“Choosing one path means giving up the other. Anyone who wants to go anywhere gets nowhere” #PhilosophicalWednesday #1

“Choosing one path means giving up the other. Anyone who wants to go anywhere gets nowhere”

It is the three paths that Vincent Van Gogh proposes in “Wheatfield with the Flight of Crows” that make us concretely imagine Mario Furlan’s phrase.

The roads are alternatives to each other, as each destination is different and by their nature therefore the choice of one excludes the other.

In this work, we are faced with what is considered a sort of artistic and spiritual testament, as it is probably the last painting created and undoubtedly the one that best expresses his state of mind.

 

 

The triple branch alludes to the choices that the painter has encountered in the course of his life, which turned out to be in opposition to each other and without a meeting solution. It is precisely in the choice of one of these streets – which for Van Gogh is represented by the central lane – to mark the renunciation of other existential possibilities: in his case, the choice of pictorial expression meant the possibility of expressing his anxieties and his tensions, reaching the goal of artistic recognition (even if post mortem).

Even in its path, the end of which is not seen, so you do not know where it leads, it is in any case a choice that will lead somewhere: it would have been indecision to confirm a static nature and an impossibility of progressing.