November 9, 2022
Stairway at Auvers, 1890. Oil on canvas, 19 11/16 x 27 3/4 in. (50 x 70.5 cm). Saint Louis Art Museum.
I recently viewed the Van Gogh in America exhibit at the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA), and it was impressive. Besides commemorating the DIA’s status as the first American museum to purchase a painting by the Dutch artist Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) on the hundredth anniversary of the acquisition, this exhibition is, in the words of the DIA press release, the “first to chronicle the events and people who introduced Van Gogh to the United States."
Largely unknown during his life, Van Gogh’s popularity began growing in Europe only after his premature death by suicide in 1890 at the age of 37. Neither he nor his work visited the U.S. in his lifetime, so American audiences were not yet familiar with him. The DIA’s exhibition reveals how America’s view of Van Gogh evolved during the first half of the twentieth century and describes his rise to cultural prominence in the United States.
To tell the story of Van Gogh in America, 74 works–portraits, self-portraits, landscapes and still lifes–are arranged into eight categories beginning with Van Gogh in Black and White, followed by America’s First Glimpse, Family Ties, A Van Gogh for Detroit, The Midwest Takes the Lead, The Tipping Point (spanning three gallery areas), Van Gogh in Hollywood and ending with A Lasting Legacy. The exhibition examines Van Gogh’s slow rise to fame in the U.S. It acknowledges his lifelong mental health struggles and looks at the challenges he faced gaining recognition and acceptance for and appreciation of his work. But it also imparts a sense of the man and his relationships with family, friends, and other artists. Finally, the exhibition details how sensationalized biographies of Van Gogh published in the early twentieth century followed by later cinematic adaptations and documentaries have contributed to his celebrity and influence his legacy today.
The show’s curator Jill Shaw (the DIA’s Head of the James Pearson Duffy Department of Modern and Contemporary Art and Rebecca A. Boylan and Thomas W. Sidlik Curator of European Art, 1850 –1970) describes Van Gogh in America as:
…explor[ing] the considerable efforts made by early promoters of modernism in the United States—including dealers, collectors, private art organizations, public institutions, and the artist’s family—to introduce the artist, his biography, and his artistic production into the American consciousness.
The Exhibition
Upon entering the exhibition, I felt as though I had stepped into a holy place. It was the kind of feeling you get when you walk into an old cathedral or church admiring the sublime architecture and absorbing the ambience. To see so many Van Goghs at once was thrilling. The space entitled Van Gogh in Black and White serves as preamble. Van Gogh’s work, it tells us, would not be exhibited in the U.S. until 1913. Before then, unless traveling to Europe, Americans could only read about his paintings in newspapers and view them in black and white photographs such as those reproduced on the walls in this area. When the work did begin showing in the U.S., it was usually met with indifference if not derision. This fate befell Van Gogh’s Chair (1888), a striking painting appropriately on display in this context.
As suggested in the exhibition guide, the painting can be considered a self-portrait of sorts because of the personal effects Van Gogh has included–a pipe and tobacco pouch on the seat of a simple wooden chair with a crate of onions bearing his signature “Vincent” on the floor behind. The onions, emblems of eternal life, perhaps symbolize Van Gogh’s hope that his work would endure beyond his death. The picture is intimate; Van Gogh’s presence is felt if unseen. Yet despite the painting having been part of a 1920 American exhibition, and having been featured in an article in Vogue magazine, it did not sell here–a missed opportunity for the U.S. Instead, it was purchased in 1924 for the Tate Gallery in London and subsequently transferred to the National Gallery there. Fascinating information accompanies many of the works presented in the exhibition, including provenance details such as these.
Van Gogh’s Chair, 1888. Oil on canvas, 36 1/8 x 28 3/4 in (91.8 x 73 cm). The National Gallery, London.
Over twenty years after his death in 1890, Van Gogh was finally presented to American audiences when his work debuted publicly at the 1913 International Exhibition of Modern Art at the 69th Regiment Armory in New York City (commonly known as the Armory Show). Comprising more than 1,300 objects, the Armory Show introduced audiences to the radical developments then taking place in modern art and included at least 21 Van Gogh paintings. Several of those that were displayed have been identified by scholars and are on view in this space, entitled America’s First Glimpse. It is worth noting again that Americans remained unimpressed by Van Gogh’s work. Most of the Van Gogh’s at the Armory Show were offered for sale, but none sold. Both art critics and collectors found them lackluster. One critic wrote Van Gogh off as a “moderately competent Impressionist, who was heavy-handed, had little if any sense of beauty and spoiled a lot of canvas with crude, quite unimportant pictures." Among these “unimportant pictures” was Olive Trees (1889), another The Dance Hall in Arles (December 1888), as well as Undergrowth with Two Figures (1890) and Stairway at Auvers (1890). All were once in the Armory Show, and are now on exhibit at the DIA, a goosebump inducing fact.
