Courtauld, London
Toothless, bearded, haggard, injured, shaved, well fed, on the mend, jaunty, natty … this superb show cascades through the many faces of Van Gogh – and reveals the anguished brilliance that lay beneath
One of the star attractions in the collection of the Courtauld Gallery in London is Vincent van Gogh’s Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear, which was painted in January 1889. The artist had mutilated his left ear two days before Christmas, following a quarrel with Paul Gauguin, with whom he had been sharing a house in Arles. Van Gogh looks pale and introspective, clean-shaven, dressed for the winter chill in his yellow room, an easel behind him and a Japanese print on the wall (the Courtauld owns this print, too, but it was stolen in the 1980s and never recovered). The Dutch artist has the hunted look of a man not yet ready to re-enter the world, except through his painting. The open blue door on the right is the same blue door that appears in the picture of his straw-bottomed yellow chair, which now hangs in the same room at the Courtauld. You can take the chair as a kind of self-portrait, too. It is as if he has stepped out for a second, leaving his pipe and tobacco pouch on the seat.
Van Gogh: Self-Portraits, the new exhibition at the recently reopened Courtauld gallery in London, is filled with presences, absences, substitutions, and echoes of different kinds. It is a magical and at times mysterious show. An exhibition of electrifying intimacy, it shows the artist at his most self-aware and at his most vulnerable. Every painting is both a kind of analysis and a rescue attempt. During the three and a half years before his death in 1890, Van Gogh painted around 35 self-portraits: some may have disappeared or been painted over. Fifteen are here (not counting that chair), as well as a sheet of three graphite, pen and ink drawings. Some are too fragile to travel, others from private collections could not be borrowed. The curators also wished to avoid unnecessary repetition. Some others were considered too clunky or otherwise unsuccessful. As it is, all the above are illustrated in the catalogue.
