Aldous Huxley, the Doors of Perception and the Watts Gallery

We went for a walk with S & C on the North Downs Way starting at Compton, near the Watts Gallery, so I suggested a visit to the gallery as well, and also, because they are literary types, a visit to Aldous Huxley's grave. I only heard the other day on the radio that his ashes are buried at Compton. (Eric Blair (George Orwell) is buried at another of my favourite churchyards, Sutton Courtenay near the river Thames at Abingdon.)

Recently a radio programme celebrated 60 years since the publication of "The Doors of Perception", one of Huxley's most remarkable books. The title comes from a line of William Blake's: "If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear as it is: infinite."

Huxley's ambition for his experiment was a personal visionary enlightenment. He had a sense he was missing something. Huxley thought humans would always need "artificial paradises" as their lives are monotonous or painful - and he sensed the "appetite of the soul".

Huxley posited a link between substances like mescaline and the correction of some mental disorders.

He informed himself of primitive man's usage of the natural pharmacopoeia. There is evidence that primitive man explored all kinds of natural stimulant, hallucinogen and stupefacient. When these psychotropic plants were taken early hominids could stay awake longer and forage for longer thus increasing their fitness for  survival. Huxley  took from other societies and from cave painting [haven't heard of this before] the insight that what is visible is to some extent illusory. The psychotropic substances give access to "the essential" and improve the necessary ability to communicate with others. Huxley wasn't interested in dosing to oblivion – he hoped that drug usage would promote understanding  e.g. that with their aid Khrushchev and Kennedy could step out of their world views - that in the political and the personal spheres these drugs would be liberating.

Newly added: For example, scientists have carried out the first controlled trials involving LSD in more than 40 years - and found that the banned hallucinogenic drug could help treat anxiety in people with terminal illnesses. For the small trial in Switzerland, eight terminally ill patients were given a high dose of the drug ... afterwards, patients reported feeling significantly less anxious about dying, an effect that lasted for up to a year, reports The New York Times. One volunteer said: "My LSD experience brought back some lost emotions and ability to trust, lots of psychological insights, and a timeless moments when the universe didn't seem like a trap, but like a revelation of utter beauty." (The week, 22/3/14)

Our ancestors may have used drugs to take the edge off the pain. Opiates, for example, negate the fear that hunting and warfare generate. But it is  important for our survival that we can feel fear. Anger is important – to forcefully pursue your goals. Although we aim for happiness, from an evolutionary point of view there is no point in happiness because it doesn't urge us to do anything at all.

The body naturally tries to regulate itself – it’s called homeostasis, and we mirror this in our behaviour; we self-medicate to regulate ourselves. Exercise is something we use as it’s effective for depression and anxiety. Wine. Coffee. The signals emanate from a core area of the brain, a large system called the striatum. The system that translates motivation into action is responsible for desire, attraction, craving, wanting – that system is important to make us go after goals. The problem with people who are addicted to drugs is that the system is overactive with craving for a particular substance. But without the system itself we would not get stuff done. 

In a previous time if someone improved their "fitness", they would have greater capacity for survival and the body's response made them feel good. Now we can feel good without improving our capacity for survival. Drugs like cocaine  make the user feel good but decrease the fitness. 

(1958 on Brains Trust) Huxley was asked about his attitude to taking drugs to relieve anxiety: he said he did not believe this to be morally wrong. Too much tension is a disease and sometimes too little tension is almost a disease. Tension can be valuable biologically. “Drugs can be a political weapon in the hands of a scientific dictator and there’s no doubt this could be done.”

In Brave New World he claimed the right to be unhappy. In this novel "happy pills" were a tyranny and a part of dumbing down  the population in line with commercial culture. This is contrasted in the novel with the savage's extremes of emotion : for example, guilt, grief, love, adoration, and shame, which are difficult to deal with but these make us fully human. Do we really want to be less?

In BNW revisited, (1958) Huxley conceded that reality was catching up with his fiction faster than he could have imagined. 

As for the future, some philosophers claim that the brain has stopped evolving but we have developed drugs as aspects of our technological extensions to do the evolving for us. These can and will become more subtle and finely tuned in changing the brain's functioning. 

