Who Is Vincent Van Gogh The Starry Night

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

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.

Another main focal point in this canvas was subject matter. This is where the objects or events are described. The artist gives us different objects such as the old couple seems displayed as depressing. Or you can observe it as normal couple, walking across the river, enjoying the night. He also gives us a boat which could possibly be giving us a correlation because the boat looks like it’s broken or about to sink. There is also another interpretation with the object that Van Gogh displays which is, the stars. Depending upon which way you want to take it, they look like flowers or fireworks. Also, there is a sense of false appearance with the houses. If you stare at just the bank you will notice that it is just a bunch of bright lights but if you pay attention to the water close to the bank, you will acknowledge the darkness or shadow of the houses.

A lucent crescent of the moon is seen on the top right hand corner of the painting where dramatic contours and fluidity of the brushworks are seen due to the Japonisme influences. Moreover, the eleven stars and the rolling hills are depicted moving to the momentum of the swirling sky.

“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.

1a. The Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh was a piece I was already familiar with, so I searched it on www.google.com. I used a high definition picture of it on Google images to further examine the painting.

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.

This masterpiece was painted by Van Gogh in 1889 while he was receiving treatment in Saint-Paul-de-Mausole, a mental asylum. The beautiful painting that many people have come to love today was never appreciated during its own time. Various art critics thought that the large brush strokes Van Gogh had made in Starry Night seemed “messy” and “childlike”. The strokes also convinced people that Van Gogh was truly crazy and that he was not as talented as other artists. Yet the pencil thick lines are what made the painting look hyper-realistic and eye-catching. They have a calming, consistent effect on people whose eyes want to follow the swirls and lines. The brush strokes that Van Gogh added more texture, detail, and blended the colors easily to one another in Starry Night. The realistic details make it feel as if the painting is trying to get a message across to the public. With every line that Vincent van Gogh had made he put as much feelings into them as he did with effort.

In the painting, you can see the night sky brimming with whirling clouds, shining stars, and a bright crescent moon. There's a village painted with dark colors but the windows have a brightly light. The village is surrounded by mountains, and there is a tall flame-like figure at the left. Different shades of blue are mostly used in the painting to represent the sky, the mountains, and the village; making the color blue the one who stands out the most.

One of Van Gogh’s most famous paintings is The Starry Night. Although, Van Gogh sold only one painting in his life, the aftermath of his work is enormous (Schapiro 31). Widely known as his greatest piece of work, the painting has been reproduced several times and is one of his most famous paintings. Van Gogh however, was not satisfied with this painting, in a letter to his brother Theo from Saint-Remy he states,

(Scholastic, 2017) The painting has many line types included and clearly shows the first element of art, line. Gogh represents shape and form by having the organic shape of the tree contrast with the geometric shaped buildings. Nevertheless, the shape is represented by the tree, hills, and other organic shapes. The form is represented by the cubes as the bases of the

     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.

The reason why Vincent van Gogh created the portray called “The Starry Night” was because he began to suffer hallucination and have thoughts of suicide as he plunged into depression. Just before sunrise, he was inspired by the east-facing window view of his asylum room at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence which he later uses his imagination to create the artwork. The Starry Night masterpiece was based on van Gogh’s direct observations as well as his imagination, memories, and emotions of the sunset at the asylum. He also wrote a letter to his brother Theo van Gogh about him seeing an amazing view which was stated: “This morning I saw the country from my window a long time before sunrise, with nothing but the morning star, which looked very big”. This part of the letter was evidence that he created “The Starry Night” because he was inspired by the view and use his imagination to paint the picture with oil painting.

The night sky depicted by Van Gogh in the Starry Night painting is completed with of brightly colored stars, twisting clouds, and a bright crescent moon. This work almost has a dot-to-dot effect on the viewer's eyes because of the swirling motions moving in a circle through the middle of the painting, but Van Gogh uses the large tree and bright moon on different sides of the paper to give the painting unity. Starry Night is arguably one of Van Gogh's best paintings because of the excellent use of all the elements of art, which is hard to achieve in one piece of artwork.

The first thing I notice in The Starry Night is the sky in the background because it stands out the most. There are many shining stars, the big bright crescent moon and wind swirls painted throughout the blue sky using contrasting colours like orange, yellow and white. Through the swirling wind, thick curve lines are flowing across the sky to form this spiral-like formation. Eleven yellow stars which look like huge fireballs lighten the whole art piece by contrasting with the cool blue, dark night sky that contains a variety of shades of blue and grey. There is also the crescent moon at the top right-hand corner that is bigger and emits an even brighter light compared to the rest of the stars. Next, I notice the giant cypress tree on the left side because of how its proportion is a lot bigger than everything else in the rest of the painting. It blocks out part of the sky and the village located at the bottom. The village houses are tiny and painted in the shade. It is compact and is close to the hills and its surrounding objects which makes the houses blend in and become unnoticeable.