This exhibition may claim to reveal the real Van Gogh through his letters, but what of the Sunflowers, the Self-Portrait With Bandaged Ear, oh, and Starry Night, with its roiling night sky and dark, mysterious cypress tree? What even of the dizzying Night Café, with its migraine-inducing electric lamps, its violent clash of reds and greens and the walls that threaten to collapse inwards, as if the painter had been hitting the absinthe all night? Surely these are the knock-out masterpieces that we expect to see in the first major UK exhibition of Van Gogh’s work for over 40 years?We may know Read more ...

This Saturday The Real Van Gogh: The Artist and His Letters opens at the Royal Academy of Arts - it is reviewed by Fisun Güner elsewhere. Organised in collaboration with the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, it is the first major exhibition of Van Gogh's work in this country for 40 years. In anticipation, theartsdesk here offers a gallery of exhibits, not only of celebrated canvases but also of letters scribbled by the artist to his brother Theo, with sketches thrown in. This Saturday The Real Van Gogh: The Artist and His Letters opens at the Royal Academy of Arts - it is reviewed by Fisun Güner Read more ...