On May 21, 1890, Vincent Van–Gogh moved to Auvers–sur–Oise, the small village north of Paris, which throughout the 19th century had attracted many landscape painters. It was there on July 29, 1890, two days after being accidently shot or shooting himself with a pistol, he died in the Inn Ravoux–now Maison de Van Gogh.

            When I mentioned to a friend that it was almost the 100th anniversary of Van Gogh’s death he suggested we rent a car and drive to Auvers to visit his tomb. This seemed a great opportunity to pay my homage and get some photographs.

I suggested some other artists whose tombs we could visit after Van Gogh’s if we made it a three day pilgrimage; Monet in Givernay, Duchamp in Rouen and Braque in Varangeville, just west of Dieppe. I wanted to indulge fully in the luxury of having a driver. When I’m alone I find it almost impossible to simultaneously drive, scrutinize the map, and remain fully alert to the manic maneuvers of Gallic drivers.

            April, 1990, 11:am, Auvers–sur-Oise: In a reverie, every slow shift of my acquisitive gaze envisioning the artists; Daubigny painting the river from his floating studio, Pissaro, Cezanne and Van Gogh hard at work in the landscape, I momentarily think–“I should have brought my paint-box to Auvers instead of my camera.” Then a flush of reality removes the brush from my hand as I realize that for me to paint in this charged land would just be adding another anachronistic footnote to what time has clarified sufficiently. Today, one can never hope to penetrate the long shadows cast by the immediacy of visual history so forcefully imposed upon one’s vision here in Auvers. Great painters have trod these roads many times before and left their inspired works for us to ponder: “Village Road, Auvers”, “Dr. Gachet’s House”, “House of the Hanged Man”, “Crows over the Wheat Fields”… I simply could add no new meaning to the dialogue.

            The small village cemetery where Van Gogh is buried beside his brother Theo, is on a hill just past the Notre Dame Church, the subject of one of his last major paintings. It was easy to find the ivy covered tomb on which were casually thrown a few fresh flowers and carefully placed, directly in front of Vincent’s headstone, a bouquet of two roses and a purple iris wrapped in cellophane with a note saying “pour Vincent et Théo Mille Années–Maril”.

I added my bouquet of paint brushes, took my photographs and left for Givernay hoping Monet’s tomb would be as easy to find and the ghosts of painters past not quite so active.

April 16, 1990: We left Auvers–sur–Oise about 11am and by 12:30pm, after doing a few tourist things along the way, arrived in Vernon where we re–crossed the Seine and drove the 4 KM south–east along the river to Giverny.

                  In the spring of 1893, the almost penniless Monet was searching for a new place to set up his large household; one that would provide a more inspirational atmosphere for his work than where he lived in Poissy, which he detested. It took him several months and many long trips on the Pacy–sur–Eure railway line searching every small village for a suitable place to rent. He finally moved on April 29, 1893, with his two children and Alice Hochedé and her five children to “le Pressoir,” a long, nondescript house with a large walled garden encroached upon by an apple orchard in the village of Giverny. This would be their home, and for him a major painting environment for the rest of his long life. Here he would establish his fame, build with great love his magnificent garden and paint his most–loved water lily paintings.

                  After years of neglect his house and gardens have now been beautifully restored as a national monument with a large parking lot and gift boutique across the road. For the art lover, restorations are always a bit problematic and, at best, a mixed blessing when they attract so many tours. And for the tourist, often just another curio to mindlessly gaze upon, or a place to congregate en–masse to take photographs during another pause along their road to misunderstanding. But, if this is the price one has to pay, no matter how many buses are left in the parking lot with their motors always running, once inside the walls one can move away from the crowds and let the restoration reveal itself as a miracle one would not want to be deprived of.

                  When we arrived, I had expected to find the parking lot full as it usually is, but there were no cars or buses. I was relieved, yet disappointed to find everything locked up tight which prevented us from simply asking at the information desk where he was buried.

