IT’S A DAY of rest, and you may be in the mood for a quiet corner and a comfy chair.
We’ve hand-picked some of the week’s best reads for you to savour.
Vincent van Gogh’s ‘Portrait of Dr. Gachet’ disappeared from public view in 1990 after being sold at an auction at Christie’s in New York. A team of reporters set out to find it, and question whether private collectors have a responsibility to share art with the public.
(The New York Times, approx 12 mins reading time)
Anyone looking to track the history, and whereabouts, of the Gachet would do well to start in Auvers-sur-Oise, a village outside Paris. When van Gogh stepped off the train there, on May 20, 1890, the rustic landscape and thatched-roof houses had already become a magnet for artists of the day. The deeply troubled artist, 37, would kill himself only weeks later. But he was about to enter one of his most productive periods during which he painted “Wheat Field With Crows” and “The Church at Auvers.”
That same day, he met with Paul-Ferdinand Gachet, a doctor who had studied nervous disorders. The two shared a love of art. Van Gogh was soon painting still lifes in the doctor’s garden — and the doctor’s portrait. Van Gogh didn’t seek to make an accurate rendering. Cameras could perform that task by then; instead he depicted what he saw in the doctor, and in himself.
The complicated topic is explored in this interesting article centering on a young Dutch woman’s experience.
(The Guardian, approx 24 mins reading time)
Zoë lives in the Netherlands, one of three countries in the world where unbearable mental suffering can be grounds for euthanasia. According to figures from the Dutch Regional Euthanasia Review Committees, last year 138 people died by euthanasia for this reason. Twenty-two of these were under the age of 30. It had taken Zoë four years to persuade her family and her psychiatrist at the Expertisecentrum Euthanasie, or Centre of Expertise on Euthanasia, that she should be allowed to die. Yet at the last minute, she had decided not to go ahead.
Jennifer Wilson looks at the history of clutter, the professional organisers whose jobs it is to help us to help get rid of things people don’t need, and asks how we got here.
(The New Yorker, approx mins reading time)
People hire organizers for all sorts of reasons, Lane notes. One organizer told Lane about a woman who summoned her to deal with the “paperwork chaos” from her family business. “But the minute I picked up one Post-it and moved it to this side,” the organizer recalled, “she lost it and she went into the kitchen and closed the door.” In such cases, the organizer said, she recommends that clients seek out a mental-health professional. Lane is more interested in those clients for whom the hiring of an organizer feels symptomatic of larger social ills. She has found people across the class strata who are overworked, and underwhelmed with what they have to show for it. They are not just too busy to organize their things; they are too busy to live their lives. Instead of writing a novel, they buy a Moleskine. Instead of travelling, they accrue travel points. They acquire books on decluttering that collect dust—somewhere. (They’ll hire a professional organizer to find them.)
Gregg McKevitt writes about Charles M Schulz, the man who created Charlie Brown and Snoopy.
(BBC, approx 6 mins reading time)
Charles M Schulz’s timeless creation Charlie Brown may have been as popular as any character in all of literature, but the cartoonist was modest about the scope of his miniature parables. In a 1977 BBC interview, he said: “I’m talking only about the minor everyday problems in life. Leo Tolstoy dealt with the major problems of the world. I’m only dealing with why we all have the feeling that people don’t like us.” This did not mean that he felt as if he was dealing with trivial matters. He said: “I’m always very much offended when someone asks me, ‘Do I ever do satire on the social condition?’ Well, I do it almost every day. And they say, ‘Well, do you ever do political things?’ I say, ‘I do things which are more important than politics. I’m dealing with love and hate and mistrust and fear and insecurity.’”
Chris Martin opens up about the power of music, reaching new heights after 28 years in the industry and learning to ignore the critics.
(Rolling Stone, approx 33 mins reading time)
He seems for real. Very, very, very for real. About all of the Rolling Stone rock & roll tropes not taken. About Coldplay’s acceptance that theirs is a message of acceptance. But also, now, about how maybe that message is the one Martin himself most needs to hear. “When I’m saying these things about world peace, I’m also talking about my own inside,” he tells me. “It’s a daily thing not to hate yourself. Forget about outside critics — it’s the inside ones, too. That’s really our mission right now: We are consciously trying to fly the flag for love being an approach to all things. There aren’t that many [groups] that get to champion that philosophy to that many people. So we do it. And I need to hear that too, so that I don’t give up and just become bitter and twisted and hidden away, and hate everybody. I don’t want to do that, but it’s so tempting.” What he is saying is this: radical acceptance — of others, of oneself; most especially of oneself — takes work, emotional manipulation even. Sometimes you need it writ large across a stadium of people. Sometimes you need literal fireworks.
Has Netflix and the rise of streaming platforms ruined the way we watch film and the industry itself? In this essay, Will Tavlin says yes.
(n+1, approx mins reading time)
For a century, the business of running a Hollywood studio was straightforward. The more people watched films, the more money the studios made. With Netflix, however, audiences don’t pay for individual films. They pay a subscription to watch everything, and this has enabled a strange phenomenon to take root. Netflix’s movies don’t have to abide by any of the norms established over the history of cinema: they don’t have to be profitable, pretty, sexy, intelligent, funny, well-made, or anything else that pulls audiences into theater seats. Netflix’s audiences watch from their homes, on couches, in beds, on public transportation, and on toilets. Often they aren’t even watching. Over the past decade, Netflix, which first emerged as a destroyer of video stores, has developed a powerful business model to conquer television, only to unleash its strange and destructive power on the cinema. In doing so, it has brought Hollywood to the brink of irrelevance. Because Netflix doesn’t just survive when no one is watching — it thrives.
After the body of 55-year-old Greg Fleniken was found in a hotel room, the police were stumped and found no clear motive. His widow turned to a private detective to help solve the case. This is how he solved it.
(Vanity Fair, approx 39 mins reading time)
There are not that many murders in Beaumont. Greg’s was one of 10 that year, which was about average. Most are not mysterious. Detective work was usually a matter of doing the obvious—interviewing the drunk boyfriend with gunpowder on his hands, or finding the neighborhood drug dealer who was owed money. A case like this was a once-in-a-career event. If you enjoy working a stubborn whodunit, which Apple does, then this one was an exciting challenge. But the problem with the hard cases is that they are indeed hard. Over the next weeks and months Apple chased down every angle he could imagine to explain the death of Greg Fleniken. But about six months into it, he was stuck.
Note: The Journal generally selects stories that are not paywalled, but some might not be accessible if you have exceeded your free article limit on the site in question.
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