In the Arles section, van Gogh's tragic life at last truly emerges in full force. Fascinated by the idea of an artist colony, van Gogh begged Gauguin and Bernard to join him in Arles. The three exchanged portraits. Yet the MFA exhibit only shows the self-portrait van Gogh sent to Gauguin, which portrays him as a thinking man, deeply committed to art, in vibrant, unrealistic colors suggesting a remove from reality. If the curators had borrowed van Gogh's portraits of Gauguin and Bernard from Amsterdam, a much clearer reflection of van Gogh's insecurities and hopes might have emerged.

Nonetheless, the exhibit offers an explanation of van Gogh's breakdown after working with Gauguin in Arles for two months. Van Gogh, after a heated argument, mutilated his ear. Yet only one image of the artist without his ear appears in the exhibit - an important curatorial decision. Instead of focusing on van Gogh as 'the crazy artist who cut his ear off,' the exhibit moves on to the tragedy of what this fit implied for van Gogh - as the exhibit undersores, van Gogh is more than a mad genius.

Scared of himself and his disease, now thought to be a type of epilepsy, van Gogh placed himself in a mental institution in St.-RŽmy. The last room of the exhibit, treating the last year of the artist's life, is flurried and rushed, and once again painted in somber blue. Even the text on the wall reads like a timeline - first St.-RŽmy, then Auvers and Dr. Gachet, then suicide with a shot in the chest.

St.-RŽmy was an important time in the artist's life - the Van Gogh Museum devotes almost half a gallery to van Gogh's work there, mostly paintings of the countryside in deep purples and dark greens. Images of death resonate in his depictions of reapers and harvests. While the intention of Face to Face is to focus on the portrait, one of his two final self-portraits is lost in the room's attempt to embrace a very intense period. This self-portrait caused van Gogh to allude to his own death, describing himself on the day he painted it as 'thin and pale as a ghost,' but it is barely noticed in the room. Van Gogh's descent into his final depression deserves more attention, either through commentary or the inclusion of more works from this period.

Similarly, Dr. Gachet, a crucial person in the life of van Gogh and other artists, including Pissaro, so important that the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York devoted an exhibit to him a few years ago, is noted only by the inclusion of some etchings. Gachet nurtured van Gogh in his final days, but this is somehow overlooked by Face to Face, an exhibit that otherwise does an excellent job of connecting van Gogh's portraits to his personal life.

The two last paintings in the exhibit - 'Adeline Ravoux' (1890), a girl with blond hair painted against a black background, and 'Portrait of a Girl' (1890), a girl with black hair painted against a white background - strangely summarize van Gogh's career as an artist and his emotional maturation. He could appreciate color, but in the end, the contrast between color and darkness, or his madness, was too much for him. As his brother Theo wrote, 'Life was such a burden to him, but now, as often happens, everyone is full of praise for his talents.'

The intrigue and beauty of van Gogh's portraits are immortal because they present a person and an artist. Seeing all of these portraits together is a phenomenal opportunity to learn about dignity, humanity and intellectual curiosity as seen through the eyes of an artist. Although the artist wrote, They say -and I am very willing to believe it - that it is difficult to know oneself - but it isn't easy to paint oneself either,' his portraits do reveal himself - not just the self-portraits, but all of his work - and to miss this chance to appreciate the genius of van Gogh's personality would be a shame.