Vincent’s Two Cafes
“I often think that the night is more alive and with more colors than the day.” Vincent van Gogh
Van Gogh’s two ultra-famous coffee scenes included a study in opposites. Although both paintings employ Vincent’s famous bold and furious brushstrokes and bold colors, the two images feel completely different. One, “Café Terrace at Night”, is charming and filled with a sparkling light, a night scene with stars outside the café on the Place de Forum. The other, “Night Café”, is, in the artist’s own words, “… one of the ugliest I’ve ever done”, a collection of contrasting colors in the most gloomy atmosphere.
Both paintings were made in Arles after Van Gogh lived and studied in Paris and met various French Impressionists. His own style became much lighter, less moralistic, and more colorful.
“Night Café” represents the interior of a swimming pool on the Place Lamartine in Arles. A more striking Van Gogh canvas would be hard to find, but no one could call this particular image beautiful. The artist’s intention was to show the lowest of humanity, unadorned, with the greatest impact and sincerity possible.
There is no doubt that he succeeded. At first glance, the viewer almost tends to look away, as if burned. Two-thirds of the painting is the café floor, executed in sulfuric yellow with exaggerated perspective lines that draw attention to the painting. Next, a green pool table, outlined in heavy black, stops us in our tracks. Next to the table there is a figure in a light-colored coat looking at us without expression.
“I have tried to express the terrible passions of mankind by means of red and green,” wrote van Gogh. Yellow walls give way to blood-red walls that lead to an annoying green ceiling, and on the walls are locals at bar tables, hunched over in the night stupor. The lamps hang from the ceiling, surrounded by Vincent’s curved wheels with yellow lines.
A stark black and white watch depends on the background, impossible to miss. It is almost a quarter past twelve in this bleak scene. “Night Café” is one of Vincent’s most powerful communications through the art of the human condition and human emotions.
The other painting of the van Gogh café, “Café Terrace at Night”, shows the exterior of a café that is still in Arles, although it was renamed The van Gogh Café and remodeled to closely resemble the painting that immortalized it. He painted this work in a burst, using many of the same techniques that he used in his drawings. This is one of his most beautiful paintings, filled with the light and peace that he sought, but never found.
The perspective and warm complementary colors draw the viewer into the painting and beyond. The graphic texture of the cobblestones of the street invites the gaze towards the small cafe itself, with its tiny white tables on the street, repeating the spheres of Vincent’s stars hung in the Prussian blue sky. The café’s awning and walls, in warm yellow, cut into the sky to enhance both colors and form the main composition.
Van Gogh loved the night. He writes: “I have a terrible need for, dare I say, religion … then I go out at night and paint the stars.” He painted this night scene on the spot, at night, without blacks. His father was a preacher and Vincent entered the ministry for a time. It was later that this artist, now a posthumous star himself, decided that his ministry would be to find a way to bring hope and comfort to humanity through his art.
