Vincent van Gogh's 'Nocturnal Landscapes and Interiors' at MoMA, New York until 5 Jan 09

Exhibition Description:

Vincent van Gogh (Dutch painter, 1853-1890) depicted and reflected upon the night throughout his career. Painting in the dark was a challenge in the late nineteenth century. However, Van Gogh refused to be bound by this limitation, relying on both his ability to observe and his imagination, as apposed to using only one of these skills. For him, the real was intertwined with the symbolic, and he set out to capture the spiritual qualities he sensed in the world around him. It was during these night hours that his experiments with imagination, memory, and observation, altogether went the farthest.

MoMA, in collaboration with the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, presents Van Gogh and the Colors of the Night. This is the first exhibition to examine Vincent van Gogh's lyrical view of the night through nocturnal interiors and landscapes, which he often combined with other longstanding themes of his art such as peasant life, sowers, wheatfields, and the encroachment of modernity on the rural scene. The exhibition includes 23 paintings and 10 works on paper from all the periods of Van Gogh's career. It will also present a selection of his letters and examples of the rich literary sources that influenced the artist's work by writers such as Hans Christian Andersen, Jules Michelet, and Emile Zola. The exhibition will travel to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, where it will be on view February 13 to June 7, 2009.

Description:

Image: Vincent van Gogh. The Starry Night over the Rhône. 1888. Oil on canvas, 28 ½ x 36 1/4" (72.4 x 92 cm). Musée d’Orsay, Paris. Gift of M. and Mme Robert Kahn-Sriber, in memory of M. and Mme Fernand Moch, 1975. © Réunion des Musées Nationaux / Art Resource, NY. Photo: Hervé Lewandowski.

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