Mystery of The Night Café

Book excerpt: Written like a detective story, this book explores the spirituality of one of the world's most beloved artists, Vincent van Gogh, through one of Western art's most mysterious paintings, The Night Café. Done in almost garish colors, the work depicts a late night in a café serving a poorer element of society, and Van Gogh himself saw both destructive forces and gaiety in the work. With author Cliff Edwards, we follow a trail of clues from a Yale art gallery to a neighborhood in Arles, from a novel by Émile Zola to a largely forgotten image of Jesus that hung in Van Gogh's bedroom. We enter the imagination of Van Gogh through the books he read, the art he admired, and the people with whom he identified, and arrive at startling conclusions that include a new and deeply spiritual understanding of a café after midnight and the "night prowlers" who inhabit it.