Bringing Van Gogh’s Vision to LEGO

LEGO has unveiled its latest artistic creation, the LEGO Art Vincent van Gogh – Sunflowers set, developed in partnership with the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. This 2,615-piece collector’s item transforms Van Gogh’s 1889 masterpiece into a three-dimensional LEGO format, offering art enthusiasts and builders an immersive experience.

The set includes:

• Adjustable petals to recreate Van Gogh’s signature brushstrokes.
• A removable frame for display versatility.
• A tile featuring Van Gogh’s signature, adding an authentic touch.

Designed to capture the painting’s three radiant shades of yellow and dynamic light and shadow effects, this release pays homage to one of the world’s most famous still-life artworks.

An Interactive Experience for Collectors

To enhance the building process, LEGO has introduced an exclusive podcast, available from March 1, 2025, featuring insights from LEGO Designer Stijn Oom and Van Gogh Museum Senior Curator Nienke Bakker. The podcast will provide historical context and behind-the-scenes details on the creation of this set.

In celebration of the launch, LEGO has also crafted two life-sized brick-built replicas of Sunflowers, which will be permanently displayed at the LEGO Store in Amsterdam and the Van Gogh Museum. Additionally, fans will have the opportunity to meet Stijn Oom, who will be signing sets at:

• LEGO Store Amsterdam – March 1, 2025
• LEGO Store Marseille – March 2, 2025

Pre-Orders and Pricing Details

The LEGO Art Vincent van Gogh – Sunflowers set is available for pre-order from January 28, 2025, ahead of its official launch on March 1, 2025. The set is priced at $199.99 USD, making it a must-have for LEGO collectors and art lovers alike. The set also includes intricate texturing techniques to mimic Van Gogh’s expressive brushwork, offering builders a deeper connection to the masterpiece.

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The study involved infants between the ages of 18 and 40 weeks and adults between the ages of 18 and 43 years. Participants were given iPads with a selection of 10 van Gogh landscapes among 40 images. The paintings were presented in pairs, allowing for 45 possible combinations for each participant.

During the study, infants were shown the painting pairs for five seconds each. Researchers observed the infants’ visual preferences by analyzing which image they looked at for a longer duration. Meanwhile, adults received the same test and visual pairings but were asked to select the image they found most pleasant. The data from 25 adults was then used to score each artwork on its average pleasantness, and this data was compared with the average looking time of 25 infants.

The findings revealed that infants tended to look longer at paintings that adults also rated more highly for pleasantness. One painting, van Gogh’s “Green Corn Stalks,” achieved the highest shared preference among both infants and adults.

The study also suggested that infants were more drawn to paintings with greater variation in brightness and colors, which aligns with their developing visual perception. High-contrast paintings are likely easier for infants to see as their vision continues to develop.

However, the research also identified differences between the preferences of infants and adults. For example, infants showed a preference for paintings with stretches of sky, while adults leaned towards the unexpected in their selections. Additionally, infants appeared to be more intrigued by images with curves and edges, while adults did not give them higher ratings.

The study’s authors acknowledged that additional brain studies would be necessary to further explore whether infants derived more pleasure from the paintings they gazed at for longer periods. Nonetheless, the results suggest a connection between infantile sensory bias and adults’ aesthetic judgment.

Philip McAdams, the first author of the study from the University of Sussex, highlighted that adults may be influenced by experiential associations that contribute to their choices, which differs from infants who respond more to visual features in a “bottom-up” manner due to their limited experiences in the world.

Understanding the visual preferences of infants and how they evolve into adulthood can provide valuable insights into the development of aesthetic judgment and the impact of life experiences on individual preferences. The study contributes to the growing body of research exploring the relationship between art, perception, and human cognition.

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A Canadian company, Festival House Inc, owns the IP Van Gogh 360, and calls the retrospective an ‘immersive experience’. They claim to have used ‘large-scale 360-projection through projectors and high-powered computer servers that deliver crisp and compelling images’. Mark Monahan, executive director of Festival House Inc, says Van Gogh 360° has been showcased in many cities in Canada and Europe, including New York, Los Angeles, Vancouver, Toronto, and Ottawa, before coming to India.

