Hail the conquering hero with a beer. The Cincinnati Art Museum today announced that its Vincent van Gogh 1890 painting “Undergrowth with Two Figures” — which was the catalyst for a major 2016 exhibition here that looked at how undergrowth and greenery were treated by the great Post-Impressionist painter and his influences and contemporaries — will be returning to Cincinnati on July 3 after a world tour. That’s the date it will go back on display in the museum’s Mary E. Johnston Gallery.
The Cincinnati Art Museum and Listermann Brewing Company are collaboratively releasing a van Gogh-themed beer on July 21, with 10% of the beer proceeds going to the museum. There will be a launch at the Listermann taproom, 1621 Dana Ave. in Evanston, at 10 a.m. that day. It will also be available at the Cincinnati Art Museum’s event Art After Dark: Beer Bash on July 27, 5–9 p.m.
The painting recently was on loan to the traveling Van Gogh & Japan exhibition, which travelled to Hokkaido, Tokyo and Kyoto in Japan and the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. The painting was seen by over 750,000 visitors in Japan alone, the art museum reported. The Van Gogh Museum had loaned Cincinnati an 1887 painting by the artist, “Trees,” for the Into the Undergrowth exhibition here.
To explain the importance of “Undergrowth with Two Figures” to the artist’s career and art history, the art museum explained that it is one of the final artworks Van Gogh painted before his death and that “a rhythmic pattern of thick brushstrokes animates the surface of this painting, and trees in rows recess toward the dark background, making the couple seem trapped by the dense vegetation. Van Gogh described the scene in a letter to his brother Theo, dated June 30, 1890, as ‘violet trunks of poplars which cross the landscape perpendicularly like columns. The depths of the undergrowth are blue, and under the big trunks the flowery meadow, white, pink, yellow, green, long russet grasses and flowers.’
“Unlike the Impressionists, who deployed a novel use of color to record the transient effects of light and atmosphere, Van Gogh was obsessed by the symbolic and expressive aspects of color. As he explained to Theo, ‘Instead of trying to reproduce exactly what I have before my eyes, I use color more arbitrarily so as to express myself more forcibly.’ ”
If you have suggestions for other Cincinnati Art Museum objects deserving of their own special beer, please let CityBeat know and we’ll pass it on.
This article appears in Jun 20-27, 2018.
