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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 27, 2000
ABOUT FACE
EXHIBITION OPENS AT PENNSYLVANIA ACADEMYFeatures American Art from the Time of Van Gogh
PHILADELPHIA—About Face will be on view at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts from October 21 through January 14, 2001. This installation of paintings and graphics from the Pennsylvania Academy’s permanent collection has been organized to coincide with Van Gogh: Face to Face at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Examining artistic subjects—from peasant scenes to portraiture—that resonate with the contemporaneous production of Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890), the exhibition features the work of such leading American artists as Cecilia Beaux, Mary Cassatt, Thomas Eakins, and Elihu Vedder.
Van Gogh is credited with bringing a "modern" form and feeling to the time-honored portrait genre. From early images of the poor in his native Netherlands to the series of vivid self-portraits he produced in France in the late 1880s, the artist conveyed an "impassioned" expressiveness motivated by his commitment to what he called a "sincere human feeling." That van Gogh found this sense of "life" most often in the underprivileged raises questions about his particular brand of realism. In effect, such portraits represent a kind of cultural typecasting, proving to be more a depiction of a specific class than an individual.
Many American artists at this time were similarly drawn to peasant imagery and strong character types. Supplementing their French academic study with visits to summer resorts in Brittany and Normandy, they explored a kind of old-fashioned rural life, rooted in a particular locale with long-established customs, which was fast disappearing in France and America. As a result, the French peasant came to appeal to urban artists and their patrons as a picturesque subject, at once nostalgic and "exotic." About Face both examines this cross-cultural phenomenon and highlights van Gogh’s little-known interest in the art of his American contemporaries.
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