Her shelves heralded all the great names—Diego Velázquez, Peter Paul Rubens, Claude Monet—but my childhood favorite was Vincent van Gogh. Even as a five-year-old, I could sense Van Gogh’s intense and searching artistic personality. The swirling clouds and sinuous cypress trees were a lens into a world of color and brushstrokes that I could not yet grasp, but one that would stay with me as I began to explore the history of art. Van Gogh became a benchmark by which I would measure the pioneering explorations of other artists.
This longtime fascination makes my first Art Institute exhibition, Van Gogh and the Avant-Garde: The Modern Landscape, even more special. Open all summer long, through September 4, the presentation unites more than 75 paintings and works on paper by Van Gogh and four other artists looking to push the boundaries of painting: Georges Seurat, Paul Signac, Emile Bernard, and Charles Angrand. Made in the northwest suburbs of Paris, these works showcase the inspiration these five found in the contradictions of an evolving landscape: labor and leisure, industry and recreation. From railroad bridges and factories to regattas and promenades, the tensions of the city’s outskirts stimulated their creativity, resulting in new ways of thinking about color and brushstroke. In many ways, this period is the missing chapter in Van Gogh’s development as a painter. Without it, Van Gogh would not have become Van Gogh.
The vibrant colors and varied textures at the heart of Van Gogh and the Avant-Garde are echoed in other exhibitions on view this summer, foremost Gio Swaby: Fresh Up, featuring the Bahamian artist’s breathtaking textile portraits, through July 3. You might also enjoy The Arranged Flower: Ikebana and Flora in Japanese Prints, up through July 9—a timely correlation, as Van Gogh and his peers were inspired by the bold compositions, juxtaposed colors, and flattened depth of the Japanese prints that they collected. And an installation by Margaret Honda, Double Feature with Short Subject, illuminates Griffin Court in a spectrum of soft hues. I hope you will join us at the museum this summer to immerse yourself in this prismatic world of color and continue your own personal exploration of art.
—Jacquelyn N. Coutré, Eleanor Wood Prince Associate Curator, Painting and Sculpture of Europe
With Vincent van Gogh’s Fishing in Spring, the Pont de Clichy (Asnières), 1887
The Art Institute of Chicago, gift of Charles Deering McCormick, Brooks McCormick, and Roger McCormick
