Arles and Van Gogh

Tuesday November 23, 2010 Day 146

This morning we caught a train to Arles with a goal of seeing old Roman ruins and visiting the Museum of Ancient Arles. The museum has a temporary exhibit which is the culmination of twenty years of excavations in the Arles River, including almost 700 pieces illustrating the variety of products that were used in the city, including scales, amphorae, statuary and architectural fragments. The exhibit was set to close in August, but has been held over until January 2 of next year.

We arrived at Arles and set out on a walk along the river toward the museum. When we arrived, we discovered that, unfortunately, it is closed on Tuesday! We could have picked any day, and wouldn’t you know, we picked the one day of the week it is closed! Sigh. That means, if we want to see the temporary exhibit, we will have to get back here before the end of the year.

Fortunately for us, Arles offers plenty to see even without the museum. There were Roman ruins right outside the museum, part of the Roman circus. We walked from there to the Office of Tourism and picked up a city map, then set off for the city center. It was lunch time by the time we arrived in the city center, so we had a lunch of soup, salad, chicken breast strips on skewers and potatoes. It was quite cool, so we enjoyed tea with our lunch. Then we walked up to the Roman arena and the theatre. On our way up to the monuments, we passed an open courtyard where four or five kittens frolicked. We paused and I got my kitten fix - one of the kittens came directly up to me and hopped upon a wall, allowing me to pick her up and pet her for a bit.

When we left the kittens, we went to the theatre. It was built in the time of Augustus and had seating for 8,000 on 33 tiers. In the middle ages, residents of the town mined it for the stone used to build it, and erected a town wall. It has been majorly restored and is used today for concerts and shows. On the grounds lies a fragment “cemetery” containing row upon row of recovered stone from the original theatre, some of them quite large, others much smaller. Many of the pieces have intricate carvings on them. Roger speculates that this is some archeologist’s dream - to reconstruct the theatre using these pieces.

 From here we went to the Arena, a two-tiered Roman amphitheatre which dates to the first century BCE. It seated over 20,000 spectators and was built to provide entertainment in the form of chariot races and bloody hand-to-hand battles. Today, it draws large crowds for a sport only slightly less brutal – bullfighting – as well as plays and concerts in summer. It has an oval arena and 60 arcades on two levels. Like the theatre, it was mined for its stone after the fall of the Roman empire, when it was transformed into a fortress with four towers and more than 200 houses were built inside it - becoming a real town on its own. In the nineteenth century, all the tenants were evicted and the arena was restored for bullfights.

 A view of the city and the Rhone river from the tower:

From the Arena we made our way back to the city center. On our way down, we passed a woman who was exiting from an apartment with her dog. We smiled and went on our way, headed to the Roman thermal baths. We followed some signs but were unable to locate exactly where the baths stood. At one point, Roger headed off one direction and I another. As I walked along, who should come around the corner but the woman and her dog. I asked her where the baths were and she kindly paused and pointed along the river a bit further than we were looking. I think our problem lay in the fact that from that point, there was no road access and we had to walk along the riverbank to get to them. The signs are for those in vehicles and thus we were misled into thinking they were slightly elsewhere. The baths were interesting - much of the outer façade remains although the inner portions are greatly destroyed.

From the baths, we returned to the city center, taking refuge from the cold in a Moroccan gift shop for a while. We were too tight to let go of any of our money there, especially since Roger has hinted that we may go to Morocco some time before we leave France. We did admire some of the tin cats outside his doorway.

The city is located in the Camargue region, known for its brightly-patterned fabrics distinctive to the region. Many of the shops were full of these fabrics, both for sale as lengths of cloth and made into various items.

They also seem to celebrate cidadas, a selection of which were for sale in several shops.

 We didn’t buy any fabric, but we did buy some interesting rice. One bag is strictly red rice, another is a mélange of three rices - brown, red and black. I have no idea how I am going to use them, but I am intrigued. We stumbled onto a Russian exhibit while crossing one of the main squares of Arles. There were glass cases of matryoshka, or nesting dolls, a whole case of Russian St. Nicholas, several mannikins wearing native Russian costumes and a display of painted eggs and black boxes. The exhibit was in a large building which was formerly St. Anne’s church. We came upon the exhibit late in the day, while we were killing time before going to the train station. The church was heated and it was a great place to warm up as we enjoyed the exhibits. There was even a video of some cartoons, but they were all in Russian. Since we could not understand the dialogue, it was hard to follow, but we sat and watched for a bit, grateful for an opportunity to rest in the warmth after our long cool day.

Van Gogh spent almost a year in the latter part of his life in this city, and it was in Arles that he hit his stride as an impressionist painter. As a result the shadow of Van Gogh is everywhere in the city. We happened by one shop where we could see a shopping bag covered with a Van Gogh print hanging just inside the door. It may have been Arles, A View from the Wheat Fields, or Harvest in Provence. Actually, it could have been any one of several but it was splendid - a canvas of golden yellow. Although we passed up the shop initially, we returned there hoping to buy the bag to carry our rice in. No luck - she wasn’t selling it, only using it for display. We ended up buying a postcard, a Van Gogh picture cube and a print of a lovely Van Gogh painting of a peach tree. He painted numerous pictures of the blooming fruit trees shortly after his arrival in Arles. During the spring, he learned of the death of his friend and mentor, Anton Mauve, who had urged Van Gogh to use color freely. Van Gogh dedicated this painting to his friend. I think it is a beautiful painting, one which is seldom seen among his more popular paintings.

Van Gogh said in a letter in 1883, "And my aim in my life is to make pictures and drawings, as many and as well as I can; then, at the end of my life, I hope to pass away, looking back with love and tender regret, and thinking, 'Oh, the pictures I might have made!'" Isn’t that a beautiful epitaph!

For a delightful retrospective, check out the youtube Starry Night video with music by Don McLean: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dipFMJckZOM It is not new - I first saw this several years ago but I still enjoy it and I hope you do too.