The first thoughts to cross my mind when I think Van Gogh are of his personality; the insanity, instability, and his pure obsession with the art he created, but the first time I saw Starry Night, I was overcome with an immense feeling of calmness and serenity that completely took me by surprise. Van Gogh’s Starry Night was one of the many works painted during his time in the Saint-Remy Asylum in 1889 and is now one of the most recognizable and desirable works of art in the world. Starry Night now resides in The Museum of Modern Art it New York, New York where it is admired and appreciated by thousands of people daily. I honestly don’t know the true definition of my feelings towards the painting. I only know that it stands out to me more so than any of his other works. When I see Starry Night, I see the dark sky that Van Gogh saw; and not only the darkness, but the exact opposite as well. I see the extreme brightness and color that he emphasizes throughout the night sky. He portrays the colors of the night with such brilliance and I am irrevocably drawn to that. Van Gogh gives the wind, literal and unmistakable movement that is impossible to interpret in any other way. The stars are oversized and shine brighter than our current reality, but I would assume it was to emphasize their brightness, and it’s a possibility that Van Gogh had a much better view of the stars than we do now and lived without our mass amounts of modern light pollution.
The color blue in Starry Night is what I, and what I would assume many other people would be initially drawn to. It is the dominant color in the painting, but taking a closer look I begin to see the lines of the small sleepy town and the color he used as high lights and undertones as well, to capture the perfect effect of moon lighting. It’s such a serene landscape, making you feel as if Van Gogh is the only person awake upon the hill, overlooking the small town portrayed, therefore making the viewer feel as if they are looking down upon the city as well.
There is an unknown object distorting part of the city scape. It is un-named and practically unrecognizable, but adds a dark foreboding essence to the painting that the rest of it does not portray. I believe it to be a grove of Tuscan-esc Cypress trees, which at night would look black and make potentially strange shapes. It is too curvy to be the proper architecture of the period and is unlit like the rest of the town, strengthening my theory that they’re trees.
It is impossible to know what Van Gogh was thinking while in this Asylum; what was going through his mind while he painted this painting. Was he happy and in a peaceful place while working on this? Or was his personal world as dark a foreboding as this painting could be perceived? Regardless, it is one of a kind and irrefutably a masterpiece in its own way, whether it is being criticized or admired. Van Gogh lived a life full of turmoil, unhappiness and lacked majorly in self-confidence, but what he lacked in life, he made up for on canvass and for that I must be thankful.