We had a good talk about Huxley and searched for his grave, finding it after some time wandering and reading the inscriptions on the many old and new gravestones near the Watts Cemetery Chapel. We were just amazed by the chapel.

The chapel is very beautiful, designed by Watts' wife Mary in a Celtic/Art Nouveau style, and conceived by her as a community project to involve all the villagers in the production of moulded terracotta tiles, some very ornamental and three dimensional.

Over the doorway

Inside there are many wonderful ornaments designed by Mary, made of gesso and painted. This is an example of her symbolic decoration.

 Everywhere we looked there were more amazing and inventive designs. It is a truly wonderful creation of the early 20th century.

 

I recommend the Harrow at Compton for a lunch. The food is really good - not particularly dear - and the service is prompt and personal.

a pub near the A3 south of Guildford

Middlemarch by George Eliot

It seems to me that this book's theme is the problem in male/ female relationships due to the inequality of education and employment which existed in European society in the nineteenth century, and continues to exist in many societies to this day.

To start with, if Dorothea had been able to achieve something (intellectual, spiritual or practical) on her own behalf she would not have been so keen to assume a role as a man's helpmeet. Secondly, if she had had sufficient education to engage with Mr Casaubon intellectually, she wouldn't have overvalued his intellectual capability, and then married him on those grounds. As it was, she took him at his own (very high) opinion, and he was insecure, suspicious and jealous when he realised that she might see that he was not as capable as she had first supposed. Dorothea is a fine person but is very conscious that she is, as a young woman who has no particular role in her community, considered less influential and effective than other adults, and is at the mercy of her advisers whenever she wants to take action. She wants to take action by marrying Will, who is a stranger to her society, and she finally grasps (it seems to take several bolts of lightning to show her) that she can take the initiative and do this if she wants to.

Mary Garth is the only woman in the story who is independent in that she earns money as an old man's housekeeper/ maid. She has in front of her a good role-model in the shape of her mother, who is educated to a certain level - school-teacher level -, can teach her own children and complete household tasks at the same time. Mary - like the rest of her family - seems to have a stock of confidence and self-possession that help her to weather her changes in fortune without self-pity. If she had had more education and more independence she would have been able to marry the man she loved without any problem - but the story is about Fred's development into maturity, not hers. She is already mature in that her emotions are fixed and stable, and she can take care of the elderly and of children without questioning her role. That is all she needs to be able to do.

The trouble that one grieves over the most is that of the Lydgate/ Rosamund relationship. Lydgate has high ideals and wants to be able to contribute findings to medical science.

even with close knowledge of Lydgate's character: for character too is a process and an unfolding. The man was still in the making .. and there were both virtues and faults capable of shrinking or expanding... Lydgate's conceit was of the arrogant sort, never simpering, never impertinent, but massive in its claims and benevolently contemptuous. He would do a great deal for noodles, being sorry for them, and feeling quite sure that they could have no power over him:... Lydgate's spots of commonness lay in the complexion of his prejudices, ... that distinction of mind which belonged to his intellectual ardor, did not penetrate his feeling and judgment about furniture, or women, or the desirability of its being known (without his telling) that he was better born than other country surgeons.

(Note that the author is ironic about furniture coming before women. The furniture doesn't matter but the lack of judgment about women becomes his undoing.)

 He wants a funded hospital so that he doesn't have to depend on selling quack medicines to keep himself in funds: he doesn't believe in them. He wants to use his brain; to observe illness and what causes and hinders it like a modern scientist. However, his fellow doctors are jealous of his superiority of manner and dislike his lofty ideals. He meets Rosamund regularly to admire her singing and for a pleasant flirtation but she is determined to have him, finding his gentlemanly manners as attractive as his titled connections.

The marriage works well as long as she responds to being his cherished pet, but Rosamund has no intellectual projects and is easily bored. She enjoys flirting with Lydgate's cousin and disobeys Lydgate's proviso that she doesn't ride a spirited new horse. Disappointment follows in which Lydgate seems to be the kindest and most forgiving of men. However, Rosamund has not changed... She can't understand Lydgate's work, she can't understand his priorities or ambitions. She can only tell him he hasn't made her happy. Making R. happy means indulging her whims. She has none of Dorothea's religious selflessness nor Mary Garth's common sense. She is a child in that she can't identify with an adult's preoccupations, and the novel tells us clearly that she has never even thought about where money comes from. Here is the result of her lack of proper education: had she been educated to the idea that she must make her own money to pay for her own fun she would have been good at it because she is clearly intelligent in a way, will act on her own  initiative and doesn't lack confidence.

