Van Gogh and the Colors of the Night--Paintings of Persons

The Van Gogh and the Colors of the Night exhibition at MoMA showcases several paintings that convey Van Gogh’s tender feelings towards the human person. Even if often he is painting his human subjects with stark realism, not much flattering them or their situation in life, he still conveys a sadness at an unhappy life, perhaps a reflection of his own unhappiness; and he paints many of his scenes to be suffused with a simple and tender human moment.

I would like to look at two of the paintings from the exhibition in light of their human subjects, and I will leave out some obvious other paintings, including The Potato Eaters, Eugene Boch, and Gauguin’s Chair.

I would like to look first at the painting The Night Cafe, not to be confused with the very famous Terrace of a Cafe at Night (Place du Forum). The Night Café I could have very easily written about yesterday in the blog on color. The painting is purposefully garish, with much less of the short brushstroke work that we are used to with Van Gogh. Unadulterated deep red and turquoise dominate the painting, at least color wise; the bold golden floor does little to mute them. In the middle of the painting, however, sits a gigantic pool table, presided over by the bartender, who stands as though he were without movement for all eternity; he looks out at us in his white eternal robes – his white bartender’s outfit – stuck in hell. And the rest of the scene is not charming. Two men appear drunk off to the right, one to the left, and just above the latter a man and a woman sit mysteriously, and seem to be meant to evoke a subtle lasciviousness in the background. This is not a happy place for Van Gogh, but he paints with empathy, allowing the bartender to plea with us that we might commiserate with him.

The second painting, The Cottage, is one of Van Gogh’s much older paintings. It is painted fairly realistically, a dark landscape with a fiery streak of sunset, dominated by a cottage. This is one of my favorite paintings from the exhibition, if not my favorite. I like it so much because of the woman standing at the cottage window. There is something loving about the way that she is leaned to the right; and the small fire that we see through the middle window is just the right touch of home, which Van Gogh would miss as his life came to a close.