“Van Gogh’s Flowers” continues at the New York Botanical Garden through October 26 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
VAN GOGH’S FLOWERS
The New York Botanical Garden
2900 Southern Blvd., Bronx
Through October 26, $15-$39, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
718-817-8700
www.nybg.org
online photo and video slideshow
This is the last weekend to catch the lovely “Van Gogh’s Flowers” exhibit at the New York Botanical Garden, a floral tribute to the post-Impressionist Dutch master who revolutionized painting. The show consists of sculptures, three-dimensional re-creations, quotations, and floral displays celebrating Vincent van Gogh, who died by suicide in 1890 at the age of thirty-seven.
“Considering my life is spent mostly in the garden, it is not so unhappy,” Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, May 1889.
French artist Cyril Lancelin has created an outdoor pathway of yellow sunflowers made of steel, plywood, eva foam, nylon, 3D printing, cork, and urethane paint, arranged in various settings, highlighted by a walkthrough area of giant blooms.
“The painter of the future is a colorist such as there hasn’t been before,” Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, 1888.
Amie J. Jacobsen contributes four framed sculptures and vases inspired by van Gogh’s unusual technique and floral paintings, featuring irises, roses, oleanders, and imperial fritillaria. “One of the funnest, most energetic parts of this is picking up on his very fast and colorful brushstrokes and getting to do that on a 3-D form — that was my favorite part,” she told twi-ny at the May press opening.
Amie J. Jacobsen has designed four floral installations for van Gogh show (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
“You know that Jeannin has the peony, Quost has the hollyhock, but I have the sunflower, in a way,” Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, January 22, 1889
Catherine Borowski and Lee Baker of Graphic Rewilding designed colorful, large-scale panel installations covered in floral patterns based on van Gogh’s subjects and palette, including irises in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory indoor pond and sunflowers, chrysanthemums, buttercups, daisies, cornflowers, forget-me-nots, and birds in and around the circular reflecting pool by the visitors center.
“I’ve been influenced by van Gogh’s work for many years, so it’s really coming full circle for us to be able to make work about his work within the botanical garden,” Baker told me. “I’ve drawn irises for years, so it was a natural progression, but drawing them in this style — if you took the sculptural lines away, you’d have something more akin to my original style. I wanted to take on that and extend my designs through the sculptural feeling of van Gogh’s work. It’s taken me in a new direction. We had to compete with the trees — no, you work with them.”
“The bizarre lines . . . multiplied and snaking all over the painting aren’t intended to render the garden in common, unimportant resemblance but [to] draw it for us as if seen in a dream, in character and yet at the same time stranger than the reality,” Vincent van Gogh to Wilhelmina van Gogh, November 12, 1888.
Of course, there are also plenty of live plants throughout the conservatory, making van Gogh’s works come to life, as the NYBG has done previously with such other artists as Frida Kahlo, Ebony G. Patterson, Claude Monet, Yayoi Kusama, and Roberto Burle Marx.
“It is actually one’s duty to paint the rich and magnificent aspects of nature,” Vincent van Gogh to Wilhelmina van Gogh, September 16, 1888.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]