Van Gogh Exhibit

[Kerri]

Ran across this yesterday and thought I'd share.

KJ*

March 11, 2000

Van Gogh Exhibit Opens in Detroit

By The Associated Press
DETROIT (AP) -- The old man with the sunken cheeks and top hat gazes sullenly
from one of Vincent Van Gogh's stark drawings in ``Van Gogh: Face to Face,''
the first comprehensive exhibition solely of the Dutch master's portraits.

``What fascinates me much, much more than does anything else in my metier is
the portrait, the modern portrait,'' Van Gogh said in 1890. ``I would like to
do portraits which will appear as revelations to people in 100 years time.''

More than a century later, the exhibition opening Sunday at the Detroit
Institute of Arts showcases 31 drawings and 36 paintings, many of which have
not been seen in this country before. It runs through June 4 before moving to
Boston and Philadelphia.

The exhibition includes works on loan from private collectors and museums the
world over, as well as the Detroit museum's Van Goghs: ``Portrait of Joseph
Rulin,'' a 1992 gift from Walter B. Ford II and his wife Josephine; two Van
Gogh landscapes; and the ``Self Portrait,'' acquired in 1922 -- the first Van
Gogh purchased by an American museum.

``This is an artist who has staggering name recognition, so you're asking to
borrow truly the signature paintings from any great museum collection,'' said
George Keyes, the museum's curator of European painting and the brainchild
behind the exhibit.

Large-scale and finely detailed drawings, produced in the Netherlands between
1882 and 1885, are the earliest works in the exhibit and capture the essential
character of Van Gogh's subjects: poor peasants, fishermen and pensioners.

The ``Orphan Man in the Top Hat'' was drawn in 1882 at The Hague with pencil,
black lithographic crayon, pen, brush and brown ink. Van Gogh applied the
graphite and lithographic crayon with such force that they left indentations on
the paper. He also scratched through some of the black areas, such as the top
hat, to create the effect of light reflecting off the sheen of the fabric.

The Detroit museum organized the collection with The Museum of Fine Arts in
Boston and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the only other museums where the
exhibit will be displayed.