IN case we needed a reason for a new show of Vincent van Gogh, try this: He was the father of the German Expressionist movement.
OK, we’ll bite – especially when that’s the hook of a wonderful exhibit like the one at the Neue Galerie.
On display in this elegant museum (home to the $135 million Gustav Klimt) are 80 paintings and drawings – more than a third of them van Gogh’s – paired with works by the German, Austrian and Russian artists inspired by his broken brush strokes, vivid stabs of color and tormented life.
“He’s the single most powerful influence on that whole trend of modern art,” says the show’s curator, Jill Lloyd, who pronounces van Gogh the Dutch way, like a strangled cough.
The challenge, she says, was persuading private collectors and the venerable Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam to part with their art for three months. (Solution: The Neue lent the Amsterdam museum its own German and Austrian works for a similar exhibit.)
And so, hanging alongside van Gogh’s “The Bedroom,” with its simple bed, chair and wash stand, is Egon Schiele’s equally spartan “The Artist’s Bedroom in Neulengbach,” painted 22 years later, only in more somber colors.
Elsewhere hang several van Gogh self-portraits and landscapes – both the well-known and the rarely seen, like the surprisingly cheerful “Corner of a Garden with Flowers and Butterflies” he painted in 1889, shortly before his death – displayed beside eerily similar works by Klimt, Schiele, Oskar Kokoschka and others.
The show is minimalist to a fault – one would like to know at least the gist of the letters, written in German, on display here – but that’s a small price to pay for seeing so many masterpieces in such an intimate space.
For many people, though, the most indelible image may be the photo of the artist himself: a big, black-and-white blow-up that hangs on the second-floor landing. Here is van Gogh as he actually looked at age 19: cleanshaven and clearly uncomfortable, with a faraway look in his eyes.
We don’t know what he’s seeing – we can only savor what he’s shown us.
“Van Gogh and Expressionism” is on view Thursdays through Mondays through July 2 at the Neue Galerie, 1048 Fifth Ave., at 86th Street. Children under 12 are not admitted; those under 16 must be accompanied by an adult.