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Analysis Of ' Starry Night '

Decent Essays

Rachael Brooks
Mrs. Cole
English 4B
23 October 2015 Analyzing Mood and Theme in Starry Night For many, the painting Starry Night, by Vincent Van Gogh, is simply paint on a canvas. Created in the summer of 1889, while Van Gogh was in a mental asylum, others perceive the painting as a message of Van Gogh’s desire for acceptance and normalcy. Heavily influenced by the Expressionist movement, Starry Night is a physical representation of Van Gogh’s feelings of melencholy during his stay in the asylum. His troubled mind allowed Van Gogh to create a painting with a yearning mood. Throughout the years, people have tried to understand Van Gogh’s reason for painting Starry Night. One way that people have used to try to understand him is through ekphrastic poetry, which is poetry about a work of art, such as Anne Sexton’s ‘The Starry Night” poem and Don McClean’s “Vincent (Starry, Starry Night).” While “The Starry Night” by Anne Sexton depicts Starry Night as having an ominous mood, the empathetic mood in “Vincent (Starry, Starry Night),” by Don McClean, with its use of sympathetic diction, detail, and figurative language best mirrors that of the original painting. Van Gogh’s Starry Night expresses the troubles and yearnings going on in the artist’s mind as he painted. The focal point in the foreground of the painting is a dark object, blocking the viewer’s sight line to the town. This dark object may represent Van Gogh’s insanity blocking his chance at a normal life.

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