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THANKS TO the way Instagram allows us to armchair-travel via everyone else’s summer vacations, I’ve been feeling a deep desire to be in the south of France and quite frankly wonder why I’m not there. To satisfy that urge, I turned to Dutch Post-Impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) and one of the 15 paintings he made of olive trees in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. Produced from 1889 to 1890, they powerfully evoke deep summer. The fiery-yellow sky and swirly gestures in “Olive Trees,” part of The Minneapolis Institute of Arts collection, felt exactly as I usually do this time of year…hot and dizzy.
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