But poor Lydgate with his high ideals! finding himself in debt, losing his good reputation and with useless interference and a grudging attitude from Rosy, he starts hitting the opiates and betting on himself in the billiard-hall. "Glittering-eyed" and full of nervous energy, he plays well for most of an evening, but can't stop when he starts to lose. Fred steps in and stops his run.

Happily Lydgate had ended by losing in the billiard-room, and brought away no encouragement to make a raid on luck. On the contrary, he felt unmixed disgust with himself the next day...

 He at last gets the loan, but it's tainted and compromised and leads to his character being suspected of corruption.

He felt himself becoming violent and unreasonable as if raging under the pain of stings: he was ready to curse the day on which he had come to Middlemarch. Everything that had happened to him there seemed a mere preparation for this hateful fatality, which has come as a blight on his honorable ambition, and must make people who had only vulgar standards regards his reputation as irrevocably damaged. ... His marriage seemed an unmitigated calamity; and he was afraid of going to Rosamond before he had vented himself in this solitary rage, lest the mere sight of her should exasperate him and make him behave unwarrantably. 

Dorothea knows what to say and Rosamond doesn't because R can't even begin to imagine how her husband feels (here there's a class rift; she comes from trade and he comes from the officer class, thus notions of honour very important to him): D. says:

I know the unhappy mistakes about you. I knew them from the first moment to be mistakes. You have never done anything vile. You would not do anything dishonourable.  

The Lydgates' is a more gripping story because it's all imperfections and compromises - having married they have to make great adjustments, and neither would have married the other if they had been more analytical about what they really expected or wanted beforehand.

But sometime in the future: "he once called her his basil plant; and when she asked for an explanation, said that basil was a plant which had flourished wonderfully on a murdered man's brains."   EXTRAORDINARily rude and resentful thing for Lydgate to say!

This book certainly makes one wonder if one understands the hopes and dreams and even moral priorities of one's husband, and in fact, makes one worry that one doesn't understand him well enough. It would be helpful if a man were more communicative - but George Eliot had a wonderful breadth of understanding of different mixtures of strengths and weaknesses in characters of both genders, and she makes one feel ashamed of one's shortcomings in this area.

The book has a number of clergymen in it and within the novel none of them talk about religion. Only the most hypocritical character does. None of the characters is held up to be judged by the tenets of Christianity in so many words, but they show a changing society where town and trade, with their own values, are playing a larger part, but the contribution of the landowning class is still needed.

Red / purple fluffy grass

Pennisetum setaceum (Rubrum) - saw it in German garden. Good for a sunny border.
 (also liked Verbena bonariensis tall, blue, self-seeds, and Heliotropum arborescens, annual)

Pennisetum setaceum ‘Rubrum’

Purple Fountain Grass

USDA Zone: 9-10

Plant number: 8.300.200

An extremely showy and popular selection of Fountain Grass, seen frequently as a focal point in containers and annual plantings. Plants form an upright clump of deep burgundy-purple leaves, bearing arching bottlebrush flowers that change from red to tan. Although not winter hardy in most regions, this may be treated as an annual or wintered indoors. Clumps are easily divided in early spring, still getting large and flowering the same year. Widely used in municipal plantings.

Further details for
Pennisetum setaceum ‘Rubrum’

Optimal Growing Conditions	Appearance and Characteristics
Sun Exposure   Full Sun Soil Type   Normal or   Sandy or   Clay Soil pH   Neutral or   Alkaline or   Acid Soil Moisture   Average or   Moist Care Level   Easy	Flower Colour   Brown   Red Blooming Time   Late Summer   Early Fall   Mid Fall Foliage Color   Purple Black Plant Uses & Characteristics   Accent: Good Texture/Form   Border   Containers   Cut Flower   Deer Resistant   Dried Flower   Massed   Specimen Flower Head Size   Very Large Height    90-120 cm    35-47 inches Spread    60-90 cm    23-35 inches Foot Traffic    None Growth Rate    Medium

