saying goodbye to Van Gogh, Amy and the Doctor change their minds and take Van Gogh to the Musee d’Orsay in 2010 Paris.
They take him inside to the gallery of his paintings and he sees crowds marveling at their beauty. The Doctor then speaks to the museum curator. “Between you and me, in a hundred words, where do you think Van Gogh rates in the history of art?”
His response is wonderful.
“Well… um… big question, but, to me Van Gogh is the finest painter of them all. Certainly the most popular, great painter of all time. The most beloved, his command of colour most magnificent. He transformed the pain of his tormented life into ecstatic beauty. Pain is easy to portray, but to use your passion and pain to portray the ecstasy and joy and magnificence of our world, no one had ever done it before.
“Perhaps no one ever will again. To my mind, that strange, wild man who roamed the fields of Provence was not only the world’s greatest artist, but also one of the greatest men who ever lived.”
What a wonderful show.
I’m so glad I’ve got more than 100 episodes to go, and when that’s done, there are nearly 700 episodes of Classic Doctor Who on BritBox.
So great to find something wonderful and new after all these years.