{"id":16718,"date":"2025-10-25T21:23:06","date_gmt":"2025-10-25T21:23:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/16718\/"},"modified":"2025-10-25T21:23:06","modified_gmt":"2025-10-25T21:23:06","slug":"nyc-artist-dresses-as-a-van-gogh-self-portrait-every-year-for-the-village-halloween-parade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/16718\/","title":{"rendered":"NYC artist dresses as a Van Gogh self-portrait every year for the Village Halloween Parade"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>He Gogh-es all out.<\/p>\n<p>New York City artist James Haggerty\u00a0has attended the <a href=\"https:\/\/urldefense.com\/v3\/__http:\/\/halloween-nyc.com\/__;!!F0Stn7g!FmVj43BD5uHd3j8jJWCNRt2n7qxJW47o7kLWMovNOhFQfrTerZ1sxxtDsN829wTNnbk9vhGIOcO3MIdi50rhCA$\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Village Halloween Parade<\/a>\u00a0for the last 15 years dressed as \u201cdifferent incarnations\u201d of a self-portrait of Vincent van Gogh \u2014 and revelers find his costume brush-taking.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDuring one night, I could take hundreds of photos,\u201d Haggerty, 52, told The Post.<\/p>\n<p>The Big Apple native \u2014 who\u2019s also an art teacher \u2014 spends two months each year working on his costume for the parade, which expects 80,000 participants and more than 2 million spectators this Halloween.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA frame is in the foreground, there\u2019s a background, and I\u2019m sort of in the middle,\u2019 he said. \u201cEverything is connected so that I\u2019m a walking canvas down Sixth Avenue.<\/p>\n<p>New York City artist James Haggerty dresses as a self-portrait of Vincent van Gogh each Halloween. Getty Images<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOver the years, the level of authenticity has increased, where I spend a lot of time paying attention to the period clothing, the brushwork. And I really try to get that natural emotion that Van Gogh has in all of his works.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The van Gogh wannabe takes three to four hours to apply face makeup to look like the manic Dutch\u00a0painter, who famously cut off part of his ear \u2014 and died by suicide at the age of 37.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think his energy and emotion and style lends itself very well to Halloween,\u201d\u00a0Haggerty added.<\/p>\n<p>Haggerty spends two months working on his costume. Getty Images<\/p>\n<p>The perennial parade-goer is so committed to the costume, he even has a second one in mind in case the first one takes too long.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere have been numerous years where I was working on one costume, wasn\u2019t able to finish it, but also had a backup plan for one that would take less time,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n<p>The Big Apple native, who attended the School of Visual Arts, is a mosaic artist, painter, printmaker and teacher.   James Haggerty \/ Instagram<\/p>\n<p>This Halloween, the weather forecast is predicting high winds, but <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jameshaggerty.net\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Haggerty<\/a> isn\u2019t worried. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m inside of a frame, so it keeps me dry.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"He Gogh-es all out. New York City artist James Haggerty\u00a0has attended the Village Halloween Parade\u00a0for the last 15&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16719,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[3456,4921,9098,68,2519,245,11843,232,75,57,9,56,63,65,64,273,3210,6018,58,11844,2380],"class_list":{"0":"post-16718","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-artists","9":"tag-chelsea","10":"tag-chinatown","11":"tag-exclusive","12":"tag-greenwich-village","13":"tag-halloween","14":"tag-halloween-costumes","15":"tag-lifestyle","16":"tag-manhattan","17":"tag-metro","18":"tag-new-york","19":"tag-ny","20":"tag-nyc","21":"tag-nyc-headlines","22":"tag-nyc-news","23":"tag-parades","24":"tag-soho","25":"tag-union-square","26":"tag-us-news","27":"tag-vincent-van-gogh","28":"tag-west-village"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16718"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16718\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}