I recently had the chance to view Van Gogh and The Colors of the Night at MoMA following a lecture on the exhibit given by one of my favorite art history professors, Professor Vivien Fryd of Vanderbilt University. The artist, whose active career as an artist lasted only ten tears, produced 1250 paintings and 100 drawings of himself, his neightbors and his French environs. This exhibit, small in scale yet large in impact, displays the artist’s nocturnal work as divided into scenes of peasant life, sowers and wheatfields, poetry of the night (town) and poetry of the night (country). The colors of the works are often jarring in their intensity and the thickness of Van Gogh’s impasto gives the works strength and content other artists could only dream of conveying. The works are drawn from many collections and it is a vert rare treat to have access to them together like this. Don’t miss it. You can also see the exhibition on-line at www.moma.org The show is on view through January 5, 2009 at the Museum of Modern Art.