Latest news with #vanGogh
Time of India
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Time of India
The Failure of Failure?
Santosh Desai is a leading ad professional. He says he has strayed into writing entirely by accident, and for this he is "grateful". "City City Bang Bang" looks at contemporary Indian society from an everyday vantage point. It covers issues big and small, tends where possible to avoid judgmental positions, and tries instead to understand what makes things the way they are. The desire to look at things with innocent doubt helps in the emergence of fresh perspectives and hopefully, of clarity of a new kind. LESS ... MORE Failure, today, is not allowed to die its natural death. It must be rehabilitated, repackaged, and recycled—turned into grit, grace, or growth. It is no longer a terminus but a threshold. The fall is not the end of the story, only the second act. Fail better. Fail forward. Fail fast. But by all means, fail usefully. We tell ourselves we are being more open, more real. We celebrate vulnerability—as long as it is accompanied by hindsight. We speak of rejection, loss, collapse—but only once we have emerged intact, triumphant even, with a lesson to teach. The shame of failure is permitted, but only briefly and only as narrative bait. There are many costumes we dress failure in. The most flattering is redemption. The stumble that made us stronger. The heartbreak that made us wiser. The bankruptcy that taught us discipline. All is forgiven, as long as it leads somewhere better. This is LinkedIn failure at its best, a pose worn by the successful to increase engagement, to say, Once I was a loser like the rest of you, but fear not; you too can be redeemed if I could be. Statistically speaking, It is an inclusive lie, but it serves its purpose. Then there's the tragic-but-noble failure. The one born of principle, conviction, or timing. The artist who never sold, the idealist who died unknown, and the fighter who was undone by the world, not by their own missteps. This version dignifies failure—but it also aestheticises it. It is curated suffering. It leaves the soul intact. It makes us suffer on their account, to feel righteous from a distance, having no skin in the game. It gives us some succour to know that our failures may exist despite our being geniuses. In our mind at least. Look at van Gogh. And when neither nobility nor redemption is available, we default to utility. Failure becomes feedback. A prototype. A data point. No time to feel, just iterate. The modern world is full of people who kept trying, or to use the language of the start-up, pivoting till something clicked and they made podcasts about it. The overblown narrative that surrounds failure today is based on truth. People do redeem themselves, failure does teach lessons that success can come nowhere near, it builds resilience and humility and can makes us better not just in terms of material progress but as people. The problem perhaps is that this narrative is purely instrumental – it thinks of failure as a means to an end, burying the fact that there can be another kind of failure. The one we don't know how to name. The failure that simply hurts. The kind that exposes you—not as a misunderstood genius or a courageous risk-taker, but as someone who misjudged themselves. The kind that brings not growth, but shame. Not insight, but silence. The kind of failure that makes you smaller, and not in a good way. Smaller, because you thought you could. And you couldn't. This failure doesn't want to be posted about. It doesn't want to be learnt from. It doesn't want to teach you anything. It just wants to exist—to be carried, not converted. We often say that younger generations lack the mental equipment to deal with failure. That Gen Z, in particular, is fragile, thin-skinned, over-therapised. That they crumble under pressure and overshare their wounds. But we, the older cohort, are hardly models of grace either. We pride ourselves on coping, on never making a fuss. But our inability to accept failure is just as deep—only better disguised. We don't collapse; we deflect. We don't feel; we reframe. We have grown up believing that failure must always be private, always provisional, always recoverable. What we cannot bear is the idea that we may have been wrong about ourselves—that we aimed for something and missed, not because the world was cruel, but because we weren't enough. The truth is, all of us are not built for greatness. A lot of us will lead ordinary lives, reaching destinations no one tells inspiring stories about. The sense of failure is often a product of unrealistic goals, something our culture is loath to admit is a real thing. We speak the language of stoicism, but we are terrified of consequence. We cannot stand the thought that some things break and stay broken. That shame is not always a dysfunction. That some failures are just failures. But maybe we need a place for that again. A place where not all pain needs to be processed. Where not all scars are signs of strength. Where we can fail—and not redeem, not repurpose, not post—but simply live with the weight of it. Because failure, in its rawest form, teaches us nothing. It just tells the truth. And that, perhaps, is enough. Or should be. The modern tendency to take all that is hard and bitter and turn into a wellness potion of some kind serves to disconnect us from the idea of pain. Adversity takes on an unrecognisable shape with well-meaning language crowding out all exits. It is important to recognise that we will have wounds, carry scars, grapple with our own failings. As people we wear skins over skins – layers grown not from growth but from the act of being. From enduring, not transforming. And that should mean something. Facebook Twitter Linkedin Email Disclaimer Views expressed above are the author's own.
