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.

Van Gogh and the Colors of the Night--Use of Color

Van Gogh would reinvent color if it meant the brushstroke that harmonized his painting. But this is only to say partly that he was influenced by the Impressionists, and partly that he was meticulous. What we see in this exhibition, however, we see through Van Gogh’s willingness to let color determine the realization of his vision of each piece.

I will talk about only two paintings from the exhibition, unfortunately leaving some other obvious ones out. The first is one of Van Gogh’s many paintings of a sower; the second is a painting entitled Night (after Millet).

The Sower, a smaller copy of a larger painting, is one of Van Gogh’s most striking experiments in color. A sower in the foreground casts seed along a broad path, and the small painting is cut in half by a Japanese-inspired tree. But the tree, which would otherwise be dominating, only draws our attention to the neon sky laced with pink clouds, and to the enormous and thickly painted sun setting over the field. The sky in this painting is an anomaly in my experience of art. And the original painting, which is in the exhibition catalogue, is gorgeous, complete, and refined; its smaller copy is shocking and just as charming.

It is almost impossible to describe the second painting that I have mentioned, Night (after Millet). A family of three sits before the hearth, the parents doing chores by the light of the lamp. The infant sleeps under the lamp, and is barely detailed. The mother half faces outward, reflecting whites and pinks and greens. The father gives us his back, a deep clay in the shadows. I mention this lovely scene of the holy family only because it is lovely.

Van Gogh and the Colors of the Night--Some Early Paintings

The exhibition offers a rare look at some of Van Gogh’s earlier paintings; and the juxtaposition of these early paintings with the paintings of Van Gogh’s mature style, for which he is so famous, also offers a rare look at the artist’s progress. In the first room of the exhibition, in the northeast corner of that room, three paintings, one from 1883, when he was living in the Hague, one from 1887, after he had moved to France, and one from 1890, one of the chronologically latest paintings in the exhibition, surprised me with the contrast between them but also with the continuity. In each painting the subject is not much different – a twilight scene – but each painting also marks a moment in the artist’s progress. The first, Twilight, Old Farm Houses in Loosduinen, is drab and conveys Van Gogh’s concern with painting realistically. The second, Sunset at Montmartre, is still concerned with realism, but evinces a striking shift in Van Gogh’s relationship with color and brushstroke. The declining sun reminds us of the Van Gogh we know, as it looks forward to his warm use of color – light oranges and yellows set against the blue-green sky – and his standout, powerful strokes with the brush. The third painting, however, Landscape at Twilight, finished not long before his death, calls the artist to mind without hesitation, as Van Gogh lacquers on thick brushstrokes in contrasting bright, deep, warm, dark, ocher hues.

Many of the other early paintings are certainly worthy of note, but I can only manage here to say that one of them in particular, Toward Evening, which Van Gogh painted in 1885, begins to show us, as a friend of mine said, his ability to cast a meditative quality. He does this by laying down a scene: the vastness of nature, with the human playing its tender part in the field.

Van Gogh and the Colors of the Night

This week’s topic is going to be the recent exhibition at MoMA entitled Van Gogh and the Colors of the Night. I have been to this charming exhibition four times, and I am excited to write about it. It is a very small display – 25 or so of his paintings, some drawings and letters, and some of his books – but it includes some major works along with some surprising works that are probably not often seen outside of their homes in permanent collections around the world.

The first two rooms of the exhibition include some works from the early part of his career that bear almost no resemblance to his later paintings but are quite lovely in their own right, and I will blog about these works tomorrow.

On Wednesday I will blog about the persons in some of these paintings.

On Thursday I will write about Van Gogh’s use of color in these paintings.

And Friday I will leave open, either for some more writing about this exhibition, or for something pulled out of a hat.