By Bill Zeeble, KERA reporter
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/kera/local-kera-538102.mp3
Dallas, TX – Bill Zeeble, KERA 90.1 reporter: This exhibit celebrates, in part, the 20th anniversary of the Dallas Museum's renowned Wendy and Emery Reves collection of impressionist and post-impressionist paintings, drawings, European furniture, and Chinese porcelain. One of its cherished works is Sheaves of Wheat by Van Gogh, finished just weeks before the painter took his own life in 1890, at age 37. But the show's also designed to offer insight into the complex artist's reasons for painting these subjects
Dorothy Kosinski, DMA Senior Curator : This theme of Sheaves of Wheat had an almost spiritual resonance for Van Gogh.
Zeeble: The DMA's Senior Curator, Dorothy Kosinski, says the painter pursued art with the same intense seriousness he'd applied to ministerial studies. But in his 20s, he failed as a minister. That's when he turned to art.
Kosinski: I think spiritual yearnings and the great thinking about the meaning of life pushed him to examine over and over again this theme of sowing and nurturing and harvest as a parallel to the great cycles of human life. Of birth & life & death.
Zeeble: These subjects also reflected what the painter knew and was familiar with, according to the DMA's Laura Bruck
Laura Bruck, DMA Gallery Interpretation Manager: He was born in the countryside, it was something he had grown up around. He really enjoyed fresh air, he talks about that in his letters. How it made him feel better. He admired the hard work of the peasants he saw working in the countryside
Zeeble: Van Gogh sketched and painted toiling peasants with a kind of reverence that reflected his admiration for them. There are more of these charcoal sketches - eleven - than the number of full-color paintings in this show. Again, Dorothy Kosinski
Kosinski: You have a sense of the weight of sheaves, the pull in the lower back as the woman struggles to lift up that burden. There's a sense of every muscle is transcribed into these incredibly beautiful and monumental presentations.
Zeeble: On exhibit too are some 3 dozen paintings and sketches by other famous artists, many of whom either inspired or helped Van Gogh, or traded paintings with him. These include Millet - whom Van Gogh wrote was the voice of the wheat - Gaugin, and Breton.
Kosinski: In this gallery you see how profoundly Van Gogh was influenced by impressionists and post-impressionists. He turns to color, he embraces a more fluid style. You also have in juxtaposition works by Pissarro & Monet, Angrand.
Zeeble: Kosinski stands in front of Van Gogh's Wheat Field with a Reaper, which, she says, overwhelms the viewer with color. The lone reaper on the left, whose clothes match the sky's color, hints at death.
Kosinki: The intense golden yellow of the grain is beyond description. There's a kind of flowing intensity that is overwhelming. But the most extraordinary thing is the color of the sky, a sort of acid green.
Zeeble: This work, says Kosinski, was painted during one of Van Gogh's darkest periods, after he'd entered an asylum. The scene is what he could see through the bars of the window in his room. He would be released soon, continue to paint, but would be dead in less than a year. This show, Sheaves of Wheat, remains on view at the DMA through January 7th of next year. For KERA 90.1 I'm Bill Zeeble
bzeeble@kera.org
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