Van Gogh’s ‘The Bedroom’ coming to the Norton Simon Museum
Vincent van Gogh painted three versions of his Arles, France, bedroom — its crookedly hung paintings set within narrow confines — from 1888 to 1889, while staying at the psychiatric asylum at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. Soon the second in the trio will be exhibited for the first time on the West Coast.
The Norton Simon Museum will announce this week that it’s staging a special exhibit of Van Gogh’s “The Bedroom” starting in December. The piece is on loan from the Art Institute of Chicago, its permanent home. The other two versions of the painting are at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris and the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.
The Norton Simon will display the artwork with six other Van Goghs from its permanent collection.
“‘The Bedroom’ is Van Gogh’s meditation on friendship, hope and crushing disappointment,” Norton Simon chief curator Carol Togneri said by email. “It serves not only as a type of self-portrait, but also as a symbol of the artist’s peripatetic existence and his search for an elusive sense of repose.”
“The Bedroom” is the first and only major incoming loan this year for the Norton Simon. It’s part of a series of reciprocal loans between the Norton Simon and the Art Institute of Chicago. Last year the Norton Simon lent Edouard Vuillard’s “First Fruits” to the Art Institute.
“The Bedroom” will be on view at the Norton Simon from Dec. 9 to March 6.
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