“The cypress is like an exclamation mark in the landscape, and the shape of the tree is like a flame,” said Max Hollein, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, discussing the Met’s new exhibit, Van Gogh’s Cypresses. “It’s the sort of thing that attracts people and certainly Van Gogh. It also has a certain kind of existential impact. It’s very expressive, and very elegant – it’s psychologically charged for sure.”
Arranged carefully across three galleries, the concise and powerful exhibition is viewable at the Met through 27 August. Among its holdings are The Starry Night, Country Road in Provence by Night, as well as the Met’s own Wheat Field with Cypresses, which due to a stipulation by the painting’s donor, is not permitted to ever leave the museum.
“Curator Susan Stein has long wanted to do this show,” said Hollein. “Van Gogh developed a kind of fascination for cypresses and really made it a core focus of his work in Arles. And because Wheat Field with Cypresses is actually not allowed to ever leave the Met, we knew that if there ever was to be a show that brought together all the important cypress paintings, it would only be right here.”
Bringing together all of the artist’s major cypress paintings, as well as important sketches and drawings, the show focuses on two extraordinarily productive years for Van Gogh – 1888-90 – where his time in the French countryside led to some of the most renowned paintings ever created. Four years in the making, Van Gogh’s Cypresses aims to be a holistic look into what led the great artist to become so captivated by the singular evergreen and how he invested himself in embodying its unique allure in artworks that have resonated for well over a century.
“There hasn’t been a show focusing on this particular motif and time,” said Hollein, “so the goal was really to bring together material from 30 public and private collections and allow you to see the working of the artist around this particular motif. It’s not a gigantic show, it’s a very precise and powerful exhibition.”
The show features what is likely Van Gogh’s most famous painting of all, The Starry Night, which is on crosstown loan from the Museum of Modern Art. For Hollein, the cypress tree that dominates the left side of the canvas is crucial to giving that painting its modern feel and intense emotional impact.
“In Starry Night, the cypress makes the painting tip a little bit to the side. You have almost like a vortex in the sky, juxtaposed with a way more vertical dynamic. You usually only see that in futurist paintings, so it’s amazing. It’s really a captivating image of a night sky and an inner self.”
Van Gogh immediately took to the many cypresses strewn across the Arles countryside upon his arrival in 1888. Sketches and letters from early in the artist’s time there testify to how rapidly the cypress made inroads into his imagination, becoming an obsession. Among the documentation offered by the Met’s exhibition is a letter to the artist’s brother Theo, written shortly after Van Gogh’s arrival in Arles, which sees the artist virtually prophesizing the major work to come. “I need a starry night with cypresses – or perhaps above a field of ripe wheat.”
For Hollein, the many letters between the brothers make for one of the exhibition’s most touching aspects. “I think the exhibit’s most moving works are the very intimate letters. You see the original letters by Van Gogh to his brother, Theo, where he describes what he’s seeing out his window. It’s very powerful to see how it moves from an idea to the written word to sketching in a letter to a drawing to a painting. You see how the artistic process works.”
Although the cypress has long been recognized as a powerful motif of Van Gogh’s work, the artist’s cypress paintings are rarely exhibited together. Van Gogh’s Cypresses promises to add new background to paintings that have become icons of the art world, letting audiences see them in new ways. Two landmark works – The Starry Night and Wheat Field with Cypresses – have not been exhibited together since 1901, where they headline the exhibition’s second gallery, The Making of a Signature Motif: Saint-Rémy, May–September 1889.
“Van Gogh is of course an artist who all of us have seen at least once, so I think it’s special to be able to show an exhibition that has a kind of focus that has never been done before,” said Hollein. “And some of the painting that we’re showing, they’re here together for the first time since 1901. So it’s really about being able to bring together this incredibly important but concise body of work.”
Although Van Gogh’s Cypresses is comparatively smaller than other shows of canonical artists staged by major art museums, its careful staging and tight focus is intended to have a considerable emotional impact. The Met has given each of the major works ample space so that audiences can linger and absorb them at their leisure. The show’s tight focus also allows for considerable repetition, so that audiences can see again and again, from different angles, styles and compositions, the same scenes and motifs. Hollein’s hope is that this repetition will make for the kind of impact that museumgoers will remember for years to come.
“The show is a success when people have a total visceral, emotional reaction,” said Hollein. “We’re bringing these works together for you to be able to see them jointly. There has been great care in regards to the installation and space we’re giving to the show, so that you will have that really physical reaction.”
Van Gogh’s Cypresses is now on show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York until 27 August
