(MIDDLETOWN, NJ) -- The Middletown Arts Center presents the incomparable, new documentary film, Van Gogh: Poets & Lovers by EXHIBITION ON SCREEN, on Sunday, January 26, 2025 at 2:00pm. Gain privileged access to the National Gallery's blockbuster exhibition, Van Gogh: Poets & Lovers, as the film takes the viewer on a tour of this once-in-a-century show of works by Vincent van Gogh.
“Ready the popcorn for the film version of Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers. 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.” – Laura Freeman, The Times
Tickets are $15 for the public and $10 for MAC Members. Tickets are available for purchase online, by phone at 732.706.4100 or at the MAC Box Office. The Middletown Arts Center is located at 36 Church Street in Middletown, NJ (next to the Middletown train station). Parking is available onsite with additional free parking available in station metered lot.
Through January 19, 2025, the National Gallery, London, is hosting the UK’s largest Van Gogh exhibition, 200 years after the museum’s opening and a century after acquiring its first Van Gogh works. Focusing on his unique creative process, the exhibition explores the artist’s years in the South of France, where he revolutionized his style. Van Gogh became consumed with a passion for storytelling in his art, turning the world around him into vibrant, idealized spaces and symbolic characters. During this time, he painted with remarkable productivity, driven by an intense creative fervor that sometimes bordered on agony. 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.
Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers (runtime 90 minutes) is a chance to reexamine and better understand the iconic artist, who is not only one of the most beloved artists of all time but perhaps the most misunderstood. The combination of exhibition and film rewrites the narrative and celebrates Van Gogh’s genius without exploiting his suffering.
The National Gallery owns two of Van Gogh’s (1853-1890) most famous paintings, Sunflower and Van Gogh’s Chair which can be seen in its first exhibition devoted to the artist. Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers is the first exhibition anywhere to focus on the artist’s imaginative transformations. It includes over 60 works and loans from museums and private collections around the world, including important pictures from the Kröller Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands, the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, and the Musée d’Orsay, Paris. Groups of Van Gogh’s most ambitious canvases and works on paper explore the artist’s creative process and his sources of inspiration. Dwelling on his time in Arles and Saint-Rémy in Provence (1888-1890), the exhibition investigates the artist’s fascinating practice of turning the places he encountered into idealized spaces in his art, thus crafting a deeply resonant and poetic framework for his oeuvre. The exhibition also shows how portraits played a vital role, as Van Gogh assigned his models symbolic meaning within his artistic universe such as the Poet and Lover of the exhibition’s title.
The National Gallery is one of the greatest art galleries in the world. Founded by Parliament in 1824, the Gallery houses the nation’s collection of paintings in the Western European tradition from the late 13th to the early 20th century. The collection includes works by Artemisia Gentileschi, Bellini, Cezanne, Degas, Leonardo, Monet, Raphael, Rembrandt, Renoir, Rubens, Titian, Turner, Van Dyck, Van Gogh and Velázquez. The Gallery’s key objectives are to care for and enhance the collection and provide the best possible access to visitors. Admission free.
Exhibition on Screen now plays in 1500 cinemas and 60+ countries worldwide and has produced 36 films on artists including Leonardo da Vinci, Vincent van Gogh, Rembrandt, Hockney, Frida Kahlo, Raphael and many more. The early 2023 release of VERMEER – THE GREATEST EXHIBITION was an extraordinary success and is the most successful documentary film on an artist ever released in the UK (and worldwide) and in the top 20 of any genre of documentary ever released in the UK.
Exhibition on Screen creates cinematic journeys into the personal and creative lives of history’s best-loved artists and their work. Amongst the roster to date are deep dives into the lives and careers of Vermeer, Frida Kahlo, Edward Hopper, Rembrandt, Matisse, Munch and Monet, to name just a few.
DAVID BICKERSTAFF (Director / Co-Author) is an artist, actor, director, editor and writer. He has produced many films for Exhibition on Screen, including other features on Van Gogh, as well as Degas, Canaletto and many others. He also runs ATOMICTV, an organisation showcasing of many of his media projects.
PHIL GRABSKY (Producer / Co-Author) is a BAFTA-winning British documentary filmmaker who has received multiple awards for his directing, writing, producing and cinematography. He and his company Seventh Art Productions are behind cinema films such as Muhammad Ali – Through the Eyes of the World, In Search of Beethoven, In Search of Mozart and the landmark My Childhood, My Country – 20 Years in Afghanistan, which won more than a dozen awards including Best Single Documentary at the 2022 Television BAFTAs and was also BAFTA nominated for its cinematography. He has made over 250 films which have played in cinemas and on TV and digital platforms worldwide. In 2009, Phil and his colleagues began work on a new arts genre for the cinema: Exhibition on Screen. This brings major art exhibitions – and the intimate biographies of the artists – to cinema, mainstream television and home entertainment platforms worldwide. The Guardian newspaper said of Exhibition on Screen: ‘Just occasionally something will crop up that restores your faith in humanity’s future. Exhibition on Screen is a global phenomenon’.
The Middletown Arts Center (MAC) is an award-winning, state-of-the-art facility in Middletown, New Jersey that offers performances, exhibits, classes, demonstrations and camps centering on the arts. Its convenient location across from the Middletown train station on Church Street enables easy access and its expanded MAC Annex Education Building is minutes away next to the Middletown Reformed Church. The MAC is operated by a non-profit 501c3, the Middletown Township Cultural and Arts Council dedicated to bringing quality arts programming and events to Middletown and surrounding communities.
