Culture Zohn: Starry Nights

If you are 27 years old and you've tried and already shed a couple of careers, can you transform yourself into a world class artist?

Can you paint in the dark?

Can you paint not only what you see but what you remember?

Can you use painting as a tonic for life's challenges, a hedge against the strife and tumult of the day?

The answers to these questions are a resounding yes at the Museum of Modern Art's small but jewel-laden exhibition of Van Gogh's paintings of the night, some of which are surprisingly filled with light.

Canvases from Amsterdam and Germany and Paris are on view, very special, rare ones, and you should not miss this opportunity to see them in the US.

Vincent van Gogh. The Starry Night. 1889. Oil on canvas, 29 x 36 1/4" (73.7 x 92.1 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Acquired through the Lillie P. Bliss Bequest

Starry nights of all kinds begin this week in New York, and the Culture Zohn will give you the tips you need to make your short list of things to do whether you are visiting or live right around the corner.

Comments

[QueenOfViolets]

I went to the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam, where they keep his earliest works, and I was surprised by how terrible a painter he was for so many years. He managed to stay with it, despite how awful he was, until he found his own vision of the world and became great.

It just shows that people don't always start out as geniuses. They can end up there through hard work and extreme focus even if where they started out was a loooonnnng ways away.

[Doesanyonecare]

If you go to MOMA to see this extraordinary exhibit, I suggest that you build in some time to stop and stare. Van Gogh's night works call out to us to enter into the space and experience the light slowly changing. I don't know why or how but, even in a crowded gallery, I had that wonderful peaceful sense of standing in the still, cool air under the expansive cover of the starry universe. If you want to meditate on more worldly thoughts, spend a few minutes with The Potato Eaters. How fortunate if you live in Manhattan; but travel if you must. This is a not to be missed exhibit.