The Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh

The Originality of The Starry Night By Vincent Van Gogh, 1889

The Starry Night is a painting done by the Dutch Post-Impressionist Vincent van Gogh. In this painting, Gogh portrays the night view outside his sanitarium room in Saint-Remy-De-Provence (Costache, 2012). This painting rose to the peak of his achievements and is considered to be one of the most-known paintings in modern culture with the most replicated and sought-after prints. This is one of the most-detailed paintings that almost everyone finds difficult to shy away from.

The Starry Night is a representational painting of the evening and the night. It is said that from early on, Gogh was always astounded by the mood that was conjured up by the evening and the night. To him, the evening and the night was the moment for creativity and self-recreation (The collection, 2013). He took this as the time to look over the day’s events. He then took his time to capture all the events, experiences, and what he thought of them through painting.

His paintings are all about how one can play around with colors and the brush to come up with the unimaginable (Greenberg & Patterson, 2008). In The Starry Night, the moon and the stars are balls of orange-yellow light that brings out the radioactive nature in them. The clouds are in shades of white coil and whirl into an atmospheric surf. The ambient blue of unearthly flow of the town below adds intensity to the precision of the picture.

However, upon deep analysis of this picture, you will see that the precision of color in this painting is an expression of Gogh’s illness. It was the “madness” that pulled him away from his painting work. With this painting, Gogh tries not to come into terms with the reality. The stand-alone cypress tree describes the isolation he is experiencing. The mix of colors ingrain a certain calmness, thus indicating the kind of environment in which he resided and the level of loneliness he experienced.

From this painting, one can clearly see the precision in Gogh’s work of art. In The Starry Night, a viewer can clearly see the transition from evening to night (Costache, 2012). The radiant moon in shades of yellow and orange and the transition with the stars to the left that are smaller in size and faded clearly portrays the night. He manages to achieve all these due to the way the brush strokes are sharp and precise.

References
Costache, I. D. (2012). The Art of Understanding Art. Chichester, West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.
Greenberg, B. R., & Patterson, D. (2008). Art in Chemistry, Chemistry in Art. Westport, Conn: Teacher Ideas.
The Collection (2013). The Starry Night: Vincent van Gogh: retrieved from http://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=79802. Retrieved on 5/14/13.

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