Tuesday, September 8, 1998

U.S. crowds flock to wait for Van Gogh

Just about the time you thought there was no cultural hope for America, that this great land was irrevocably addicted to vulgarity and schlock in its entertainment fare, you pick up a newspaper and read about a couple of thousand people waiting in line for hours and hours in temperatures as high as 97 degrees Fahrenheit, and for what?

For free tickets to go see 70 paintings by Vincent van Gogh at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, that's what.

Maybe you are not a van Gogh lover, and that's OK, but here are some things you cannot say about him. You cannot say he was trite. You cannot say he was unoriginal. You cannot say he lacked visual imagination. Some of us would put things in a more positive light. We would say that there is some extraordinary burst of power in his paintings capable of altering the way you see the world.

The point here, however, is that American tastes come in all shapes and sizes, and that while some will sometimes wallow in the mud, some will sometimes reach for something glorious, and that there's no one answer possible of where the whole of us resides except in stressing our diversity, a diversity occasionally to be found in one and the same person.

Sure, there's enough of the bad stuff out there to elicit mutterings of gloom, but then come the newspaper stories about waiting for van Gogh or you see a superb movie or find true wit on TV, and you know that this ship is far from sunk.