Van Gogh exhibit links to Japanese woodblock prints
Axel Rüger, director of the Van Gogh Museum, and Nienke Bakker, senior conservator, reveal ‘Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear’ (1889, The Courtauld Gallery, London). Van Gogh Museum image
AMSTERDAM – On March 23, the Van Gogh Museum will open “Van Gogh & Japan,” a major exhibition about the influence of Japanese art on the work of Vincent van Gogh. With some 60 paintings and drawings by Van Gogh and a large selection of Japanese prints, the exhibition explores the extent of Van Gogh’s admiration for this form of art and the fundamental impact it had on his work.
Exceptional loans from museums and private collections all over the world are coming to Amsterdam, among them Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear (1889, The Courtauld Gallery, London), a painting that has not left the UK since 1955 and has not been shown in the Netherlands since 1930.
Other highlights include Van Gogh’s Self-Portrait (1888, Harvard Art Museums/ Fogg Museum, Cambridge, Mass.), Woman Rocking the Cradle (Augustine Roulin) (1889, The Art Institute of Chicago), Undergrowth with Two Figures (1890, Cincinnati Art Museum), La Crau with Peach Trees in Blossom (1889, The Courtauld Gallery, London) and The Arlésienne (Marie Ginoux) (1888, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). It is the first time that an exhibition of this scope and scale has been devoted to this subject.
Van Gogh’s encounter with Japanese printmaking played a decisive role in the direction he took as an artist. During his time in Paris (1886–88) he became fascinated by ukiyo-e, 19th-century Japanese color woodcuts, and began to collect them on a large scale. What Van Gogh so admired about these colorful prints were the unconventional compositions, the large planes in bright colors and the focus on details in nature. The three remarkable paintings he made after Japanese prints while he was in Paris were his first exploration of this new artistic model.
Van Gogh swiftly came to identify Japanese art as a benchmark for his work, as we learn from the letters he wrote from Arles, where he moved in early 1888 with the idea that the South of France was “the equivalent of Japan.” He learned to look “with a more Japanese eye” and made “paintings like Japanese prints.” Van Gogh & Japan shows how Van Gogh began increasingly to work in the spirit of the oriental example, with the emphasis on a bold, colorful palette.
With some 60 paintings and drawings by Van Gogh and a large selection of Japanese prints, the exhibition explores the extent of Van Gogh’s admiration for this form of art and the fundamental impact it had on his work.
“Van Gogh & Japan” is accompanied by a colorful book illustrated with more than 250 paintings, drawings and Japanese prints. Van Gogh’s admiration for Japan and the great influence Japanese printmaking had on his work are described in depth. Available in Dutch, English and French, paperback. Publisher: Mercatorfonds, Brussels. Price: €29.95.
The exhibition will be on view through June 24.