More than 300 of Gogh’s artworks have been incorporated into the digital exhibition, including The Starry Night, Sunflowers, Potato Eaters, self-portraits, Wheatfield with Crows, Bedroom in Arles, and Almond Blossoms. The exhibition took over eight months to develop, and onlookers are immersed in floor-to-ceiling projections animating the master’s oeuvre. The giant projections highlight brushstrokes, detail, and color.

Presented by DLF Malls and Absolut Glassware, this edition of Van Gogh 360° features a lounge space and a bar alongside a creative space for people to engage with art. In Mumbai, the exhibition witnessed a footfall of nearly 80,000 enthusiasts over the course of two and a half months through 1,500 shows, displaying the intersection of technology and art of the legendary artist who continues to stay relevant and is a beacon of talent to young art enthusiasts till date. The exhibit quickly became a must-do on the itinerary for anyone traveling to Mumbai.

The Delhi edit is already sold out for the first two weeks. Van Gogh 360° is on view at DLF CyberCityPhase 2, Sector 24, Gurugram, and tickets are available on in.bookmyshow.com from ₹699 onwards. The exhibition concludes on April 30.

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The exhibition will feature 25 works including masterpiece works by Caillebotte, Cézanne and van Gogh.  The collection was assembled half a century ago and is expected to realize in excess of $200 million. A portion of the sale proceeds will benefit educational purposes. 

The businessman, collector, and philanthropist Edwin Lochridge Cox stood at the forefront of civic life in Texas and the greater United States. He started collecting art half a century ago and  according to the art advisor Stephanie Connery, many of the works have not been seen in public since before the Second World War.

Highlights of the collection include one of Gustave Cailleboite’s best known works, Jeune homme à sa fenêtre, which was featured in the first exhibition of Impressionist works in America in 1886. The picture, which shows Cailleboite’s brother Rene gazing out from a Parisian apartment, is an elegant mix of academic technique and realism. The work is expected to fetch over $50m.

Vincent van Gogh’s Cabanes de bois parmi les oliviers et cyprès will also be included in the exhibition. The work shows a combination of the artist’s favorite Provençal motifs and encapsulates the characteristics of the artist’s mature style that emerged at Saint-Rémy, where it was executed in October 1889. The work is expected to fetch around $40m.

Also included in the sale is Paul Cezanne’s L’Estaque aux toits rouges (1883-1885), a brilliantly coloured picture in which it is easy to see the seeds of Cubism taking root (est. $35m-$55m).

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The museum, located in the Winter Palace of the tsars, had to work around Russia’s strict restrictions on cryptocurrencies to organize the sale. Recent cryptocurrency legislation in the country placed limitations on the use of digital assets as monetary currency.

Mikhail Piotrovsky, the general director of the Hermitage, said in a statement that the sale was “an important stage in the development of the relationship between person and money, person and thing,” adding that NFTs “create democracy, make luxury more accessible, but are at the same time exceptional and exclusive.”

The NFT sale will include Leonardo’s Madonna Litta, Judith (ca. mid-1490s.), van Gogh’s Lilac Bush (1889), Wassily Kandinsky’s Composition VI (1913), and Monet’s Corner of the Garden at Montgeron (1877).

The initiative, dubbed “Your token is kept in the Hermitage,” is part of a push to growing the museum’s digital reach. It is intended to “ensure a new level of accessibility to the Hermitage collections and emphasize the democracy of the museum, and emphasize the importance of digitalization as a new stage in the art collection world.”

“We will expand other opportunities, in particular digital ones, which will introduce the collections and the palace. We will build new experiments based on new technologies,” Piotrovsky said.

Each NFT will contain Piotrovsky’s signature to make the work an original work. Copies of the NFTs will also be kept by the Hermitage, which plans to display them this fall in an exhibition centered on NFT art.

The Hermitage is not the first world-class museum to make NFTs of artworks in its holdings. In May, the Uffizi Galleries in Florence sold an NFT of a Michelangelo painting for $170,000 in an effort to recoup financial losses resulting from the pandemic. The Uffizi said at the time that it also planned to issue NFTs of works in its collection by Caravaggio, Botticelli, Titian, and Raphael.

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The painting, measuring  25 inches by 31 inches, was drawn one year before his suicide at the age of 37 in 1890. It is one of the few landscapes from his coveted Arles period. The painting depicts a street scene showing the Trinquetaille bridge rendered using the artist’s signature expressive brushwork and warm color palette.

