Amsterdam, Netherlands: Beginning the End with Van Gogh

Wheatfield with Crows -- oil on canvas, 101x50 cm, Auvers, June 1890
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

The Grand Tour is quickly coming to an end. Five months of watching clothes in European laundry machines and drying them by air are about to be replaced by New York laundromats with their "no drying without washing" rule. Currency exchanges and hostels will no longer be necessary. Once in a while, a work of art perfectly encapsulates the moment. Yesterday, it was Van Gogh's Wheatfield with Crows.

As one of the last works painted by Van Gogh, the painting was displayed toward the end of the Van Gogh Museum exhibit that chronologically summarizes the artist's stellar career. The canvas is twice as long as it is wide, an opportunity to appreciate a "wide-screen" view of a painting. The top third of the painting is comprised of a dark night sky with hues that range from dark blue to light blue. The rest of the painting consists of a wheatfield with three diverging paths. Flying toward the top right hand corner of the painting are several crows.

The crows, symbols of death or transition, strikingly fly amidst both the wheatfield and the sky, bridging the blue and the gold with wings that look like V's and upside-down W's. What would otherwise be a straight-forward landscape painting becomes a painting rife with symbolism, melancholy at best, sadistic at worst. There will never be a first time again, a time when the great cities of Europe appear anew before my eyes, a time to get blissfully lost, free from the constraints of geographical know-how. Second trips are different: a time to focus on select neighborhoods, a time to visit the attractions off-the-beaten-path, a time when the novelty effect of a first-time trip has waned. The crows cruelly remind me that the honeymoon phase of my time with the cities of Europe is long gone.

The diverging paths similarly remind me of the trip's end, most notably with the dead-end road in the middle of the painting. It was a dilemma I often faced: Which city is next? What's most efficient? What's most practical? The end of the road is soon approaching, when the highways, ferry routes, and train tracks transform into a runway and fly me away. By avoiding flying within Europe, I encountered the reality of the landscape, from the Bosnian mountains to the Scottish hills, from the Croatian coast to the Bulgarian plains. The possibility of taking a ferry across the Atlantic, a dream I hope to realize one day, is now superceded by the constraints of time and money. The time is coming to take the runway.

Van Gogh, beloved for his thick brushstrokes and bright colors, paints a blue, gloomy, and sorrowful painting as one of his final masterpieces. It's a reminder that "happily ever after" does not always come true outside of fairy tales. Indeed, the end is often best symbolized by a dead-end road and a murder of crows. It is soon time to, at least for now, let go of the charm and allure of European cities. Another life awaits across the pond.