Germany: Nuremberg

We went to Nuremberg on an impulse but I immediately loved it. It is all pedestrianised, and if you arrived by car you would be looking for a car park first of all, so we had the best first impression because we came out of the station and immediately saw the towers of the city wall and walked along the main strasse and took in the fine traditional but tall and elegant buildings, each with its statue of a saint or angel, the interesting mixture of old and new architecture and the buzz of the city life. Our hotel was right in the centre of town. Guide book Steve gave the castle a good write-up and after a very steep climb we found the views were well worthwhile, I enjoyed the gardens - flowers of any colours all together in a tapestry - and the romantic towers and courtyards were exactly like illustrations in the story books.  Somewhere along the way we had seen that Nuremberg had been destroyed in the war so we were looking at a reconstruction and again, I felt that bombing the place to rubble had been such a terrible act of violence, seeking to eradicate people's history and identity as well as the people themselves.

I have to say here that I used to live in Plymouth and that City too was completely destroyed by German bombs; I cried over the old film of rubble stretching as far as you could see, and the young people still going out to dance to a band on the Hoe (the promenade) quite cheerfully because they were still alive - not that many people died because they fled to the hills. So I know perfectly well the bombing was all reciprocated but at this point it hardly makes any difference to anyone but the petty-minded who did what to whom.

Nuremberg is the birthplace of Albrecht Durer whose work is miraculous; sheer time travel. I love his studies of wildflowers, irises, squirrels, - the hare. And so we went around his house guided by a recording purporting to be of his wife who told us about the activity in the house, which was more than a home, it was a workshop of different craftsmen - engravers, painters and printers - and Durer was the boss. His self-portrait shows him with very pretty long hair. How did he wear it when he was working, I wonder? Push it under his hat?

Part of the city wall showing wooden walkway

That day was very hot; it rained in the night and hasn't been quite so hot since. That evening we went to a restaurant-cum-cocktail bar that was very popular and we couldn't get served so we went and had the local sausages and pretzels instead. There were buskers all along the street, some of them very good; like the standing up sitar player.

The next day we caught a tram to the outskirts of town to see the Nazi Documentation Centre (museum) and we felt quite bad about wanting to go; as though the Germans would think we weren't willing to let bygones be bygones, but we wanted to see the Nazi parade grounds and the museum is there too. The museum is sited in one of the Nazi monuments: a giant coliseum made of brick fronted by stone. The new steel entrance pierces the building at an angle like a knife stabbing at its heart. The atmosphere is thoroughly serious and unhappy. The story of the rise of the Nazi party, the cult of Hitler, the militarisation and the war is told in by pictures and audio commentary relieved by the occasional film. It seemed to take a very long time to get through it all. I found most memorable the first person accounts by two old boys who had worked as slave labourers in the quarry where the stone came for building the great stadium at Nuremberg. They were questioned about the work they had done and they both focused on the feeling that the stones were beautiful,  rather than the suffering but one went back to that place where they had worked like brutalised slaves day after day, and talked about starving on thin soup; their young lives were blighted by violence and imprisonment and that none of them had done nothing to deserve that.

Then there are a few pictures of terrible atrocities - like the pile of starved skeletons looking like so much old junk, or young naked girls lying dead after having dug their graves, and you look at the uniformed figure in the photo curiously and wonder why he thought, and continued to think, that all this cruelty was justified. But this is old news and you already know why; explaining it is the function of  the museum and it does this well.

There are films of Hitler's processions through Nuremberg City where the buildings behind the shouting, singing crowds are clearly in poor repair; a dirty remnant of its medieval heyday; and that fact is eloquent too. The old women who were young girls at the time just remembered all the excitement of having parades in their city and loving being involved and hanging out flags and best of all, seeing Hitler.

The specially-built parade grounds are being allowed to crumble away and can we be sorry about that? The seating provides a home for a yellow and pink flowering of wildflowers and butterflies, and there's a football pitch and a race track on the grounds. The columns became unsafe and were blown up. Really, I think it should all be blown up, but I suppose it serves as proof that it really happened, just here. We walked around the lakes and I picked up some fat green acorns. It was good to catch the bus back to lovely Nuremberg and roam around the streets once more.

