Self-Portrait, 1889, by Vincent van Gogh (Norton Simon Museum /
December 23, 2012)
What is it, exactly, about Van Gogh?
For those of us with a vested interest in contemporary art, who spend much of our time immersed in the work of artists most Americans have never heard of, it is an important question to ponder from time to time — one that the Norton Simon Museum's temporary installation of an 1889 self-portrait on loan from the National Gallery of Art calls again to the fore.
There is no more familiar face in all of modern art history: the piercing blue eyes; the gaunt, sallow features; the imagined spectacle of a severed ear (turned discretely away from the viewer in this, as in most, variations); all swimming in a sea of madly quivering brush strokes.
If you've never seen Van Gogh's visage in one of the dozens of self-portraits he painted in his lifetime, you've seen it on postcards, calendars, coffee cups or refrigerator magnets. The National Gallery portrait, painted three months after Van Gogh committed himself to a mental asylum in Saint-Remy, in the south of France, and less than a year before his death at age 37, is one of the best known, and its front-and-center presentation here is sure to draw the requisite crowd.
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To learn more about an amazing fine art exhibition, please visit Love Unlimited Film Festival and Art Exhibition.
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