From the museum website, 01-12-2008
Van Gogh and the colours of the night is an unique exhibition of paintings by Vincent van Gogh evoking the atmosphere of the evening and night. The exhibition will be organized in collaboration with the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. One of the masterpieces from the MoMA collection, the world-famous painting Starry night, will be on display again in the Van Gogh Museum for the first time since 1990.
Well before he became an artist, Van Gogh was fascinated by the cycles of nature and human life and the times of the day. Scenes set at dusk, evening, or night form a constantly returning motif in his work, many of which are masterpieces like The potato eaters or the Sower-series.
Poetry of the night and the forces of nature
The exhibition will explore the different layers of content of these works: the poetry of the night and the association with modern times on one hand, and the everlasting forces of nature on the other, the literary sources that influenced Van Gogh; and, last but not least, the stylistic and technical methods which Van Gogh applied to conceive his effects of dark and light.
Publication
Van Gogh en de kleuren van de nacht
Sjraar van Heugten, Joachim Pissarro, Chris Stolwijk and others
Catalogue of an exhibition held in 2008-09 in New York (Museum of Modern Art) and in 2009 in Amsterdam (Van Gogh Museum)
160 pp., 115 illustrations, paper bound
Amsterdam (Van Gogh Museum) and New York (Museum of Modern Art) 2008
ISBN-13: 978-90-6153-825-7