- The Night Cafe I visited www.artgallery.yale.edu and came across Vincent Van Gogh’s The Night Café (1988). I followed the instructions on “How to begin the Critical Analysis Essay (Extra Credit)”. As I was clicking through the collection at a “fairly good pace,” I stumbled on The Night Café. Its image stayed in my head for whatever reason. I finished looking at the collection and went right back to it. The painting must have struck a chord in my head, but getting into why that chord was struck would require another type of assignment. The Night Café is oil on canvas, from the art movement known as impressionism. The Night Café uses a display of optical and psychological color though harsh, textured swirls of impasto, which is the think buildup of paint on the surface of the canvas. One of his most interesting paintings (I think) is this one. The place he hung out at night drinking. The work depicts the interior of the Café de la Gare, an all night tavern owned by Joseph-Michel Ginoux and his wife Marie. It was located at 41 Rue Du Temple, 4th St. Paris, France. It is known that Van Gogh visited disreputable drinking establishments. The bare setting of the Café de la Gare served as inspiration to Van Gogh. The asymmetrical composition serves the purpose of communicating a feeling of unbalance. The psychological elements of this painting gave it unity: The disproportioned elements in the composition, the odd placement of objects, and the odd point of view contributed to its conceptual unity. The artist used oil on canvas because it helped his strong brush strokes define his expressional lines which were characteristic of his paintings. Expressional lines are not necessarily connected to the depiction and therefore not related to an object in reality, they are not descriptive. As he used a lot of expressional color, we realize that he does the same thing with line with one very great emphasis. In Van Gogh’s case, his colors and his paint were so thick and his brush stroke was so emphatic that really you can look at a Van Gogh and say that every single brush stroke is a line and that is what gives his painting a wild sense of energy. What Van Gogh’s first critic called “feverish,” it is all through these undulating constantly changing lines. We can see an example of this in the light surrounding the bulbs illuminating the café. When I first looked at this work, I felt somewhat overwhelmed by a feeling of unease. The subject matter conveys a sense of loneliness and desperation. There are drinkers slouching; they are probably very drunk and can’t hold their posture. One of them (left) sits alone with his hands holding his head, probably a sign of pain and desperation caused by problems and the effects of alcohol. In the background, a man and a woman make plans for the rest of the night. The lone standing figure is said to be the owner of the tavern (behind the billiard table). He seems to be looking straight at us (or Van Gogh) in this case. The author wanted us to get a feeling for the entire establishment. There is a kind of odd proportion between the objects in the composition; there is an odd perspective of looking at this room, this very narrow room. There is an odd placement of the clock, which could be interpreted as the feeling of distorted time while drinking. It could also mean that time at night is not as important as it usually is during the day (especially if one is drunk). And there is even an odd placement of our point of view. We are looking at this as if we were hovering, we don’t even know where we are. This perspective could symbolize the feelings a person has while intoxicated. But I believe the real basis for the uneasiness for this particular painting, which Van Gogh definitely wanted us to have, is color. With complimentary colors, “opposites attract.” They actually intensify one another when placed together. We didn’t know exactly why this worked until the end of the 19th century when it was discovered that actually those complimentary colors produced an after image on our retina. When we are looking at the red color, it produces an afterimage of its opposite color. This is a chemical process that happens in the retina. “Prolonged staring at any saturated color fatigues the receptors in our eyes, which compensate when allowed to rest by producing the color’s complimentary as a ghostly afterimage in the mind.” In the case of red, the afterimage color is green. Now, if we put green next to red, the retina creates the afterimage of both, this intensifies both colors. Van Gogh definitely wanted to communicate intense feelings through the use of complimentary colors. These complimentary colors contributed to that feeling of unease or even “dread” as some of Van Gogh’s critics would say. It’s just not the other oddities of this painting, but it really is for me the overwhelming feeling caused by the use of these complimentary colors what gives this painting its meaning. Trying to imagine what it would be like if the red on the wall and the green on the ceiling were fully saturated; I can only fathom the intensity of such image. But this is deliberatively an odd color of red posted against an odd color of green. Van Gogh actually wrote about it and called it “bilious green” and “blood red.” And he also said about this night café, which was right down the corner from his house: “It is a place where one can go mad or commit a crime.” I cannot help to imagine how intense that “bilious green” and that “blood red” were for him. Anger, thoughts of violence, and alcohol are definitely a bad combination. Van Gogh was definitely trying to communicate his state of mind. He defines his problem very sadly in this composition. The main goal of this piece of art was to fulfill a very basic human need of connection and communication. He obviously felt very isolated, anxious, erratic, depressed, and without purpose or direction. Addiction might also be a factor. His was a mental problem that affects many people in our planet. He was very successful in making others aware of these psychological maladies.