Word: gogh
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Face to Face reveals the many personal traumas in van Gogh's life. While in The Hague, to his family's severe chagrin, van Gogh began living with a former prostitute, Sien, and her mother and children. His earlier portraits of Sien, which occupy more than a wall of the exhibition, reflect a woman defined by hardship and given a sense of beauty. Cleverly juxtaposed with these images are later ones, from 1883, showing an aged, unsmiling and cynical Sien. Shortly after one particularly jaded drawing, van Gogh upped and left for Nuenen, a village in the Netherlands, to live...
...exhibit itself changes with this move. Inspired by Jean-Franois Millet, van Gogh became convinced that the peasantry was the true subject for modern art. Study after study, in dark earth tones, reveals van Gogh's desire to capture the humility and spirit of the common worker. Particularly impressive is the exhibit's collection of van Gogh's studies for his first masterpiece, 'The Potato Eaters' (1885), the final version of which is not included in the show. Van Gogh was upset with the reception of this painting, moved briefly to Antwerp, where his brother Theo introduced...
Everything brightens as the exhibit moves to the Paris and Arles years of the late 1880s. Even the walls of the museum change from somber blue to yellow, van Gogh's favorite color. In Paris, van Gogh was busy but poor, so he often used himself as a model. Seven of his self-portraits appear in the exhibit, more than have ever been seen together before...
...Gogh's brushstrokes reveal his interest in Impressionism and Pointillism, as well as the influence of his friends Toulouse-Lautrec, Gauguin and Seurat. The portraits are hung close together to underscore how small changes in technique and pose can make an image completely different. The sea greens, seen later in van Gogh's flower paintings, make their first appearance here...
...When van Gogh leaves Paris for Arles, the mood shifts yet again, to pink and yellow hues and intense color. In Arles, the Roulin family - Joseph Roulin, postal worker, his wife Augustine, and their three children, all friends of van Gogh - becomes his primary subject. This is the largest collection of the Roulin family portraits ever seen together - 17 in total, including seven different versions of 'The Postman Joseph Roulin.' Granted, the exhibit was conceived in part because the Detroit Institute of Arts wanted to show off one newly acquired version, but the museum-goer gets a little lost...