Essay about Van Gogh's 'Starry Night'

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Vincent van Gogh was a Dutch painter who lived between 1853 and 1890. He was a disturbed artist who battled mental illness. In his ten-year career, he created around 900 paintings. He went to Paris to learn Neo-Impressionism and Pointillism. Due to his deteriorating mental condition, he hacked off a portion of his ear. He voluntarily entered an asylum after this incident and received treatment. He was allowed to take a chaperoned walk outside and paint in a separate studio space within the asylum. At the asylum, he accomplished numerous works, including ‘Starry Night’.

The spectator sees a night landscape when looking at the image. The sky, stars, and moon, which are mostly shown on the right side of the painting, take up a considerable portion of the canvas. Trees may be seen in the foreground to the right, while a town or village concealed in the trees can be seen to the left. On the horizon line, there are dark hills in the backdrop. The painting's deep texture is created by heavy, broad strokes. The art's worth is based on Vincent van Gogh's employment of a unique slick stroke style. The image may be classified as belonging to the landscape genre. All elements of ‘Starry Night’ are bound by a single concept and lack individuality. Because certain things (houses, trees) are visible and many of them overlap each other, this unity is reflected in the composition and dynamics (trees, field houses). The items' scale is also altered (the stars and the moon are hypertrophied). The painting's liveliness, which communicates the artist's emotional experiences, is a standout aspect. The observer is drawn by the wonder of the sky and night in ‘Starry Night’.

Vincent van Gogh's mixing of color, light, and brushstrokes creates the look of ‘Starry Night’. The night sky dominates the top two-thirds of the canvas, with a little village situated between the Alpilles and an olive grove. Short, circular brushstrokes of bright blue form an energetic sky with glowing yellow and white circular stars and a crescent moon. The morning star shines brightest, close to the left of the center. The sky's blue blends seamlessly with the black mountains. In the foreground, there is a gigantic cypress tree that shakes and sways with the same intensity as the sky. It has been compared to a flame. The cypress virtually fills the entire painting's height. The church spire, like the cypress tree, soars towards the sky. The village windows are lit by yellow lights. The church is dark, no light is coming in through the windows. With its intensity, swirling movement, and dream-like character, the sky pulls the eye.

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‘Starry Night’ concentrates on color, light, and the artist's sentiments, which is an example of Post-Impressionism. Paintings from this time period frequently depict nature. Vincent van Gogh was enthralled by the night sky, believing that it had more hues than during the day. He also thought that dying was a means of reaching the stars. In this picture, the dominant night sky's vibrancy and movement contrast with the small town's hard, straight brushstrokes. At this hour of the night, he drew many sketches of the view outside his bedroom window. The big cypress joins ground and sky, like life and death, and is likewise rendered with dynamic brushstrokes. The composition of ‘Starry Night’ is balanced by diagonal lines with trees at the bottom on the right side and a dazzling yellow moon at the top on the left. Separate linear dark shapes, on the other hand, are employed to distinguish the town, trees, and hills in the lower section of the picture. From a hypothetical vantage point, the artist is looking down on a village. It is framed by his newly found motifs: a cypress climbs skywards on the left, a group of olive trees clusters into the cloud on the right, and the undulating waves of the Alpilles flow across the horizon.

The significance of ‘Starry Night’ is commonly linked to Vincent van Gogh's declining mental state. The blues he utilized in this picture represent a return to the hues he employed throughout his mental illness battles. The whirling brushstrokes might potentially be a reflection of his emotional condition. The gloomy church, painted from memory, features a spire more typical of his very devout boyhood in the Netherlands. Surprisingly, there is no light coming in through the windows of the church. In his letters to his brother Theo, he spoke extensively about stars, which dominate this image and represent his dreaming, heaven, and death. It's possible that Vincent van Gogh's suicide one year after creating ‘Starry Night’ predicted his death by suicide. The color palette, movement arrangement, and strokes all contribute to the painting's sense of depth. Color representation was extremely important to Vincent van Gogh. “I am highly sensitive to color and its special language, its effects of complements, contrasts, and harmony”, he once wrote. Broad strokes conceal the volume of things, while individual contour strokes just define their size. Saint-Remy or Nuenen remembered in a nocturnal attitude that the settlement itself may be anyplace. Like some type of provincial Eiffel Tower (whose attraction was never far from Vincent van Gogh's nocturnes), the church spire appears to be reaching out into the elements, acting as both an antenna and a lightning conductor. Mountains and trees (especially cypresses) by Vincent van Gogh had only just been found, yet they seemed to spark with an electric charge. He set out to recreate their image in the service of the symbolic, confident that he had mastered their inherent look. These landscape components, together with the firmament, are shouting the praises of Creation in this picture.

Because of its alien aspect, representing a spacecraft or rocket in the sky, ‘Starry Night’ appears to have been painted by a kid rather than a great artist. This painting is outstanding and wonderful because of its vivid and unusual qualities. What are the unique characteristics shown in this image that compel millions of viewers to seek a solution? Perhaps there will be no one answer to this question. Nonetheless, anyone who has seen a replica of ‘Starry Night’ at least once is unlikely to be disappointed. The painting ‘Starry Night’ has reached the pinnacle of creative perfection.

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Essay about Van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night’. (2023, October 26). Edubirdie. Retrieved April 28, 2024, from https://edubirdie.com/examples/essay-about-van-goghs-starry-night/
“Essay about Van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night’.” Edubirdie, 26 Oct. 2023, edubirdie.com/examples/essay-about-van-goghs-starry-night/
Essay about Van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night’. [online]. Available at: <https://edubirdie.com/examples/essay-about-van-goghs-starry-night/> [Accessed 28 Apr. 2024].
Essay about Van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night’ [Internet]. Edubirdie. 2023 Oct 26 [cited 2024 Apr 28]. Available from: https://edubirdie.com/examples/essay-about-van-goghs-starry-night/
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