Amsterdam
“Van Gogh and the Colors of the Night”
Van Gogh Museum
February 13–June 7, 2009
MoMA - The Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd Street
September 21, 2008–January 5, 2009
Curated by Joachim Pissarro and Sjraar van Heugten
That iconic image of Vincent van Gogh painting beside the Rhône River at night wearing a candle-studded hat may be a tired cliché, but it underscores his career-long concern with depicting darkness through light. His sustained ambition to wed Impressionist techniques with his own tendencies toward the visionary and symbolic is the subject of this exhibition, which includes drawings, a selection of his personal correspondence, and approximately two dozen nocturnal and twilight paintings from all periods of his career. Despite the visual and thematic threads that connect these canvases, this marks the first time they have been seen together. A catalogue, with essays by the curators and van Gogh scholar Chris Stolwijk, accompanies the show.