Description
VAN GOGH: POETS & LOVERS
IN CINEMAS FROM 6 NOVEMBER 2024
200 years after its opening and a century after acquiring its first Van Gogh works, the National Gallery is hosting the UK’s biggest ever Van Gogh exhibition. Van Gogh is not only one of the most beloved artists of all time, but perhaps the most misunderstood.
This film is a chance to reexamine and better understand this iconic artist. Focusing on his unique creative process, Van Gogh: Poets & Lovers explores the artist’s years in the south of France, where he revolutionised his style. Van Gogh became consumed with a passion for storytelling in his art, turning the world around him into vibrant, idealised spaces and symbolic characters.
Poets and lovers filled his imagination; everything he did in the south of France served this new obsession. In part, this is what caused his notorious breakdown, but it didn’t hold back his creativity as he created masterpiece after masterpiece. Explore one of art history’s most pivotal periods in this once-in-a-century show. Made in close collaboration with the National Gallery.
This film uses Van Gogh’s revealing letters to better understand this iconic figure.
The most exciting and dramatic period of Van Gogh’s life explored on the big screen.
Directed by David Bickerstaff
Running time: 90 minutes
READ: Times Weekend Review: Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers on screen
Laura Freeman
“A critic must stand by her hyperbole and I would not dock a single one of the five stars I gave the sold-out Van Gogh show at the National Gallery. But like all exhibitions, it is rather hard on the back and the feet, and the new no-liquids rule means that there is little opportunity for refreshment. Wouldn’t it be nice to experience such a stellar show from the comfort of a plush upholstered chair, perhaps with a salty snack and a glass of something cool and clinking? Ready the popcorn — or possibly the sunflower seeds — for the film version by Exhibition on Screen. Every brushstroke and ridge of impasto is reproduced with extraordinary fidelity. There are no crowds, no queues, no takers of selfies. This is an excellent, insightful, immaculately filmed documentary”.
In cinemas
READ: Guardian Review “A blockbuster portrait of a thoughtful master”
READ: Times Review: “Nothing quite captures the thrill of being at the sold-out National Gallery show, but Exhibition on Screen’s excellent documentary comes pretty damn close”
LISTEN: Phil Grabsky talks to Danny Pike about the film on BBC Radio Sussex (5 mins)
