Van Gogh

http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/exhibitions.php?id=5634

Van Gogh and the Colors of the Night
September 21, 2008–January 5, 2009

Special Exhibitions Gallery, second floor

Throughout his career, Vincent van Gogh (Dutch, 1853–1890) attempted the paradoxical task of representing night by light. His procedure followed the trend set by the Impressionists of "translating" visual light effects with various color combinations. At the same time, this concern was grafted onto Van Gogh's desire to interweave the visual and the metaphorical in order to produce fresh and deeply original works of art. These different artistic concerns found themselves powerfully bound together in Van Gogh's nocturnal and twilight paintings and drawings. This exhibition will present new insight into Van Gogh's depictions of night landscapes, interior scenes, and the effects of both gaslight and natural light on their surroundings. Representing all periods of the artist's career, the exhibition will comprise over two dozen works of superlative quality—several of which have never been seen together, even though they were very clearly conceived with each other in mind. This exhibition will be shown at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, February 13–June 7, 2009. It will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue.

Van Gogh and the Colors of the Night


By Joachim Pissarro, Chris Stolwijk, and Sjraar van Heugten, with essays by Geeta Bruin, Jennifer Field, and Maite van Dijk

Co-published by MoMA and the Van Gogh Museum in conjunction with the first exhibition to focus on Vincent van Gogh's depictions of nocturnal and twilight scenes, Van Gogh and the Colors of the Night examines the artist's night landscapes, interior scenes, and representations of the effects of both gaslight and natural light on their surroundings. It features over one hundred illustrations, including details of Van Gogh's iconic paintings and works by other artist important to the development of his style.

Essays by Joachim Pissarro, Adjunct Curator in the Department of Painting and Sculpture at MoMA, Sjraar van Heugten, Head of Collections at the Van Gogh Museum, and Chris Stolwijk, Head of Research at the Van Gogh Museum, provide context for better understanding the artist's motives and offer in-depth studies of the technical and stylistic aspects of Van Gogh's work.

.이 작품 진품은 처음 보는데, 내가 중학교때부터 따라 그리던 습작이 떠오르던 하루였다. 판화 습작도 여러 장 있었고, 생각보다 크기가 크고, 심혈을 기울여 여러 장의 습작들 끝에 나온 대작이었다. Early in his life, van Gogh was a devout Christian and wanted to become involved in religion for his profession. He became a lay preacher and afterwards strived to become a painter of the working people. Capturing peasants’ everyday laboring in his paintings, he most famously did so in The Potato Eaters (1885). In a dark room lit only by a single candle hung above the table, the painting shows five peasants eating potatoes at the table. The overall darkness and dull green shades coloring the walls give off an impression of dirt and grime everywhere, and the shadows threaten that there are worse unseen areas in the room. The size of the people relative to the room and the low-hanging candle-lamp crowd the room to a stifling point, and the presence of only one community plate certainly is a statement of the family’s sanitary standards