Cardplayers at Night Café

#91017     36″ X 48″       oc     24″ X 32″       Print

Before moving to the Yellow House on September 18, 1888, Vincent van Gogh stayed at Cafe Alcazar for four months. A few days before leaving there, he stayed up three nights to paint, while sleeping during the day to finish “The Cafe at Night” (1888). In a letter to Theo, Vincent remarked that he felt the cafe was a “whole dirty joint” where “a person can ruin himself, go mad, commit crime.” Vincent added, “I have attempted with the red and the green to express the terrible passion of man.”

Indeed, the very effect of the complimentary red and green finds its expression in Van Gogh’s “The Cafe at Night.” The stained yellow gaslights along with the garish green ceiling and blood-red walls evoke an artificial hallucinatory atmosphere. Besides the few sad characters slumped in their chairs, an innkeeper in white stands near the billiard table. According to the clock on the wall, it is almost fifteen past midnight.

In Chen’s version of the Night Cafe, the original interior scene remains the same, yet in the foreground, three cardplayers concentrate intently on their game. Two of them are the familiar players from Paul Cezanne’s “Two Cardplayers” (1890-92), dressed in deep brown with the glare of the yellow gaslights upon them. Pablo Picasso’s “Barcelona Harelquin” (1917) is the third cardplayer, elegantly occupying the center of the painting, and dressed in a costume with greenish-blue and pink diamond patterns.

In modern art, Cezanne, Van Gogh, and Picasso are among the most famous. According to art history, Van Gogh created the background for the advancement of modern art, Cezanne laid the foundation upon it, and Picasso built his kingdom. This painting of Chen’s reveals such a grand collaboration of these three masters.

– T. F. and Julie Chen