During his short life Vincent van Gogh (1853 - 1890) had a good feeling for himself and his situation. The late-appointed artist, who only began to paint at the age of 27, was not only master of his craft, but also of (self-fulfilling) prophecy. "I foresee some poverty as my lot, but - but I will be a painter," he once wrote to his brother Theo. Van Gogh always understood art as a fight. From the beginning he rejected corrections of his "strict, coarse", but "true" imagery in favor of better saleability. "I will not run after collectors and art dealers, like whoever feels like coming to me."
However, nobody came. Or maybe. But Van Gogh was long since dead and the myth of the lonely, desperate, eternally incomprehensible, godlike genius, who sold a single image and ultimately gave the ball as a disease sufferer of civilization, was born long ago. The legends of German art historians, authors, collectors and dealers of the early twentieth century have had as much influence as Van Gogh's posthumous breakthrough. For tens of years, museums and researchers have been trying to correct this image and show the Dutchman for who he is: a pioneer of modernity - no less, but no more.
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In Germany, as luck would have it, two parallel curated exhibitions can be seen in parallel, dedicated to this approach in different ways. The Potsdam Museum Barberini shows still life of the artist. According to director Ortrud Westheider, it is the world's first show dedicated solely to van Gogh's work of that genre. The fact that never before has a museum come up with this idea - the Dutchman painted more than 170 still lifes - is even more astonishing, as the "sunflowers" are his most famous pictures of all. Although none of the six preserved versions of the cycle - a seventh burned in Japan during the Second World War - can be admired in Potsdam, the exhibition shines with a number of significant paintings.
The Städel Museum in Frankfurt am Main spans the bow considerably. It describes Van Gogh's path from the less successful artist - he sold about 20 works in his lifetime - to the cult figure of the late Impressionists and Expressionists and the most expensive painter in the world, which was forged three or four decades after his suicide in large numbers. "Soon after his death, the biography began to outshine his work," says Frankfurter curator Alexander Eiling in an interview with SPIEGEL.
Who finds the exhibition title "Making van Gogh - History of a German Love" as lurid, self-congratulatory or even presumptuous, does the Städel injustice. "We do not want to say that Germany invented van Gogh, it's our intention to show the German share of the painter's acquaintance." And this includes the dark side of the success story: in 1914, about 150 works by van Gogh were in German private and public collections. Today it's about twenty. At the end of 1937, the Nazis confiscated the wonderful "Portrait of Dr. Gachet," which belonged to the Städel. Exhibited in Frankfurt is the empty original frame - the painting is now privately owned and is worth several hundred million dollars.
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Van Gogh: onions, lemons and self-portraitsThe museum documents the radiance of van Gogh on later generations of painters in direct comparison. Of the more than 120 presented paintings and works on paper, 50 originals from the Dutch count from all phases of his creative career, including some of his most famous works. The Städel makes it very easy for visitors with no prior knowledge of art history to understand the influence of the youngster, who died young at the age of 37.
Both exhibitions show that Van Gogh was indeed far ahead of his time, but by no means the lonely, self-employed artist, suffering and throwing his colors like a madman under the bright blue sky of southern France on canvases. That's all myth. To marvel at a total of almost 80 documents for his constant struggle for forms of expression and design. In the course of his almost ten years of creation, color and brushstrokes continue to detach themselves from the form. He, the self-taught, tried and tried and tried. Van Gogh was not only a source of ideas but also liked to be inspired. "He's not the spontaneous virtuoso, he had to work hard," says Eiling.
The two museums - both of which prepared their Van Gogh events for about five years - talked about a temporal equalization of the expositions. They did well to stay with their planning. The visit is worthwhile here and there because of the large number of loans. One of the highlights of the Städel is the fact that the exhibitions are not closely related to each other, not only through the painter as such: the painting "La Berceuse" from the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, of which Van Gogh painted five versions. It depicts Augustine Roulin, the wife of the postmaster of Arles.
Vincent in a letter to Theo van Gogh advised to hang the work between two of his "sunflower" pictures. The portrait of the motherly figure as a symbol of security and the two still lifes left and right should act like a triptych, so spiritually charged. The light reflected in the flowers of the sun would radiate to the warming kindness of the woman - and vice versa. Because, as van Gogh said: "Still lifes are the beginning of everything."
" Van Gogh Still Life ", Museum Barberini, Potsdam, until 2 February 2020
" Making van Gogh: History of a German Love ", Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main, until 16 February 2020