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When & Where
DATES + HOURS
Saturday, January 14 10:00 am - 9:00 pm
Sunday, January 15 10:00 am - 6:00 pm
Monday, January 16
10:00 am - 7:00 pm
Tuesday, January 17
4:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Wednesday, January 18
4:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Thursday, January 19
4:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Friday, January 20 10:00 am - 9:00 pm
Saturday, January 21 10:00 am - 9:00 pm
Sunday, January 22 10:00 am - 6:00 pm
LOCATION
Pennsylvania Convention Center
Exhibition Hall F


12th & Arch Streets, Philadelphia PA 19107


www.paconvention.com
Ample parking is available and transit is just a short walk away.

Ooh La La :: Van Gogh In Philadelphia

Van Gogh Painted this Beautiful "yellow house" in 1888 

Van Gogh Up Close

February 1, 2012 - May 6, 2012

 Paid Tickets Required
 Member Tickets

Vincent van Gogh was an artist of exceptional intensity, not only in his use of color and exuberant application of paint, but also in his personal life. Drawn powerfully to nature, his works--particularly those created in the years just before he took his own life--engage the viewer with the strength of his emotions. This exhibition focuses on these tumultuous years, a period of feverish artistic experimentation that began when van Gogh left Antwerp for Paris in 1886 and continued until his death in Auvers in 1890.

Radically altering and often outright abandoning traditional painting techniques, van Gogh created still lifes and landscapes unlike anything that had ever been seen before. He experimented with depth of field and focus. He used shifting perspectives and brought familiar objects “up close” into the foreground. And he produced some of the most original works of his career; works that dramatically altered the course of modern painting. Through some 40 masterpieces borrowed from collections around the world, Van Gogh Up Close is the first exhibition to explore the reasons and means by which this impassioned artist made such unusual changes to his painting style in the final years of his life.

When he arrived in Paris, van Gogh initially worked in the Montmartre apartment he shared with his brother Theo. He created a series of still lifes and paintings of flowers and fruit, focusing especially on aspects of scale, angle, and color. In many of these works, objects may be seen from above, or are placed in a tightly cropped space providing no clues to their context or setting. Pieces of fruit appear to tip forward and threaten to roll out of the picture. Meanwhile, the close up views of grasses, wheat sheaves, and tree trunks, which dominate the foreground of a number of the landscapes of this period, hint at more than just a detailed study of subject--they suggest a deep concern with representing the sensory and emotional experience of being outdoors.

When van Gogh discovered the work of other artists in Paris, such as the Impressionist paintings of Monet, Pissarro, and Renoir, and the pointillist works of Seurat and others, he was inspired to use lighter colors and to play with different kinds of brushwork in his own work. At about this time, he also began to acquire Japanese woodblock prints. He admired these for their decorative use of color and flattened compositions, and he embraced the ideas of Japanese artists who worked in close communion with nature, studying “the smallest blade of grass” to better comprehend nature as a whole. Indeed, when he moved to Arles in 1888, van Gogh wrote that being in the south of France was the closest thing to going to Japan.

The landscapes that he painted around Arles show Japanese influence in their deep views of the countryside and high horizon lines, while the landscapes he went on to create in Saint-Rémy and Auvers in 1889 and 1890 are tightly packed, more structured works. Dominated by a screen of trees or falling raindrops, these paintings suggest the immediacy and closeness of van Gogh’s surroundings. A year before he died, he wrote in a letter to his sister, “I…am always obliged to go and gaze at a blade of grass, a pine-tree branch, an ear of wheat, to calm myself."

In his final works, van Gogh closed in on his subjects in even more dramatic ways, reducing the depth of field and maximizing the expressive impact of his brushwork and color. An intimately focused view of a clump of iris, a tangle of almond branches, and the vibrant patterning of an Emperor moth are just a few of the images in an audacious series of still lifes which mark the culmination of the exhibition.

Support and Organizers

Van Gogh Up Close is made possible by GlaxoSmithKline and Sun Life Financial. The exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities. Additional support is provided by the Robert Lehman Foundation, The Pew Charitable Trusts, The Annenberg Foundation Fund for Major Exhibitions, The Kathleen C. and John J. F. Sherrerd Fund for Exhibitions, the National Endowment for the Arts, The Women’s Committee of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Arcadia Foundation, Barbara B. and Theodore R. Aronson, David and Margaret Langfitt, Mr. and Mrs. Robert E. Linck, Mr. and Mrs. John M. Thalheimer, Mrs. Eugene W. Jackson, Mr. and Mrs. Leonard Abramson, and other generous individuals. Promotional support is provided by NBC 10 WCAU and Amtrak. The catalogue was funded, in part, by the Netherland-America Foundation.

The exhibition is organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.

Curators

Joseph J. Rishel, The Gisela and Dennis Alter Senior Curator of European Painting before 1900, and Senior Curator of the John G. Johnson Collection and the Rodin Museum
Jennifer A. Thompson, The Gloria and Jack Drosdick Associate Curator of European Painting and Sculpture before 1900 and the Rodin Museum

Location

Dorrance Special Exhibition Galleries, first floor

Itinerary

Philadelphia Museum of Art, February 1–May 6, 2012 (Dorrance Galleries)
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, May 25–September 3, 2012

Kimmel Center :: Free Events :: 2011-2012

Happy New Year :: 2012 :: Photo by: The Kimmel Center :: Philadelphia PA 

Free at the Kimmel: Sing in the New Year!
Sat, Dec 31

Free at the Kimmel: New Year's Day Celebration!
Sun, Jan 1

Philadelphia Chamber Music Society: Vladimir Feltsman, piano
Wed, Jan 11

Philadelphia Chamber Music Society: Curtis Chamber Orchestra
David Effron, conductor
John de Lancie, Jr, narrator
Tue, Jan 24

Philadelphia Chamber Music Society: Leila Josefowicz, violin
John Novacek, piano
Sun, Jan 29

Kimmel Center Rentals: Jazz Masterpiece
Four Black Immortals
Fri, Feb 3

Free at the Kimmel: Bash the Trash: African Folktales
Sat, Feb 18

Philadelphia Chamber Music Society: Eric Owens, baritone
Craig Rutenberg, piano
Tue, Feb 28

Free at the Kimmel: The Deedle Deedle Dees
Sat, Mar 10

Broadway: FELA!
Tue, Mar 20 - Sun, Mar 25

Philadelphia Chamber Music Society: Marc-André Hamelin, piano
Thu, Mar 29

Free at the Kimmel: Community Rocks with Sara O'Brien
Sat, Apr 7

Philadelphia Chamber Music Society: Quatuor Mosaïques
Tue, Apr 10

Philadelphia Chamber Music Society: Garrick Ohlsson, piano
Thu, Apr 12

Philadelphia Chamber Music Society: András Schiff, piano
Tue, May 8

Philadelphia Chamber Music Society: Christian Gerhaher, baritone
András Schiff, piano
Thu, May 10

Free at the Kimmel: The Little Farm Show
Sat, May 12

Free at the Kimmel: Celebrate the Sounds of the Organ!
Sat, Jun 9

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