Vincent van Gogh: Starry Night
Another classic, probably the best known of Van Gogh’s paintings. It hangs in the Museum of Modern Art, New York. While looking for things to say about it, I tried to avoid the usual psychobabble — but in vain. This piece exudes psychological meanings and evading them would eventually result in a crippled, and even dishonest review. I would like to focus on several details and make some conclusions about” the bigger picture.”
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I think that this piece is all about contrasts. Dark blue and black hues oppose the bright whites and the yellows in the sky. The sharp needle-like tops of the cypress tree almost pierce the round halos around the stars. Interestingly, the whites and yellows of the stars resemble chicken egg contents, which in particular cooking styles must be kept unmixed and intact when pan fried.
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This “must” makes the breaking of the shell a rather tense and strenuous moment. I think it is possible to draw a parallel between that kind of tension and the artist’s emotional state and compare him to a delicate egg, being poked by the menacing cypress needles. In a way, he “asks” for such a comparison. Eventually the pressure was too much for him and the painter cracked. He has gone mad; the view we are seeing is one from his mental asylum in Saint-Remy-de-Provence, France.
But there is an even more striking contrast: the enormity of the stars vs. the seemingly Lilliputian buildings of the town. What is and was the city, particularly for such a man as Vincent Van Gogh? Well, it was a collection of banalities and mundane problems, a Ferris wheel of everyday life — something he might have preferred to avoid and ignore.
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It makes sense that these houses appear so small — for the artist, they indeed were small. What was big for him — the universal questions about life, death and God, and how they all relate to each other — was depicted in appropriate cosmic proportions; the stars and how they came to be often allude to these questions. The artist expressed his world view on this canvas, making it a brooding, philosophical work of art.
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Another contrast is that of nature and the city, of the untamed and the civilized. It is well demonstrated by the opposition of the tree in the foreground to the church on the outskirts of the town. This contrast may also be seen as the manifestation of the artist’s personal conflict with the religious institution, ensuing from his personal experience. After all, he failed as a clergyman, largely due to his rebellious and uncompromising character.
Van Gogh brings forward elemental ecstasy as an alternative to the stiffness of established clergy; unbridled sentiment expressed in art vs. prettified channeling through the fixed text of a prayer — this painting may be seen both as a personal prayer and a defiance.
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The composition is very unbalanced, and dynamic; appropriately, it spirals the painting to psychological heights or depths, depending on the viewpoint. If it is true that van Gogh engendered expressionism, this piece of his may be considered as one of the springboards for this art movement.
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This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 19th, 2007 at 5:39 pm and is filed under Post-Impressionism, Vincent van Gogh. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
on April 5, 2008 at 2:49 am Sanjay wrote:
I love this art peice
on May 4, 2008 at 6:05 pm Allana Thompson wrote:
What did you say about “Starry Night?”