Vincent Van Gogh Starry Night Meaning

The life span of 37 years saw Vincent Willem van Gogh (Vincent) in creating beautiful works he dearly loved. Painting was an avenue, which allowed him to express his inner thoughts or vent his struggles. My decision to research on Vincent’s painting, Starry Night (1889) came with the inspiration from Don Mclean’s Song, Starry Starry Night where his lyrics spoke about Vincent’s life that further intrigued me in writing this paper.

Vincent van Gogh was a deeply troubled, post-impressionist artist and his painting “Starry Night” is his most famous piece. Working from memory, he painted the oil on canvas passing the time in Saint-Remy-de-Provence located in southern France while undergoing treatment in an insane asylum. The piece is very energetic with eleven fireball

When I first saw Vincent van Gogh’s painting of The Starry Night, I was immediately drawn to the peaceful luminescent stars emanating outward like vibrant yellow halos into the captivating striking blue sky. I felt a sense of calm and tranquility as the bright orange moon shone intently over the serene village below. The sprawling mountain range, grassy hills and fields of wheat intensified this feeling as a soft wind swept through the countryside. Under the immense stars and vibrant night sky, the people of the village sleep soundly in their cottages. This painting exudes an overwhelming feeling of calmness and peace in my mind.

To begin with, everyone knows Vincent Van Gogh. He is one the most famous artists in the world. In Van Gogh's “Starry Night” it has been said that the painting depicts his view from an asylum. After receiving a mental

One of the most mysterious and thought-provoking images to date was painted in 1889 from a mental health institution in St. Remy, France by non-other than Vincent Van Gogh. The opulence of blues and yellows has the ability bring a viewer to its knees, mostly in a subconscious manner that evokes a kind of spiritual quest, perhaps one that Van Gogh was on himself. The Starry Night is still heavily contemplated and its meaning is still relatively unknown and quite debated, as is the man himself. In an effort to gain an understanding of not only the painting but the painter himself, I chose two articles that provide an understanding of the art and the artist: Van Gogh’s Agony by Lauren Soth and Under the Starry Night by Denis J. Billy. Both writers take a different approach to grasping the elusive understanding of this wondrous work but occasionally find some similarities and understanding of him and his work, which I will elaborate on through the course of this paper.

Van Gogh depicted clouds and stars in whirly shape in order to direct the viewer´s eye around the painting. When standing in front the painting, one would spontaneously be attracted by those swirls and would follow one swirl to another. These elements make the painting seems to be fluid and abstract. The yellow crescent moon at the upper right corner is blight and mild. It softens the painting to convey a sense of serenity. Compared to other Impressionist paintings, Starry Night is somehow different: van Gogh used very expressive color and distorted form to give the viewers a very bright picture. Van Gogh wrote a letter to his brother to point out that compared to other Impressionist artists of that time, he utilized “exaggeration in terms of composition.” He uses techniques such as surrealism to draw those swirls. In Starry Night the landscape seems to be a way to convey the artist’s emotion. I believe that the fight van Gogh had against his mental illness is reflected in the painting. When looking at the upper sky in the painting, there is a strong contrast between the sky and the stars, similar to what van Gogh experienced that time: his illness and his hope to recover. Van Gogh painted the village in dark color but on the contrary, he used bright color to draw the windows. I think this contrast gave people the idea that finally human should have hope and try their best to overcome the

“The Starry Night" was created in 1889 during the post-impressionistic period which was a time in which artists used symbolism and color to expressed their feelings and psychological well being (MOMA Learning, n.d.). Additionally, this was also a time in

Vincent Van Gogh was a Dutch artist from the mid 1800’s who was considered to have created approximately 2000 artworks. Growing up, he was classified to be highly emotional and having low self-esteem. Within those depressed emotions, it helped him pioneer the path of expressionism in his art pieces. But as he got more into him artwork he came more mature with his artwork and caused his color patterns and brush strokes to evolve into another style of art called Impressionism. Starry Night Over the Rhone was one of his last ‘few years’ paintings. It was painted in September of 1888. The canvas resides in Musée d'Orsay,

This is good for painters who take a while on paintings because they can come back the next day and manipulate something that they want to look differently. The Starry Night is a type of oil painting. It is a realistic picture of what a nighttime sky would look like, therefore it is a piece of representational artwork. You can tell that Van Gogh built up a lot of layers to form the different hues of blues he wanted throughout the painting. The stars in this are very strong and bright while the village seems a little gloomy and depressing.

