VAN GOGH’S LETTER ABOUT THE NIGHT CAFE. Van Gogh’s letter about the Night Cafe is devoted primarily to giving his brother the details of his domestic life and how he is furnishing his house. Van Gogh’s descriptions are full of color words, usually simple primary colors. I think of a cafe as a homey place, but the passage about the painting in the letter speaks of a cafe as a place where one can “go mad or commit a crime….” And yet, Van Gogh makes clear that he is writing his letter in a cafe and that: “Just as I’m writing to you, the poor peasant who is like a caricature of Father happens to have come into the café. The resemblance is terrible, all the same. Especially the uncertainty and the weariness and the vagueness of the mouth.”
Using bright colors to express the powers of darkness is ambitious. And Van Gogh himself adds that it is “…all with an appearance of Japanese gaiety….” For me, the colors do succeed in being disorienting and disturbing. This is not a cozy scene. But I don’t have a feeling of the the powers of darkness.