Painted "the day I got up," Van Gogh wrote, referring to one of his most disabling episodes, the Washington self-portrait, with the damaged ear hidden by the turned head, depicts the artist determined to get back to work. He wears an artist's smock, his equivalent of a humble peasant's cloak. His hand, simple worker that he is, seems almost to have metamorphosed into a palette, fingers changed into brushes. Van Gogh is ready to capture the painting that we are looking at. A blob of blue and another of complementary orange, next to his thumb, announce the limited palette of the painting. Out of such limited means—blue, orange, and a smear of white—this painter, misunderstood or not, opened the way for 20^th-century art. Paul Klee was right to be a little scared, since nothing in the generation that followed—neither Schiele's kinkiness nor Pechstein's screaming color, nor Kandinsky's pulsating landscapes, which are also on view at the Neue Galerie—is quite as unnerving as Van Gogh's intense expression. His keen and probing eyes peer into the mirror, but they are looking into the future, our future, as well.