Van Gogh's night sky is a field of roiling energy. Below the exploding stars, the village is a place of quiet order. Connecting earth and sky is the flamelike cypress, a tree traditionally associated with graveyards and mourning. But death was not ominous for van Gogh. "Looking at the stars always makes me dream," he said, "Why, I ask myself, shouldn't the shining dots of the sky be as accessible as the black dots on the map of France? Just as we take the train to get to Tarascon or Rouen, we take death to reach a star."
The artist wrote of his experience to his brother Theo: "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 morning star, or Venus, may be the large white star just left of center in The Starry Night. The hamlet, on the other hand, is invented, and the church spire evokes van Gogh's native land, the Netherlands. The painting, like its daytime companion, The Olive Trees, is rooted in imagination and memory. Leaving behind the Impressionist doctrine of truth to nature in favor of restless feeling and intense color, as in this highly charged picture, van Gogh made his work a touchstone for all subsequent Expressionist painting.
The Museum of Modern Art, MoMA Highlights, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, revised 2004, originally published 1999, p. 35
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The curving, swirling lines of hills, mountains, and sky, the brilliantly contrasting blues and yellows, the large, flame-like cypress trees, and the thickly layered brushstrokes of Vincent van Gogh’s The Starry Night are engrained in the minds of many as an expression of the artist’s turbulent state-of-mind. Van Gogh’s canvas is indeed an exceptional work of art, not only in terms of its quality but also within the artist’s oeuvre, since in comparison to favored subjects like irises, sunflowers, or wheat fields, night landscapes are rare. Nevertheless, it is surprising that The Starry Night has become so well known. Van Gogh mentioned it briefly in his letters as a simple “study of night” or ”night effect.”
His brother Theo, manager of a Parisian art gallery and a gifted connoisseur of contemporary art, was unimpressed, telling Vincent, “I clearly sense what preoccupies you in the new canvases like the village in the moonlight… but I feel that the search for style takes away the real sentiment of things” (813, 22 October 1889). Although Theo Van Gogh felt that the painting ultimately pushed style too far at the expense of true emotive substance, the work has become iconic of individualized expression in modern landscape painting.
Technical challenges
Van Gogh had had the subject of a blue night sky dotted with yellow stars in mind for many months before he painted The Starry Night in late June or early July of 1889. It presented a few technical challenges he wished to confront—namely the use of contrasting color and the complications of painting en plein air (outdoors) at night—and he referenced it repeatedly in letters to family and friends as a promising if problematic theme. “A starry sky, for example, well – it’s a thing that I’d like to try to do,” Van Gogh confessed to the painter Emile Bernard in the spring of 1888, “but how to arrive at that unless I decide to work at home and from the imagination?” (596, 12 April 1888).
As an artist devoted to working whenever possible from prints and illustrations or outside in front of the landscape he was depicting, the idea of painting an invented scene from imagination troubled Van Gogh. When he did paint a first example of the full night sky in Starry Night over the Rhône (1888, oil on canvas, 72.5 x 92 cm, Musée d’Orsay, Paris), an image of the French city of Arles at night, the work was completed outdoors with the help of gas lamplight, but evidence suggests that his second Starry Night was created largely if not exclusively in the studio.
Location
Following the dramatic end to his short-lived collaboration with the painter Paul Gauguin in Arles in 1888 and the infamous breakdown during which he mutilated part of his own ear, Van Gogh was ultimately hospitalized at Saint-Paul-de-Mausole, an asylum and clinic for the mentally ill near the village of Saint-Rémy. During his convalescence there, Van Gogh was encouraged to paint, though he rarely ventured more than a few hundred yards from the asylum’s walls.
Besides his private room, from which he had a sweeping view of the mountain range of the Alpilles, he was also given a small studio for painting. Since this room did not look out upon the mountains but rather had a view of the asylum’s garden, it is assumed that Van Gogh composed The Starry Night using elements of a few previously completed works still stored in his studio, as well as aspects from imagination and memory. It has even been argued that the church’s spire in the village is somehow more Dutch in character and must have been painted as an amalgamation of several different church spires that Van Gogh had depicted years earlier while living in the Netherlands.
Van Gogh also understood the painting to be an exercise in deliberate stylization, telling his brother, “These are exaggerations from the point of view of arrangement, their lines are contorted like those of ancient woodcuts” (805, c. 20 September 1889). Similar to his friends Bernard and Gauguin, Van Gogh was experimenting with a style inspired in part by medieval woodcuts, with their thick outlines and simplified forms.
The colors of the night sky
On the other hand, The Starry Night evidences Van Gogh’s extended observation of the night sky. After leaving Paris for more rural areas in southern France, Van Gogh was able to spend hours contemplating the stars without interference from gas or electric city street lights, which were increasingly in use by the late nineteenth century. “This morning I saw the countryside from my window a long time before sunrise, with nothing but the morning star, which looked very big” 777, c. 31 May – 6 June 1889). As he wrote to his sister Willemien van Gogh from Arles,
It often seems to me that the night is even more richly colored than the day, colored with the most intense violets, blues and greens. If you look carefully, you’ll see that some stars are lemony, others have a pink, green, forget-me-not blue glow. And without labouring the point, it’s clear to paint a starry sky it’s not nearly enough to put white spots on blue-black.(678, 14 September 1888)
Van Gogh followed his own advice, and his canvas demonstrates the wide variety of colors he perceived on clear nights.