                  When Monet died his body had been placed on a hand cart and wheeled to the family plot, followed by a few artist friends including Bonnard and Vuillard and his close personal friend, Prime Minister Clemenceau. I concluded we would not have far too look. We retraced our route toward Vernon hoping to find a cemetery. We stopped to ask the first person we saw walking on the road if she knew where the famous artist Monet was buried. She asked me if I was a Canadian, which was a surprisingly strange answer to my question. She was, as it happened, an exchange student from Canada and a bit homesick. After some small talk she pointed beyond the brush at the edge of the road and said; “See that large tree over there, his grave is right under it.”  The dense foliage along the roadside had well hidden a small churchyard we would have missed without her help. As I had hoped, his tomb was covered with a garden of flowers. While I set up and took my photographs my “driver” spent his time trying to work out the complex genealogical links to Monet of all those with other names who had been interred in the same plot. By 2pm we were on our way to Rouen where we planned to spend the evening.

In 20th century western art history Duchamp has such a large presence that I thought his fame would lead me directly to his tomb. I knew he had died in Neuilly, a suburb just west of Paris, so there I began.

The staff in the gatehouse of Cimetière au Neuilly could offer no help until one took interest in my project and spent over an hour searching records, discovering that he had died in Neuilly but was transported to Rouen–Seine–Maritime for interment.

On April 16, 1990, after visiting the Canadian War Graves in Dieppe we drove to Rouen to spend the night and the following day began searching for Duchamp’s tomb.  We started at the tourist office where an attendant suggested if we were looking for an artist we should enquire at the Rouen Art Museum. However, they could not help.

After much map searching and driving around we finally arrived at Cimetière Monumental, a vast conglomerate cemetery on a hill overlooking the city. At the gatehouse there was no record of Duchamp, but fortunately one attendant did know the tomb’s location and got into our car and directed us to a large family plot with three elevated granite slabs overlooking a truly magnificent view of old Rouen.

  Marcel was under the right slab interred with his wife Gaby, his brothers, Raymond Duchamp Villon and Jacques Villon and sister Suzanne Duchamp Grotti, all distinguished artists.

 “D’ailleurs  c’est toujours les autres qui meurent”

April 16, 1990: In the early afternoon after photographing the tomb of Monet in the churchyard at Givernay, we drove thru to Dieppe bypassing Rouen to where we would return and spend the night. From Dieppe we took the coast road southwest through Pourville to the western limits of Varengeville. Turning toward the water, we drove on for what seemed a very long time down a beautiful treed road of elegant summer homes and retirement estates before reaching the small church and sailor’s graveyard perched on a cliff overlooking the water. The view, I imagined, was just as Monet had seen it at the end of the 19th century when he made his painting “Church at Varengeville.”

            Braque’s tomb was there filling a good part of the small cemetery. It was virtually impossible to photograph in such a confined space with the lenses I had, and having to face my camera directly into the afternoon sun.  Anyway, I took some shots and then returned to Dieppe and an interesting diversion–The Canadian War Graves Cemetery. It was a very moving experience. My academic exercise of finding and photographing the tombs of dead artists who had achieved fame and accomplishment during their usually long lifetimes cast for me a very different light on how I saw those endless rows of white crosses marking the graves of young men sacrificed in war. Sacrificed, before having one chance to realize any of their own potential creativity. No philosophical justification seemed to reach out and satisfy my need to comprehend. We spent a good hour walking the rows and reading the names. Then moving on to Rouen for the night, we would spend the next day looking for Marcel Duchamp.

The Braque photographs did not turn out and I would have to return, which I did on Saturday, May 05, the beginning of  a holiday weekend. In Dieppe it was impossible to rent a car or find a vacant room, so I backtracked to Rouen where I became a tourist for the weekend. Early Monday morning I picked up a rental car in Dieppe and by noon had taken my photographs in an ideal light and was back in Dieppe waiting for a Ferry to England to attend Terry Frost’s exhibition at the Tate and where we would spend several days visiting London art galleries.

CIMETIÈRE DU PÈRE LACHAISE

MÈRE ET FILS

  I had been searching for Utrillo’s tomb since beginning this project as he seemed to epitomize all the romantic ideas we have of a “bohemian Montmartre artist.” I had hoped the cemetery tour guide, Vincent de Langlade would be able to help me but he could not. He did, however, tell me that Suzanne Valadon, Utrillo’s mother had been interred in the St.Oen Cemetary just north of the Clignancourt Flee Market.

