Starry Opening for Van Gogh

In a city still young and self-conscious in the world of high art, an exhibition of 70 Vincent Van Gogh paintings drew a sold-out crowd that reflected both the region’s diversity and the powerful mainstream appeal of an artist who died in relative obscurity more than a century ago.

They came by the thousands to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art--chemists, heavy equipment operators and professional artists; couples in cashmere and families in linty flannel.

The exhibition, “Van Gogh’s Van Goghs: Masterpieces from the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam,” is expected to draw more than 900,000 visitors before it closes May 16, which would make it the largest in Southern California since the museum displayed the “Treasures of Tutankhamen” two decades ago.

“This is a once in a lifetime experience,” said Jane Jaquette, a West Hollywood multimedia artist who spent part of her Sunday teaching her niece about perspective in front of “A Park in Spring.”

“I’ve been waiting a long time for Los Angeles to vie with New York in the arts,” she said. “Now, we’re not so much the bastard child any more.”

The wide array of paintings came from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and encompasses the artist’s entire career. During a renovation at the Dutch museum, curators chose to display the pieces at two museums in the United States: the National Gallery of Art in Washington and the county museum in Los Angeles.

“I think it’s a harbinger for things to come,” said LACMA spokesman Keith McKeown. “People are starting to realize that Los Angeles is a major world art capital.”

Of the about 4,000 people who filed through the gallery on opening day Sunday, some had studied Van Gogh’s vivid pastures and portraits in books and stood close to analyze the simple precision of the master’s brush strokes. Others stood back to absorb the dark, somber peasant scenes of his early works in Holland and take in the swirling lines and warm fields of wheat that marked his later years in the south of France.

And still more went merely to figure out how the short life and prolific work of a tortured man, who sold just one painting in his lifetime, has generated such a fuss for so many years.

“I wanted to see why these paintings cost millions,” said Nadim Bakhos, 29, a civil engineer in Los Angeles. “I guess it’s because these are 100 years old.”

Although Bakhos liked the paintings and said he came from a family that could afford fine art, he thought the originals were not much more impressive than reproductions he had seen elsewhere.

Others vehemently disagreed. “Look at the ‘Wheatfield With Crows,’ ” said Anthony Knight, a school principal from Studio City. “The color is striking. I don’t think it can be reproduced.”

Knight plans to bring his fifth-graders to the exhibit and said children are inspired by Van Gogh’s simple, sometimes warm and sometimes moody images.

“His work speaks to children more than any other artist,” he said. “This may be the only time in their life that they’ll get to see it.”

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Although more than 500 people are allowed to enter every hour, visitors are able to stand as close as they liked to the paintings, which were covered in glass. They can rent headsets to play a CD that explains the history and style of each painting.

The Van Gogh exhibition will be open seven days a week, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., in the LACMA West annex building and is expected to draw more than 6,000 people every day. It is sold out today, and few tickets are left for the next three weekends, McKeown said.

At times on Sunday, a cluster jammed up at the larger, more colorful works of his later years and the ambience was more chatty than reflective. But the crowd generally flowed smoothly.

“It’s awesome,” said Mark Adams, a heavy equipment operator from Sunland. “You’ve got to take the headset tour. Otherwise, it’s just a bunch of pictures on the wall.”

Some came from as far as New York and Boston to see the works of a man remembered by many as the artist who cut off his earlobe.

“It’s wonderful to be able to come to the West Coast and see what is truly a treasure,” said Pat Klein, who flew from Tucson with her husband to see the exhibition. “There is much more diversity to his work than I realized.”

Van Gogh, the son of a Dutch minister, began painting after a short, unsuccessful attempt to follow his father’s footsteps in the clergy. He studied impressionists and post-impressionists in Paris before moving to Provence, where he developed a more vibrant style that would posthumously make him one of the world’s most enduring and popular artists. He doubted his own career choice until his final years and suffered epileptic seizures and fits of depression.

Jeff Piper of Laguna Beach was struck by the progression of Van Gogh’s life, which ended in 1890 when he shot himself in the chest at age 37.

“I’m more impressed than I thought I’d be,” he said. “Seeing all his work, it’s like watching a crazy man in action.”