Invention, remembrance and observation
Arguably, it is this rich mixture of invention, remembrance, and observation combined with Van Gogh’s use of simplified forms, thick impasto, and boldly contrasting colors that has made the work so compelling to subsequent generations of viewers as well as to other artists. Inspiring and encouraging others is precisely what Van Gogh sought to achieve with his night scenes. When Starry Night over the Rhône was exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants, an important and influential venue for vanguard artists in Paris, in 1889, Vincent told Theo he hoped that it “might give others the idea of doing night effects better than I do.” The Starry Night, his own subsequent “night effect,” became a foundational image for Expressionism as well as perhaps the most famous painting in Van Gogh’s oeuvre.
Essay by Dr. Noelle C. Paulson
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- Van Gogh had chopped his ear because of his relationship with Gaungin? Why their relationship had deteriorated ? Button navigates to signup pageComment on egg head's post “Van Gogh had chopped his ...”
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Van Gogh was very troubled. He grew up in poverty and had to leave school to get a job at age 15 to help support his family. He's had terrible luck with women as well. He fell in love with his landlady's daughter and she rejected his marriage proposal. He later fell in love with a prostitute, and she quit for a while, but when she started up again, it was hard for Van Gogh. He also fell in love with his cousin, who was disgusted by this information and fled the country. He spent most of his money on paint and art supplies, so he lived basically on coffee and bread, which caused him to become physically ill. He also developed anxiety and depression, and his mental state got so bad that he occasionally ate paint and sipped turpentine. After Gaungin checked up on him for about a month, the two of them got into a fight. There is speculation now that Van Gogh may not have been the one to cut off his ear, but that it could have been Gaungin. It's also known that Van Gogh shot himself in the chest, but scientists are questioning whether or not that's accurate. They believe that if he had shot himself while holding the gun at arms length, his injury should have been much worse. They have a theory that perhaps he was shot by someone else from farther away. Comment on Emily Metz's post “Van Gogh was very trouble...”
- Why did he chop his ear off! I know he was in a bad relationship but why would he do such a thing! Button navigates to signup pageButton navigates to signup page
- No one really knows, but there are theories. According to art historian Waldemar Januszczak, Van Gogh was in despair because he felt he couldn't compete with Paul Gauguin, a painter that Van Gogh admired a great deal. They lived together for a short while, and didn't get along too well. Gauguin eventually decided he'd had enough and wanted to leave. Meanwhile, Van Gogh wasn't so successful with women, due in part to his problems with alcohol. So, the same night Gauguin decided to leave, Van Gogh cut his ear off, and wrapped it up for a girl he liked - similar to the way Matadors cut off the ear of a bull after killing it - as a trophy. It was Van Gogh's way of saying, "Okay, Gauguin, you win, I lose!" Button navigates to signup page
- I do not know if it is true, but based on his actions and his life issues, some say Van Gogh was bipolar, is that true? Button navigates to signup pageButton navigates to signup page
- Vincent Van Gogh was combating his anguishing mental illness — frequent episodes of depression, paralyzing anxiety and, according to some accounts, the symptoms of bipolar disorder — which would eventually claim his life in 1890, shortly after his 37th birthday. //www.brainpickings.org/2014/06/05/van-gogh-and-mental-illness/ Button navigates to signup page
- Several times throughout this article, I see quotes dated in an odd way, with a number preceding the date. (Ex. "“These are exaggerations from the point of view of arrangement, their lines are contorted like those of ancient woodcuts” (805, c. 20 September 1889)). What do these numbers mean? Button navigates to signup pageButton navigates to signup page
- What is the reason Van Gogh made the church windows dark? Button navigates to signup pageButton navigates to signup page
- He was pretty disillusioned with religion, so maybe he meant that as a way to show his lack of faith in religion. Button navigates to signup page
- How do these three spaces relate to one another? How does the eye move through them? Is the arrangement stable or unstable? What is your relationship to the scene? Button navigates to signup pageButton navigates to signup page
- can you explain 3 component of art style,content and ccontext where located in this art? Button navigates to signup pageButton navigates to signup page
- I understood that the style and colors of this painting were impacted by Van Gogh's use of foxglove (containing digitalis) for his health. Is that true? (//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digoxin_toxicity) Button navigates to signup pageButton navigates to signup page
- I suggest being wary of theories that offer medical conditions that seek to explain an artist's decisions. There are countless such theories and all that I have seen are, in my opinion, without merit. Button navigates to signup page
- Great article! When was this published? Button navigates to signup pageButton navigates to signup page
- August 9, 2015 Button navigates to signup page
What kinds of choices did Van Gogh make in artwork the starry night to break the tradition and try something new? What is the difference between representational and non-representational art forms in the 20th century of Modern Art
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To answer the first question, he used his memories such as the steeple of a church from his native Holland, his emotions, his imagination, and direct observations such as the view outside his window in the asylum with only one big morning star to create the piece instead of painting from direct observation. Night landscapes were rare. He painted Starry Night in his own style like the stars are swirly instead of appearing like bulbs of light.