Canberra Times
07-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Canberra Times
Four seasons in London: what to do in the city come rain, chill or shine
HOW: If the quirky Tate Modern doesn't tickle your fancy, how about the National Gallery on Trafalgar Square? Masterpieces by Michelangelo, van Gogh, Monet and other legends are displayed here, while next door's National Portrait Gallery reopened in June 2023 after a facelift. As well as kings and queens, you'll see pioneering women (Emmeline Pankhurst, Mary Quant, Malala Yousafzai) and inspiring Davids (Bowie, Beckham, Hockney). Head to nearby Chinatown for dim sum or have afternoon tea, with dainty sandwiches, scones and cakes, at Fortnum & Mason, London's oldest department store. Shop a bit here - or on Bond Street and Oxford Street, both lined with big brands - then enjoy a pint and people-watching at a storied Soho pub like The Dog and Duck (a former hangout of George Orwell). Catch a play at one of the West End's myriad theatres - perhaps Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap, the world's longest-running show - or pamper yourself at The Londoner. This 350-room "super-boutique" hotel has a swish spa, an upscale Japanese izakaya and a chic-casual French restaurant overlooking Leicester Square, the always vibrant heart of London's West End.
Telegraph
20-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Court battle over who owns famous van Gogh roots is tearing French village apart
A tangled clump of tree roots that inspired Vincent van Gogh's final painting are at the centre of a heated legal battle between French villagers and their mayor. Five years ago, art experts concluded that a system of exposed, gnarly roots along the side of a road in Auvers-sur-Oise on the outskirts of Paris, were those depicted in Tree Roots, the artist's last work. It is believed that he painted the piece just hours before he died in 1890, after shooting himself in the chest with a revolver. News of the location shook the art world. The small village, located about an hour north of Paris where van Gogh spent the last two months of his life, attracted international media in the summer of 2020 and a steady stream of eager pilgrims. But the discovery has since become the subject of a pitched war between the town over whether the roots belong to the municipality or property owners Jean-François Serlinger and his wife Hélène, who is also an artist who moved to the village to live where van Gogh had worked. Last month, French courts sided with the Serlingers and ruled that the roots painted by van Gogh are on their property, marking the second legal victory for the couple. 'The embankment containing the tree roots painted by Vincent van Gogh does not constitute an accessory to the public highway,' the Versailles Administrative Court of Appeal wrote in their decision. But for Isabelle Mézières, the mayor of Auvers-sur-Oise, the fight is far from over. 'The roots belong to the people of Auvers!' she wrote this month, adding that she plans to file another appeal. 'There's no way we're going to surrender the public interest of the people of Auvers in the face of private interests. The question of ownership has not been settled.' The couple moved to the village in the mid-1990s and purchased an extra parcel of land in 2013, not knowing that they had also bought an important part of art history. Since the discovery, the Serlingers have launched guided tours called 'The Mystery of van Gogh's Roots' in collaboration with the van Gogh Europe Foundation. Auvers will not 'abandon its roots' Tickets are €8 (£7), and visitors are led on a 30-minute tour that traces the artist's life and work throughout the town, including the tree roots on their property. The tours offer an 'immersive experience' of the area that is 'deeply linked' to the artist's final painting and last stretch of his life, according to the site. Despite the municipality losing their case twice in a row, the town has vowed to try a third time. 'We are considering a possible appeal,' Michel Gentilhomme, the town's lawyer, told Le Parisien. 'There is a desire for private individuals to appropriate this property, in the interest of the municipality's residents. This issue must be resolved so that the municipality is not criticised for having abandoned its roots.' For their part, the Serlingers said they wanted to 'turn the page' and put the legal battle behind them, while pursuing other ways to develop the site. 'There's no doubt about it, we own the land right down to the street,' the couple told Le Parisien. 'We've won a second time. We're within our rights.' The initial connection between the local roots and the painting was made in 2020, when Wouter van der Veen, a local van Gogh expert, stumbled on an old black and white postcard in his collection that showed a man walking his bike along the village's Rue Daubigny. The familiar ancient roots growing out of the road caught his eye and, in a eureka moment, he made the connection between the photo and the painting. The new tourist season officially started on Saturday, which came with an air of tension in the village amid the ongoing row. 'It created a deep sense of insecurity around a site that calls for calm and serenity,' Mr. Serlinger told The New York Times. 'We have a feeling of insecurity with a mayor who is still in a war.'
