THE STARRY NIGHT BY VAN GOGH. WHY VAN GOGH PAINTED IT, WHAT IT REPRESENTS, WHERE YOU CAN SEE IT
In The Starry Night Van Gogh represents the most visionary night in history of art.
Before this painting the night had never been so intense! It’s one of the most famous paintings by Van Gogh, in which darkness is illuminated by violent flashes and by cosmic energy which seems that it can’t find peace.
Like all Van Gogh’s works The Starry Night is like a vision and it can barely hold the energy of the brush strokes.
READ ALSO: Van Gogh is a post-impressionism artist with Gauguin and many other.
WHY VAN GOGH PAINTED THE STARRY NIGHT
At the time when Van Gogh painted The Starry Night he was in the asylum in Saint-Rémy.
It was 1889 and he was admitted there after a nervous breakdown, but there he could paint en plein air, and there he painted one of his masterpieces.
In those days Van Gogh wrote to his brother:
“I feel a tremendous need for religion, so I go outside at night to paint the stars”.
The sky, the nature, the starry night satisfied his desire for infinity.
WHAT THE STARRY NIGHT BY VAN GOGH REPRESENTS
In The Starry Night Van Gogh put a small church which resembles those common churches in his native Holland in the centre of the painting; on the left he painted a cypress in the foreground, whereas the small village and the swirling sky with bright orbs seem to blend into one another.
The planet Venus is represented as a star in this sky, and researchers have determined that in the spring of 1889, between the end of May and the beginning of June, it was indeed near its brightest possible. So Van Gogh really observed reality to paint this work.
The sky, the stars and the moon are linked by a movement which gives us the impression that we are inside a swirl, and we feel a strong feeling of vertigo.
WHERE THE STARRY NIGHT BY VAN GOGH IS
The Starry Night by Van Gogh is exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art of New York (MoMA)
At the end of this post the link at website.
Img source: Radio Monte Carlo.net
For the past seventeen years I’ve had vestibular migraine—it’s a migraine variant. That means vertigo, which likely has as many presentations as strokes in that painting. Starry Night has always spoken to me, so I found the vertigo connection interesting.
There’s an order to Starry Nights that doesn’t come with vertigo. That painting isn’t chaos. Maybe chronic vertigo took Van Gogh to the edges of his mind, maybe he flew (or fled) there in the suffering storms of vertigo, but I don’t see vertigo in the painting. I see order, however fluid.
The works of Van Gogh can only be understood by reading the letters he wrote to his brother Theo.
There is certainly a part related to his mental distress but the artistic research of Van Gogh has been a long time and “Starry Night” is one of the highest points of his style.
I enjoyed your article and insights.
Thanks 😀