Van Gogh

WASHINGTON -- Jaynie Simmons lost the battle on Sunday. She arrived at the National Gallery, felt the skin-baking sun, stared at the endless line of sweaty people waiting for free passes to next month's Vincent van Gogh exhibit and left.With a soldier's resolve -- and lots to read -- she was back yesterday. It was still pretty sultry. The wait was two hours. But she would not be denied her free advance pass to see the work of the famed Dutch painter, whose praises she sang while biding the time.

"VINCENT VAN GOGH" painted his life story while on stage at Hampstead Elementary recently, to open a monthlong show of works by all 650 students who attend the school.Ted Brown, a retired educator, portrayed van Gogh. Brown, a talented musician and artist, is able to re-create a day in the life of master artists and musicians in a way that children can understand the historical period, problems and courage of those he portrays.On stage, van Gogh painted with his characteristic bright, bold strokes of color.

COMPARING THE BURNT facade at 184-186 Main St. in Annapolis to a Van Gogh is a stretch. Yet the thinking behind this analogy seemed to prevail last week when the Historic Preservation Commission in the state capital decided unanimously to deny a demolition permit to the owner of that property."

AIX-EN-PROVENCE, France -- Painters know the region well because it has served so beautifully as subject matter: the French-blue Mediterranean, gnarled black-and-silver olive trees, chalky mountains, flirtatious villages, timeless brasseries and, of course, the ruins of an ancient Roman domain.Last fall, that fabulous setting attracted a swarm of amateur artists from Santa Barbara, Calif., who gathered noisily one rainy October morning in the medieval darkness of the breakfast room at Hotel Les Augustins.

I have an old painting of van Gogh's bedroom (at Arles) that I bought many years ago for $4 at a barn sale. How can I find out more about it and its value?Van Gogh painted two copies of his "Bedroom at Arles." One, painted in 1888, measures 29 by 36 inches and hangs in the Art Institute of Chicago. The other, painted in 1889, measures 22 by 29 inches and is in the Vincent van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.The painting was reproduced by art firms, some of which sell "canvas transfers," which are paper pictures of famous paintings attached to canvases.

For a lesson on France, second-graders at Worthington Elementary studied textbooks and maps, then toured the Louvre museum and gazed at the Parisian skyline from the Eiffel Tower.Thanks to University of Maryland, the Ellicott City school is plugged into the Internet, a worldwide computer system of 25 million users that provides everything from tours of the White House to the latest satellite photos of the solar system."It can take them anywhere," said second-grade teacher Donna Mamula, whose students are planning to take an electronic field trip to see volcanoes in Hawaii in March.

Washington--The Kreeger Museum, consisting of the house and collection of modern art of the late David Lloyd Kreeger and his wife, Carmen, becomes Washington's newest museum today when it opens on an appointment-only basis.It's an attractive addition to the area's art scene, although it falls short of being a stunning one.The house, designed by architect Philip Johnson in 1967, is a modern structure that looks like a breath of fresh air in this fussy postmodern era.The collection sounds glorious on paper.

Ludwig von Beethoven didn't die; he's alive and well in 62-year-old Ted Brown.Dr. Brown, a resident of Annapolis, has made a career of bringing back the gifted spirits of famous musicians and painters such as Mozart, Picasso, da Vinci and Chopin. He travels across the country eight months a year impersonating these famous characters from the past.His captivating performances have left audiences cheering and sometimes crying."I want people to know that gifted individuals like Monet and Beethoven had as many problems as we do and just as many frustrations," he said.

That tapestry of self-loathing, bravado, cowardice, pur meanness and ecstasy known as the artistic temperament gets an almost clinical examination in Maurice Pialat's brilliant "Van Gogh," opening today at the Charles.Of course no better example of this weird stretch of highway exists than the mind of Vincent van Gogh, the self-taught, demonically driven, Dutch-born French painter who all but reinvented the way we see the world in his 37 years, only the last decade of which was spent with a brush in hand.

For their imaginative packaging alone, two programs from the Fractal Design Corp., called Painter and Sketcher, would be worth a place on the software shelf. Painter comes in a real paint can, minus the paint, while Sketcher comes in a box reminiscent of the cigar boxes we used to use to hold charcoals, pencils, crayons and sketch pads.The packaging is just the first of many surprises. Both Painter and Sketcher are powerful tools for creating and modifying computer-based art. Each comes in versions for either Apple Macintosh or Microsoft Windows computers.