Andrew Graham-Dixon reviews the two major exhibitions marking the Van Gogh centenary in the Netherlands
It is late. The candle, which has burned down almost to its wick, has been extinguished. Shadows encroach, but there is just enough light to illumine the pages of the large family bible propped open on the table. Today's reading, you can just make out, is Isaiah Chapter 53. The prophet announces the coming of the servant of the Lord: ''He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.''
Still Life with Bible is signed, in a red scrawl at bottom left, ''Vincent''. An early painting, from his Nuenen years, it's a reminder that Van Gogh always had a keen sense of his own destiny. ''He was despised, and we esteemed him not.'' It was written, and it came to pass.
One hundred years after the martyrdom, the sad and pointless suicide prompted by mental imbalance and a desperate sense of failure - the apotheosis. It takes, needless, to say, a peculiarly late twentieth-century form: a blockbuster of a Vincentenary sponsored by, among others, Japanese TV and Dutch beer (Heineken: ''Refreshes the arts other beers cannot reach''), and treated for much of last week's spectacular press binge as a major publicity opening for the Netherlands Board of Tourism. Memorial statuettes of the great man were had by all (compliments of NBT), a foretaste of other consumer durables doubtless in the pipeline: Vincent sweatshirts and T-shirts and mugs, for sure, and maybe even - who knows? - the Memorial Limited Edition Porcelain Replica of Van Gogh's Ear. Human tastelessness, when it comes to centenary celebrations, knows no bounds.
''Vincent van Gogh'', at...