OZYMANDIAS OF EGYPT

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing else remains. Round the decay
of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Percy Bysshe Shelley 1792-1822

Germany: Rothenburg: We didn't go by the romantic road

The guide book we used on our last trip, in Eastern Europe, is called Frommer's Europe by rail. I looked at it before we came away and it was very enthusiastic about the Romantic Road, so I decided we would take the romantic road from Wurzburg to Augsburg. But we left the book at home because very little of it deals specifically with Germany and we thought we would get another. Part 1 of my plan went well and so we caught the train from Heidelberg to Wurzburg enjoying beautiful views all the way.

View through train window - lots of this

 Also, I loved Wurzburg. It is nicely proportioned and seems like a homely market town, cheerful and comfortable, like Stamford, only bigger. The first day we just walked about with our new guide book, which had been so unhelpful on the subject of Heidelberg, and enjoyed the churches and the squares. At the town hall we went to see the WWII display, and were horrified to find that poor Wurzburg had been bombed with thousands of incendiary bombs only 6 weeks before the end of the war. It was completely destroyed. And that was not the whole story, for when the Americans came to liberate the town the townspeople fought them over nearly every house and you could imagine the confusion and rage over the place. So it was a rebuild. Nevertheless, the old town retained its charm and there was a great Rathaus, cobbled streets and interesting statues. I especially love the Madonnas on the street corners.

The second day we went to see the residenz (spectacularly baroque) and learned more about German history, and then caught the train to Rothenberg. The plan had been to catch the Romantic road bus, which Frommer's had considered one of the most beautiful routes in Europe, but our new guide, Stevie Nicks, (for we changed his name for being so opinionated) was less enthusiastic about it and so we caught the slow train to Rothenberg, instead of the bus, the town which Stevie considered the highlight of the trip. Stevie assured us we would have no difficulty in finding somewhere to stay the night because the many tourists that came by day were usually day trippers. However, Stevie was wrong; because we happened to arrive on a day when R'berg was hosting some kind of rock concert and every bed in town was booked up.

Rothenberg - medieval story book town

So we went around R'berg for a few hours just looking at the lovely well-maintained old buildings and pretty squares and soaking up the idea that this had once been a functioning town as one might find in old stories about rich merchants' daughters and wicked step-mothers- I spent longer than I meant to do seeing round a church guided by a local elderly lady, and admiring a splendid wood carving that had held a reliquary of the Holy Blood. We had beer and fries in a pub garden and managed to get away without buying anything in the long streets of tourist shops for here was the ultimate in tourist traps and a crowd of people taking photographs in all directions everywhere we walked; but our mate Stevie positively recommended it as being of more interest than Heidelberg. So we returned to the tiny village where we had changed trains and stayed in a proper German guesthouse for a change, eating German meat and dumplings and enjoying the peace of the scenic countryside. After looking at the map we decided to change our minds about the Romantic Road and go to Nuremberg instead.

I'm afraid my photos are never quite focussed but I hope you can see that this is a masterpiece. St James (or John) has his head on Jesus' lap.

Germany: Lack of memory: Heidelberg: 2 sensible methods

We started in Cologne and apart from the amazing size of the Cathedral building and the love padlocks on the bridge I have forgotten everything about it. This is because we walk everywhere with a map and then catch a train somewhere else and this is probably not a good way to have a holiday. You need to stop and think sometimes.

We knew that Cologne had been destroyed in the war so we were glad to see how well the town had been rebuilt. The next day we took the train to Heidelberg. The train journey was rather wonderful as it took us along the great Rhine valley and there are vineyards on the slopes. Heidelberg itself is sited on one side of the river Neckar,although there is a famous bridge going across, the town hasn't strayed over much. This was where I rebelled and demanded we get a guide book as we had no idea what was what in town; although you can guess that all the buildings are very historical and probably owned by the university. There is a brilliant travel bookshop in town but they had only one guidebook to Germany in English, and this was where Rick Steve, author of Germany 2014, came into our lives. This is is his incredibly helpful entry on Heidelberg:

Lowlights
Heidelberg
This famous old university town attracts hordes of Americans. Any surviving charm is stained almost beyond recognition by commercialism. It doesn't make it into Germany's top three weeks. 