Olive Trees, 1889. Oil on canvas, 28 3/4 x 36 1/4 in. (73 x 92.1 cm). The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City.
The Dance Hall in Arles, December 1888. Oil on canvas, 2 ft. 2 in. x 2 ft. 2 in. (810 x 650 cm). Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
Undergrowth with Two Figures, 1890. Oil on canvas, 19 1/2 x 39 1/4 in (49.5 x 99.7 cm). Cincinnati Art Museum.
We learn that despite Van Gogh’s inclusion in over 50 group shows in the 1910s and 1920s in America alongside other European Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists, little sold except a few pieces to private collectors. With what the contemporary press called its “courageous” 1922 purchase of Self-Portrait (1887), the DIA became the first museum in America to own a Van Gogh. Gradually other public institutions followed the DIA’s lead with midwestern organizations leading the way–next notably was The Bedroom (1889), a remarkable gift to the Art Institute of Chicago by a private donor. It is displayed here as well as the paintings acquired thereafter by public museums in Kansas City, Saint Louis, and Toledo.
Self-Portrait, 1887. Oil on artist board mounted to wood panel, 13 3/4 x 10 1/2
in (34.9 x 26.7 cm). Detroit Institute of Arts.
The Bedroom, 1889. Oil on canvas, 29 x 36 5/8 in. (73.6 x 92.3 cm). The Art Institute of Chicago, Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial Collection.
Not until 1935, 13 years after the DIA purchase, was Van Gogh the subject of a solo exhibition in the U.S. The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City mounted a blockbuster show of over 120 works that traveled to several other venues including in an abbreviated form to Detroit.
Portrait of Postman Roulin/Portrait of the Postman Joseph Roulin, Arles, early August 1888. Oil on canvas, 25.5 x 18.8 in (64.7 x 47.7 cm). Detroit Institute of Arts.
Lullaby: Madame Augustine Roulin Rocking a Cradle (La Berceuse), 1889. Oil on canvas, 36 1/2 x 28 5/8 in (92.7 x 72.7 cm). Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
L’Arlésienne: Madame Joseph-Michel Ginoux (Marie Julien, 1848–1911), 1888–89. Oil on canvas, 36 x 29 in (91.4 x 73.7 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Van Gogh in America moves toward its conclusion addressing the 1950s. This was when Hollywood further sensationalized his life in Vincente Minelli’s adaptation of Irving Stone’s popular 1934 biographical novel entitled Lust for Life (the publication of which serendipitously coincided with the 1935 MOMA retrospective). Loosely based on both the book and Van Gogh’s actual life, the 1956 film of the same name starring Kirk Douglas portrays Van Gogh as a tortured genius suffering for his art, mythologizing him as a struggling artist in the American imagination.The film especially sparked public fascination with Van Gogh and his work that has endured to the present day. The exhibit successfully debunks some of this hysteria and culminates with the wondrous painting referred to as Starry Night (Starry Night Over the Rhône), 1888, an á propos ending.
Starry Night (Starry Night over the Rhône), 1888. Oil on canvas, 28 3/4 × 36 1/4 in (73 × 92 cm). Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
My Impressions
Considering that Van Gogh in America is exclusively at the DIA and not a traveling exhibition, the DIA staff has anticipated demand to see the show by selling tickets at timed intervals for entry. Once in, one can take as long as needed to experience the pictures, read about Van Gogh and his work, and listen, if desired, to a complementary audio tour. Still, to be honest, at the time I toured on a Saturday, it was crowded.
Roses, 1890. Oil on canvas, 27 15/16 x 35 7/16 in (71 x 90 cm). National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.
Interestingly, sunflower paintings, which are among Van Gogh’s most iconic works, are conspicuously absent from this show. The closest flower painting in the exhibition is Roses (1890), a spectacular, almost three-dimensional seeming study of a vase overflowing with formerly pink roses that have transformed over time to a brilliant white. My guess is that the DIA probably could not secure loans for any of the well-known sunflower works and/or wanted to spotlight lesser known still lifes. Indeed, there were many Van Gogh works I had never seen before or knew existed, such as the oil painting referred to as A Pair of Leather Clogs (1889, also at the Armory Show) or the drawing called The Wounded Veteran (ca. 1882-1883), a haunting portrait of Adrianus Zuyderland of the Dutch Reformed Home for the Elderly in The Hague. Indeed, we learn that this work is one of more than 1,100 drawings Van Gogh made over the course of his career, for drawing he said was “the root of everything” in art.
A Pair of Leather Clogs, Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, Autumn 1889. Oil on canvas, 12.68 x 8.07 in (32.2 x 40.5 cm). Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, (Vincent van Gogh Foundation).
