444 / Celestial Means of Locomotion

444 is the name of an ongoing project of Celestial Means of Locomotion published by Départ Pour L’Image Edition, which consists of collecting a selection of works including paintings, photographs, and drawings.
The project is a creation of a reflection around the exceptional nature of 444 days, an interval of time in which Van Gogh transformed Arles and all of its surrounding territory, from Montmajour to Sainte-Marie-de-la-Mer, from Fontevieille to the countryside of Provence, in an open-air study. 444, through the rereading of the real and symbolic elements of the territory, it brings together the evocative dimension of the image with the introspective and visionary nature of Van Gogh's letters.

The project emerges from the encounter with the plane tree to the left of the Trinquetaille Bridge from Quai de la Roquette that Van Gogh painted when it was just planted at the beginning of October 1888. The large tree on the Rhône, appointed with the role of living proof, is a sensitive point around which images take place and from which analogies and interpretations begin and return; the shimmering crown like a starry sky becomes the symbolic location of the confrontation between the earthly condition and the otherworldly sphere. The title Celestial Means of Locomotion refers to the exact star map of the night between July 9 and 10 1888 when Vincent wrote to Theo about the analogy between the positions on the map and the stars: just like how the means of transportation allow the living to go from city to city, so that mortal diseases are imagined as “moyens de locomotion céleste” to travel one day among the infinite stars.