 So this was very disappointing and also very untrue, because there we were in early August and we didn't hear any American voices, and we saw plenty of Japanese, Chinese and Korean people (maybe students at summer school?) and as the day turned to evening we had many of the cobbled squares to ourselves. Yes, there were many tourists on the hill seeing the castle and the castle gardens, but by no means so many that we couldn't enjoy the place! The views are lovely and the river is peaceful. We had dinner in the student canteen which is where I enjoyed the second example of brilliant German practicality. There is a buffet for all the dishes on offer. You take a plate and help yourself. I thought (wrongly) it would be an all-you-can-eat buffet and this encouraged me to be a bit of a pig, which isn't sensible. I probably took too many curried chick peas and a surfeit of spicy quorn glop. So how is it priced? By weighing the plate. This is so sensible I can't understand why I haven't come across it before.

The student canteen is in the old armoury. The town is full of make-do like this. We ate under the trees outside at trestle tables with students and sundry others. Apart from this, we were pleased to make the acquaintance of Robert Bunsen (in statue form only of course), as we had never realised he was German.

I should add that the first sensible German method was that for queuing for a train ticket - you take numbered ticket and then sit down on a comfy red bench until your number comes up. Queuing is never fun but this way takes some of the pain away.

Netherlands: No gears, no brakes -having fun in Holland

From Stamford, we caught the train to Peterborough, from thence to Ely and to Bury St Edmonds where we had a long wait, so we walked for a long way with our rucksacks on and I discovered that my straps pull my shoulder and neck uncomfortably, but otherwise the rucksack isn't too bad. The public park is lovely in an old-fashioned way (especially if you are keen on begonias) because families play together there, among the ruins of a once proud monastery. It sounds as though I am anti-monastery and I'm not at all; the ideal of hospitality and the word "hospital" on the plan always make me think that the monks worked to benefit the lay community and were not always set on their own worldly wealth. This monastery was sacked and ruined and the pieces lie round about the park, but some houses have been built very artfully into one of the old walls and this is very attractive and pleasing to see.

Long wait at another station but we eventually boarded the ferry at Harwich. It's a well-fitted ship and so huge you can hardly feel it moving and we slept well. Husband was rather dismayed to find it a very steep climb into the top bunk, but he made it. In the mornIng he found out that there was a ladder sneakily hidden behind the cabin door.

It was not difficult to find the way to Wageningen by rail and we arrived in time to walk around this pleasant town with our hostess and climb a hill steep enough to give us a view; which she swears is very rare in the Netherlands. This view is over a part of the Rhine delta and the wild flowers were delightful. The town is famous for having an agricultural university which is very hot on green issues. Once the university buildings were all around the town as they are in Edinburgh, say, and now the town buildings - not easily converted - are being abandoned by the university which is moving to a campus. The university has abandoned its arboretum, which is sad, and an impressive greenhouse of tropical specimens. The town is like a garden city in that the townspeople have modest homes and put a lot of effort into their gardens. The soil seems to be very good (meaning I am jealous of the flowers!). Our friend reports that the Dutch don't want inequality - it's not in their nature, and indeed, their way of life seems to be enviable. The cycling keeps them fit and down to earth, and slows them down in a way that must be good for their mental health.

The next day I got a chance to do some cycling myself. I am not good on a bicycle! I can just about manage, and suddenly we were in a huge park threaded with cycle routes and the bicycles available had no gears and no brakes. How to stop? Back peddle. This was really hard to do at first and I kept reaching to clutch at non-existent brakes, and I always back-peddle when getting on... Basically it was all very fraught for half an hour and then it was fine apart from the people I mowed down because they did not get out of the way fast enough.

The terrain was sandy, with pine trees, and there were areas where the trees had been burnt, we think intentionally. There was heather coming into bloom. However, we didn't see any birds, although the others said they had seen beetles.

The land is quite flat and the paths are good

After a few hours of this we reached the Kroller-Muller museum, Otterlo. This is the most amazing modern art gallery. I discovered I don't think much of Seurat - very clever and intellectual pictures with no life or movement to them. But his friend and supporter Signac was good!

The permanent exhibition is very rich in Van Goghs and I hope I will have time to write about them later.