Yahoo
20-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Court battle over who owns famous van Gogh roots is tearing French village apart
A tangled clump of tree roots that inspired Vincent van Gogh's final painting are at the centre of a heated legal battle between French villagers and their mayor. Five years ago, art experts concluded that a system of exposed, gnarly roots along the side of a road in Auvers-sur-Oise on the outskirts of Paris, were those depicted in Tree Roots, the artist's last work. It is believed that he painted the piece just hours before he died in 1890, after shooting himself in the chest with a revolver. News of the location shook the art world. The small village, located about an hour north of Paris where van Gogh spent the last two months of his life, attracted international media in the summer of 2020 and a steady stream of eager pilgrims. But the discovery has since become the subject of a pitched war between the town over whether the roots belong to the municipality or property owners Jean-François Serlinger and his wife Hélène, who is also an artist who moved to the village to live where van Gogh had worked. Last month, French courts sided with the Serlingers and ruled that the roots painted by van Gogh are on their property, marking the second legal victory for the couple. 'The embankment containing the tree roots painted by Vincent van Gogh does not constitute an accessory to the public highway,' the Versailles Administrative Court of Appeal wrote in their decision. But for Isabelle Mézières, the mayor of Auvers-sur-Oise, the fight is far from over. 'The roots belong to the people of Auvers!' she wrote this month, adding that she plans to file another appeal. 'There's no way we're going to surrender the public interest of the people of Auvers in the face of private interests. The question of ownership has not been settled.' The couple moved to the village in the mid-1990s and purchased an extra parcel of land in 2013, not knowing that they had also bought an important part of art history. Since the discovery, the Serlingers have launched guided tours called 'The Mystery of van Gogh's Roots' in collaboration with the van Gogh Europe Foundation. Tickets are €8 (£7), and visitors are led on a 30-minute tour that traces the artist's life and work throughout the town, including the tree roots on their property. The tours offer an 'immersive experience' of the area that is 'deeply linked' to the artist's final painting and last stretch of his life, according to the site. Despite the municipality losing their case twice in a row, the town has vowed to try a third time. 'We are considering a possible appeal,' Michel Gentilhomme, the town's lawyer, told Le Parisien. 'There is a desire for private individuals to appropriate this property, in the interest of the municipality's residents. This issue must be resolved so that the municipality is not criticised for having abandoned its roots.' For their part, the Serlingers said they wanted to 'turn the page' and put the legal battle behind them, while pursuing other ways to develop the site. 'There's no doubt about it, we own the land right down to the street,' the couple told Le Parisien. 'We've won a second time. We're within our rights.' The initial connection between the local roots and the painting was made in 2020, when Wouter van der Veen, a local van Gogh expert, stumbled on an old black and white postcard in his collection that showed a man walking his bike along the village's Rue Daubigny. The familiar ancient roots growing out of the road caught his eye and, in a eureka moment, he made the connection between the photo and the painting. The new tourist season officially started on Saturday, which came with an air of tension in the village amid the ongoing row. 'It created a deep sense of insecurity around a site that calls for calm and serenity,' Mr. Serlinger told The New York Times. 'We have a feeling of insecurity with a mayor who is still in a war.' Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Yahoo
06-04-2025
- Yahoo
The Site Where Van Gogh Made His Final Painting Will Remain Private Property, a Court Rules
A lengthy legal dispute over a patch of land in Auvers-sur-Oise, France, that is believed to be the place where Vincent van Gogh made one of his final paintings, has come to an end, with a court ruling in favor of the French couple that owns the land. Auvers-sur-Oise's mayor, Isabelle Mézières, has for five years argued that the embankment was public property, but earlier this month, an appeals court in Versailles sided with Jean-François and Hélène Serlinger, the owners of a residence that includes where van Gogh made Tree Roots (1890). More from Robb Report Inside Robb Report's April 2025 Design & Innovation Issue A Spanish Art Dealer Sold a 'Lost' Caravaggio. Police Are Now Investigating Her for Fraud. A New Trustee at the British Museum Is Opposed to Returning the Parthenon Marbles to Greece The judge affirmed that the site does belong to a part of the public road, as the mayor has argued, and ordered the municipality to cover €2,000 in legal expenses. The Serlingers purchased the property at 48 Rue Daubigny in 2013. At the time of the purchase, the couple was unaware of the site's significance within van Gogh's oeuvre. In 2020, Van Gogh Institute director Wouter van der Veen learned of the plot of land after comparing an early 20th-century image that matched the roots in Van Gogh's painting to the work itself, which was created in the the days before his suicide in a nearby wheat field. The unfinished painting is now housed in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. Mézières has criticized the ruling, insisting that the site is culturally significant to the French town. In a statement published to Facebook, she said the roots are part of the town's history and pledged to appeal the decision. 'These roots are not a commodity—they belong to the people of Auvers,' she wrote. Best of Robb Report The 10 Priciest Neighborhoods in America (And How They Got to Be That Way) In Pictures: Most Expensive Properties Click here to read the full article.