The work was in the hand of the widow of the artist’s brother, Theo. The painting was last offered in 2004 at Christie’s auction in New York where it was sold $11.2 million which was below its estimate of $12 million. Before that, it sold at Christie’s for $15.4 million in November 1999. It was last exhibited in 2016 at Oslo’s Munch Museum, in a show focused on van Gogh and Edvard Munch that also traveled to the van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

“Works of this scale and importance are incredibly rare and everything about it, from the vibrant, ‘absinthe’ color of the sky and the highly structured composition to the thick and expressive brushwork of the water speaks of an artist at the very height of his creative powers,” said Christie’s senior international director of Impressionist and modern art, Jay Vincze, in a statement.

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Ines Abdel Dayem, Egyptian Minister of Culture, described the museum as an enrichment of Egypt’s cultural infrastructure and soft power, inaugurated the museum as he site of one of the world’s rare artistic collections. The museum opened with an aim of developing artistic, archaeological and national museums in Egypt, and to encourage public engagement.

The Museum boasts a significant collection of Impressionist, Romantic and Classical works, including pieces by world renowned artists such as Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Claude Monet, Édouard Manet, Berthe Morisot, Eugène Delacroix and Peter Paul Rubens among others. The collection also includes a number of porcelain vases and antiques from France, Turkey, Iran and China. Though the Khalils’ collection is predominantly an international one, there are a number of works by Egyptian artists.

Mohamed Mahmoud Khalil Bey (1877-1953), was a politician and an avid collector. He was the president of the Egyptian Senate, a minister of agriculture and the co-founder of the Society of Lovers of Fine Arts. Khalil worked towards enhancing the cultural exchange between Egypt and France, organising the Egyptian pavilion at the Paris International Fair in 1937 and being elected a member of the French Academy of Fine Arts in 1949.

The museum was closed for ten years following the theft of a Van Gogh painting known as Poppy Flowers (1887), cut from its frame and stolen in August 2010 and still missing. Poppy Flowers was also stolen from the same museum in 1977 but recovered a decade later.

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It depicts a windmill named the Pepper Mill, seen from the street under a bright sky, with a man, a woman and a little girl walking in front of wooden palisades that surrounded the place. It was painted in 1887, one year after Van Gogh moved to Paris and lived in Montmartre while he was lodging with his brother Theo. He left the French capital in 1888 for southern France, where he lived until his death in 1890.

The result surpasses last year’s equivalent sale in Paris that was pushed to June because of the pandemic and brought in a much lower total of €10 million ($11.8 million). This sale also brought in more than the house’s October Paris-based “Modernités” evening auction, which generated €28 million ($33 million).

Other top lots which was sold at Sotheby’s auction was Francis Picabia’s La corrida (Le Matador dans l’arène), ca. 1940–4, which was sold for  €3.5 million ($3.7 million) with buyer’s premium. against an estimation of €2.5 million ($2.9 million). Camille Pissaro’s 1887 gouache Pea Harvest hammered at €2.8 million (€3.4 million with buyer’s premium, or $4 million)

An Edgar Degas pastel featuring a ballerina sold for €2.6 million ($3.2 million), against a low estimate of €2 million ($2.3 million). uguste Rodin’s bronze sculpture of a seated embracing couple, Le Baiser, cast in 1904, hammered at €780,000, above the high estimate of €600,000 ($400,000). Its final price was €956,3000 ($1.1 million).

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The Courtauld gallery’s renowned collection includes masterpieces like Van Gogh’s Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear and Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère. Its massive holdings of works on paper count pieces by artists such as Leonardo, Rembrandt and Rubens, but until now, the museum was sorely missing masterpieces from the 20th century. Apart from Cézanne, none of the artist’s work which is included in Karshan gift was represented in gallery holdings.

There are drawings by great names but also “astonishing and revelatory” works by artists less well known to the wider public. For example, an explosively colourful work by the Californian abstract expressionist Sam Francis, and abstract works by Henri Michaux made while he was tripping on mescaline.

Soutter produced his most famous piece while interning against his wish  in hospice in Ballaigues, a small village in Switzerland.  After he developed osteoarthritis, Soutter would dip his fingers in ink and work directly on paper. The gallery will also receive a piece by the Abstract Expressionist artist Sam Francis and a series of abstract works by Belgian painter and writer Henri Michaux that were created while he was high on mescaline. The Karshan gift will go on display in late 2021, when the historic gallery reopens following a $70.5 million modernization project.

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