Van Gogh and the Colours of the Night, review (Amsterdam)
Vincent Van Gogh's Starry Night is one of the first pictures the visitor sees in New York's Museum of Modern Art, its placement proclaiming its status as a forerunner of both the Fauve and Expressionist movements in 20th-century art.
The exact opposite is the case in Van Gogh and the Colours of the Night, the show about Vincent's twilight and nocturnal scenes that opens at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam on Friday.
Hung at the end wall of the last gallery, Starry Night feels like a summation, as though the whole exhibition has been building up to the climactic moment when we catch our first glimpse of it hanging in the distance.
It is as though everything we've seen so far – the oil paintings, drawings, and letters by Vincent juxtaposed with canvases by his predecessors and contemporaries – is there solely to help us understand this strange, hypnotic masterpiece.
Only it can't be understood. No matter how well you know it or how hard you try to see it within the context of Van Gogh's art and life, one reason why it has become so famous is that it defies easy explanation or analysis.
That doesn't mean you can't get closer to the sources of Van Gogh's inspiration by looking at the artists he looked at, or that you shouldn't take into account his religious beliefs (or lack of them) and state of mind when he painted it.
But, after all that, I still have no idea whether Van Gogh intended the picture to be read as a pantheistic celebration of the natural world, an apocalyptic vision of a universe in chaos, or a bitter reflection on the indifference of nature to man and all his works. Not only is there nothing else quite like it within Van Gogh's own work, there is nothing else like it in art...
Read entire article at Telegraph (UK)
The exact opposite is the case in Van Gogh and the Colours of the Night, the show about Vincent's twilight and nocturnal scenes that opens at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam on Friday.
Hung at the end wall of the last gallery, Starry Night feels like a summation, as though the whole exhibition has been building up to the climactic moment when we catch our first glimpse of it hanging in the distance.
It is as though everything we've seen so far – the oil paintings, drawings, and letters by Vincent juxtaposed with canvases by his predecessors and contemporaries – is there solely to help us understand this strange, hypnotic masterpiece.
Only it can't be understood. No matter how well you know it or how hard you try to see it within the context of Van Gogh's art and life, one reason why it has become so famous is that it defies easy explanation or analysis.
That doesn't mean you can't get closer to the sources of Van Gogh's inspiration by looking at the artists he looked at, or that you shouldn't take into account his religious beliefs (or lack of them) and state of mind when he painted it.
But, after all that, I still have no idea whether Van Gogh intended the picture to be read as a pantheistic celebration of the natural world, an apocalyptic vision of a universe in chaos, or a bitter reflection on the indifference of nature to man and all his works. Not only is there nothing else quite like it within Van Gogh's own work, there is nothing else like it in art...