The Starry Night is an oil painting that depicts a small, nestled town under an almost magical sky. This piece, much like Elisabeth’s Nocturne, possesses a dominance of cool hues. While both paintings depict a night sky, Vincent van Gogh’s The Starry Night actually leads the observer’s eyes through the painting due to it’s brush strokes and fluidity. Although the work is very fluid and almost kinetic, it is not overwhelming or busy. Its rhythm is purposeful, not noisy. In fact, the painting almost gives off a calming, spiritual feeling to the viewer. The sky over the nestled town is a swirl of blue, yellow, and orange tints and shades that demonstrates an almost ethereal influence as if something greater is meant to be shown than what is simply before the observer. Radial

Vincent Van Gogh was formed by his social, cultural and historical context. This is expressed clearly in the underlying stories of both paintings, Starry Night, 1889 and Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear, 1889. Both of these paintings portray a narrative relating to Van Gogh significantly as he emotionally connects to the subject in each painting. Van Gogh’s aim of these subjective works was to express meaning through colour and express the painting to a more personal emotion for the viewer. Van Gogh belonged to a small style of Post Impressionism which was a reaction against Impressionism and their formality.

The Starry Night was painted by Vincent van Gogh during his stay in hospital window at Saint-Rémy in 1889, one year before his death. Although the canvas painting with oil on held out multiple interpretations, van Gogh’s apparent theme is his communication of the vastness in his artwork. The painting depicts a small town, verified as the view of van Gogh from his hospital window, which was under a blue and vast dark night sky that is filled with luminous stars. There are many interpretations of Starry Night which is came from van Gogh’s influences in his poetry, personal religious conflict, astronomy, depression, all of which convey van Gogh’s representation in creating an unique lucius view of reality.

     With its swirling colors and lines, The Starry Night, incorporates not just the color and light that is found in the earlier works of these painters, but it shows how forms and feelings also came into play. One of van Gogh’s main beliefs was that art was a direct representation of how the artist feels. Having grown up in a very religious family, van Gogh viewed the heavens as a beautiful, living thing. His heavy brushstrokes and vivid colors portray the night sky as crazy and chaotic and the village below as peaceful and serene. Van Gogh’s troubled life, which involved many failures in life, love and business, forced him into madness, which eventually caused him to commit suicide. While the problems of his life may have caused personal trauma, the artistic importance of his insanity is overwhelming. Perhaps if he had not gone crazy, he never would have created the masterpieces that have had such an impact on art and history.

One of Vincent Van Gogh’s most world renowned paintings is his landscape oil painting Starry Night. The painting displays a small town underneath an unusual yet still extremely beautiful night sky. In this night sky, Van Gogh utilizes an array of colors that blend well together in order to enhance the sky as a whole. The town is clearly a small one due to the amount of buildings that are present in the painting itself. In this small town most of the buildings have lights on which symbolize life in a community. Another visual in Starry Night is the mountain like figures that appear in the background of the illustrious painting. Several things contribute to the beauty of Van Gogh’s painting which are the painting’s function, context, style, and design. Van Gogh’s utilization of these elements help bring further emphasis to his work in Starry Night.

“Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul,” said William Maugham, a British playwright from the 19th century. Vincent Van Gogh, an artist who is considered by many one of the most inspirational artists in history, was no stranger to depicting his struggles in life or feelings in his work. Van Gogh’s piece Starry Night, designed in the year 1889, shows this to be true in that it was the result of his experiences in an asylum that encouraged this piece. Despite this work has being so well known, many critics and observers of the piece have differing views on what he was trying to communicate through it. Two prime examples of this can be seen by the views expressed in the poems entitled, “Vincent” and “The Starry Night”, written by Don McClean and Anne Sexton, respectively. While the poem “Vincent”, has a depressing tone to it, “The Starry Night”, by Anne Sexton, depicts Starry Night as having a more lively mood, which more accurately represents that of the painting, by Vincent Van Gogh.