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  • Visit

    • Plan Your Visit
    • Accessibility
    • Visiting with Kids
    • Food and Drink
    • Tours and Guides
    • Explore the Campus

    Open today 10:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m.
    Admission is always free

    6th and Constitution Ave NW 
    Washington, DC 20565

    Sculpture Garden Extended Hours

    Open late until 8:00 p.m. on select nights

    Through September 5

  • Exhibitions & Events

    • Exhibitions
    • Calendar
    • Kid-Friendly Events

    America’s 250th

    Celebrating American art and artists

  • Art & Artists

    • Artworks
    • Artists
    • Stories
    • Fun and Games
    • Educational Resources
    • Research

    Open Call

    Artists Reimagining the Collection

    Meet the 50 makers selected from more than 1,600 submissions

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  • Shop
  • Become a Member

  • Visit

    • Plan Your Visit
    • Accessibility
    • Visiting with Kids
    • Food and Drink
    • Tours and Guides
    • Explore the Campus

    Open today 10:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m.
    Admission is always free

    6th and Constitution Ave NW 
    Washington, DC 20565

    Sculpture Garden Extended Hours

    Open late until 8:00 p.m. on select nights

    Through September 5

  • Exhibitions & Events

    • Exhibitions
    • Calendar
    • Kid-Friendly Events

    America’s 250th

    Celebrating American art and artists

  • Art & Artists

    • Artworks
    • Artists
    • Stories
    • Fun and Games
    • Educational Resources
    • Research

    Open Call

    Artists Reimagining the Collection

    Meet the 50 makers selected from more than 1,600 submissions

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  • Shop
  • Become a Member

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  • See extended hours

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    Painted with high-keyed, vivid color, a brown-skinned person sits painting in front of two skeletons posing in front of a wheatfield and the head and shoulders of Van Gogh in this stylized, surreal, vertical composition. The artist sits facing away from us with his knees angled to the right. He wears a wide-brimmed, straw hat, yellow-lensed glasses, a blue headphone over the ear we see, and has a light gray beard and hair. He wears a short-sleeved, red shirt patterned with sunflowers and cobalt-blue pants. He sits on a folding stool and leans away from us to paint on a canvas propped on an easel. A round palette and a tube of paint lie on the ground between the easel’s legs. The man tips forward to paint copy the pink underpants worn by one of the skeletons . Close to the painter, both skeletons stand with their bodies facing us, but they look in at each other. Their inside arms are raised, and those hands are held by their faces. The other hands float just above the hips. The skeleton on our right wears a carnation-pink foundation garment with garters, pink pumps, and a pink bow around the bare skull. The skeleton to the left wears a black bra, black pumps, a red bow on the skull, and a red and a yellow bracelet on one wrist. A pair of worn, brown boots pulled open with loose laces lies beyond this skeleton’s feet. One boot is tipped back to show a hole in the sole. Green and lemon-lime-colored grasses behind the skeletons give way to a terracotta brown and maroon-red, Y-shaped path. The long side of the Y spans the width of the painting, and the short leg winds into the distance between vivid, canary-yellow fields. Seven black birds fly low over the crops, and there is a conical dark green cypress tree near each edge of the canvas. The head and shoulders of Van Gogh loom in the sky as if he was peeking over the side of the world. His shoulders and face are angled to our left, but he looks at us with brown eyes and an exaggerated, unsettlingly wide, toothy smile. A bandage is wrapped around the side of his head, and he wears a brimmed hat, white shirt, purple vest, and dark blue jacket. A white area, perhaps smoke, rises along the back of the wheat but in front of Van Gogh’s right shoulder, to our left. The sky is painted with visible strokes in aquamarine, azure, and sapphire blue. The artist signed and dated the upper left corner, “R. Colescott 81.”
    Robert Colescott, Auvers-sur-Oise (Crow in the Wheatfield), 1981, acrylic on canvas, Corcoran Collection (Gift of the Women's Committee of the Corcoran Gallery of Art), 2014.136.152

    Auvers-sur-Oise (Crow in the Wheatfield)

    Auvers-sur-Oise (Crow in the Wheatfield)

    Robert Colescott · 1981 · acrylic on canvas ·  Accession ID  2014.136.152

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