Category Archives: Vincent van Gogh

Pokémon no go: Van Gogh Museum stops free cards amid tout chaos

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Booming resale market for cards featuring Pikachu in style of Van Gogh’s Self-Portrait With Grey Felt Hat

They are more commonly associated with pop concerts or football matches than art exhibitions. But rows of ticket touts have become a familiar sight outside the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam in recent weeks as they seek to get their hands on a limited edition Pokémon card.

There was so much interest in the card, which was being offered as part of an exhibition of modern art by Pokémon artists inspired by Van Gogh’s links to Japanese culture, that the museum has clamped down.

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AI Vincent van Gogh talks of ‘mental health struggles’ in Paris exhibition

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Musée d’Orsay adds AI and VR to display of artist’s last works, never previously seen together

For a man who died in 1890, Vincent van Gogh seemed remarkably au fait with 21st-century parlance.

Asked why he had cut off his left ear, the artist replied that this was a misconception and he had in fact only cut off “part of my earlobe”. So why did he shoot himself in the chest with a revolver, causing injuries from which he died two days later?

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‘A little bit cursed’: how stolen Van Gogh was a ‘headache’ for the criminal world

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‘Indiana Jones of art world’ traces lost artwork seized from museum during Covid lockdown

It was a masterpiece with a curse: an early Van Gogh worth €3m-€6m (£2.6m-£5.2m) stolen from a Dutch museum three years ago was being passed around the criminal world like a hot potato, according to art detective Arthur Brand.

“We knew that the painting would go from one hand to another hand in the criminal world, but that nobody really wanted to touch it because it wasn’t worth anything,” said Brand, who is known for retrieving stolen artworks. “You could only get in trouble. So it was a little bit cursed.”

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Revealed: why Van Gogh’s ‘empty chair’ paintings were never shown together

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Sister-in-law hid one dedicated to Gauguin because of ‘anger at the French artist’s attacks on his former friend’

Shortly before Vincent van Gogh cut off his left ear and had a breakdown after quarrelling with his fellow artist, Paul Gauguin, in the French city of Arles in 1888, he created a pair of extraordinary paintings. One, Gauguin’s Chair, depicts a couple of books and a lit candle discarded on an ornate armchair. The other, Van Gogh’s Chair, shows a tobacco pipe and pouch on a rustic wooden chair and is instantly recognisable as one of the most famous paintings in the world.

Now, the mystery of how the diptych of paintings came to be split up – and why the picture of Gauguin’s chair was kept in the family collection while Van Gogh’s Chair was sold off – has finally been solved.

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National Museum of Slovenia cancels art exhibition over alleged fakes

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Show claiming to feature works by Van Gogh, Matisse and Picasso abruptly cancelled as police launch investigation

An exhibition in Slovenia claiming to feature works by Picasso, Van Gogh and Matisse was abruptly cancelled this week over fears some works were forged, prompting a police probe on Friday.

The National Museum of Slovenia planned to officially open the show on Wednesday this week, entitled “Travels” and featuring 160 paintings owned by the little-known Boljkovac family.

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Unseen Van Gogh sketches that rework scorned masterpiece to go on display

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Preparatory work for ‘redoing’ of The Potato Eaters – savaged in his lifetime – to feature in exhibition

A collection of Vincent van Gogh’s preparatory drawings sketched ahead of a planned “redoing” of The Potato Eaters, a masterpiece brutally slated by buyers, friends and family at the time of its painting, are being exhibited for what is believed to be first time.

The Dutch artist considered his depiction of a peasant family from the village of Nuenen in Brabant eating a meal of potatoes as one of only four of his works that could be regarded as important, alongside The Bedroom, Sunflowers and Augustine Roulin (La berceuse).

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Pencil drawing of old man identified as Van Gogh work

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Drawing has been in private hands since around 1910 and is now going on display in Amsterdam

A pencil drawing of a broken old man, head in hands looking utterly exhausted, has been identified as a work by Vincent van Gogh.

The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam said on Thursday that it had authenticated the drawing as being the work of the man himself. Teio Meedendorp, a senior researcher at the museum, said it was a “spectacular” discovery shining light on Van Gogh’s early career as an artist living in The Hague, a time less well known than his years in Paris or the south of France.

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