European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - January 31, 1991, Darmstadt, Hesse                                A i avers French town abounds in memories off s8.s Amputch stranger by Peter Mikelbank Washington Post it began five years ago with a car crash a bad one. He was rear ended hard by a drunk Driver at a red Light on an unfamiliar Road in avers sur Oise in Rural France. Reading the police report in his Hospital bed belgian businessman Dominique Charles Janssens noticed the recorded location of the Accident the Street outside an inn named Maison Van Gogh he assumed this was a conceit a commercial appropriation of a famous name. But a gendarme told him no his misfortune had taken place outside the Rooming House in which Vincent died. Janssens was not unsophisticated about Art but he. Knew Little of Van Gogh beyond the banal famously Melancholic. Starry night. The ear. St ill Janssens is a Man who does not entirely believe in the randomness of coincidence does not entirely dismiss the possibility of a a a a destiny and so in his Hospital bed with an Uncertain sense of Mission he began devouring All he could about Van Gogh. It was a phrase from one of the artist s letters to his brother Theo that first caused Janssens s pulse to quicken. Quot one of the first letters i read was one where he said avers was Gra vement Beau gravely Beautiful. This is not an expression the French  it was in fact an expression Janssens had heard before at Home from his parents in dutch. Janssens and Vincent shared dutch ancestry they shared a certain conciliatory sensibility one must adopt if one is a foreigner in France and Janssens began to believe they shared a certain indomitable romantic Faith in the potential of Man. A lust if you will for life. Quot before Quot Janssens says Quot i Only had an image of the absinthe Drinker the ear thing the Man who hired prostitutes. In the Hospital i discovered a  after two months of convalescence he was released and his first Stop was Maison Van Gogh. Padlocked. A neighbor told Janssens the owners were away for the summer but the House was for Sale. Janssens thought it would make a Nice museum. So he bought it. The climb to Vincent s Garret is a twisting creaking ascent into desolation. This room in avers is not like his room in Arles which no longer exists with its Bright yellow bed framed pictures and ample furnishings this is a grim and colourless Braque painting a five sided closet smaller than imaginable with a Steep angled roof forcing a stooped step to a single tiny skylight. It is empty of the items that were there in Vincent s Day a bed a chair an easel and a Calendar. These things Are in storage. A discoloration reveals where the Calendar was tacked it Hung there untouched for nearly 100 years. Juillet 1890. X this is where Vincent came to live in the Spring of that year after being released from the Asylum at St. Ferny into the private care of one or. Cachet a local Homeopath and Art collector who had earlier treated Renoir and Cezanne for depression. Vincent could afford Only a poor Man s lodgings Betook the first room at the top of the stairs because it was cheapest looking out Only onto the corridor. Quot on my own Quot he wrote Theo Quot i have found an inn where i shall pay 3.5 francs a Day. The address Here is place de la Mairie Chez  ,.the room is like an aging photograph or a still life in sepia. Gray paint and plaster Peel Back off Inch wide cracks running the Walls from floor to roof. The room is hypnotic sorrowful,.almost sinister. The Light is Gray the air suffocating the space almost psychotic ally confining. It is difficult to imagine How a sad Little Man or anyone could return nightly to create in such surroundings. Yet it was Here that Vincent worked on 70 canvases in. As Many Days portraits of the country Village scenes its Church and thatched cottages creating what is considered his Best work impassioned landscapes restating the feel of starry night and portraits characterized by harsh modern color. By summer his Faith in Gachet gone Vincent s canvases and letters grew Darker and brooding. In late july in a sketch of wheat Fields and troubled skies he Vincent Van Gogh painted this self portrait in 1889. Less than a year later he was dead. 4 stripes Magazine january 31, 1991