It was an uncomfortable, claustrophobic metro ride deep into an unfriendly immigrant area of Paris.  Very unnerving, so I would walk back into a more friendly neighborhood before catching a metro home.

Suzanne’s tomb was easy to find. I placed my bouquet, took my pictures and facetiously asked her to direct me to her son’s tomb.

Walking a circuitous route back toward Butte Montmartre and the metro station Lamarck–Caullaincourt, where I intended to catch my train, a serendipitous glimpse of a small cemetery changed my focus— Cimetière St.Vincente, one I had completely missed in all my walks around Paris– I had to visit!

Approaching the entrance, at first glance I saw a nicely dressed woman standing as if to greet me. Which she did, asking if she could be of help. When enquiring about Utrillo she simply said, “he’s there below the steps” pointing to some stairs at the rear of the cemetery. I followed her gaze then turned to thank her but she was gone, and just as she had said, the tomb was there.

Thanks Suzanne!

            In the spring of 1990, I spent several weeks in the south of France working on this project. I made my base in Nice where many of the artists who influenced my early years as an artist had lived and worked, and spent their final years. Sadly, although I tried many times I was not able to get to the tomb of Matisse, who was buried outside the churchyard of the Franciscan Monastery in Cimiez, enclosed by a huge fence too difficult to scale. It was a similar situation with Picasso who was buried in a tomb jack-hammered from the stone at a corner of his chateau in Varvanargue, near Aix. They would not let me through the gate.  

April 30, 1990: Driving to Nice from Grasse where I had been photographing a Fragonard Monument, I got a momentary glimpse of a small cemetery just before the exit to Le Cannet and thought immediately of Pierre Bonnard, who had died there. I had to stop. It took some maneuvering to find my way back to the old cemetery where I hoped I might find Bonnard’s tomb.

Although it is not in my nature to be superstitious, I occasionally try to attach some meaning to my intuitions and coincidental encounters as I wander through these strange spaces—spaces that often seem to occupy more than a physical dimension. Today when I entered the cemetery at Le Cannet it seemed deserted. Then I saw a man lying prostrate on a tomb sobbing and muttering words I could not understand. Was there some omen here or was it simply a personal expression of grief? Or was it just one of those peripatetic mourners who would follow me around the cemeteries in Paris and mourn over the tomb I was trying to photograph? I moved quietly on and went about my business.

            There was no gatehouse to get information from so I searched the rows tomb by tomb. After several hours I was hot, thirsty and tired, and ready to give up. Then recalling having seen a tombstone with name “Marthe” in large letters–the name of Pierre Bonnard’s wife. I searched again and soon found the tomb on which were carefully placed (obscuring most of the headstone) a freshly watered pot of flowers, a crockery vase of fresh cut flowers, a glass jar of beach pebbles and a potted aloe plant sitting on a decorated plate—significant signs my initial gaze had overlooked. I spread apart the flowers and below the name Marthe was “Bonnard” in large letters and below that in small letters, Pierre Bonnard. I was elated! Then, as I moved the vase to more clearly expose the names for my photographs, a scream ordering me to leave the tomb alone startled me and I accidentally spilled water from the vase. I turned and a man screaming “Grave-robber,” and shaking his fist at me said he would get the gendarme to deal with me. And off he ran.

I sometimes feel a strange frisson when photographing these tombs and at times it seems like committing an act of violence as I move things to suit my purpose. Ideally, I would like the only trace of my intrusion to exist on the film in my camera where it can later be dealt with objectively. The spilled water would soon disappear in the heat of the Midi sun leaving no trace. But what of the angst of the man who ran off for the gendarme?

            Re–living my experience with the guardian at St Louis in Versailles, I calmly placed my brushes on the tomb, took several photographs, very carefully replaced the flowers as they had been before my intrusion, then casually left before any “officials” arrived to stop me.

             On the way out of the cemetery I puzzled momentarily over the tomb where the man had been so distraught. Everyone in that area of the cemetery had been in the ground for well over a century. One more mystery!