The Starry Night
1889
Vincent van Gogh
Description
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
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
Medium
Oil on canvas
Original Title
La nuit étoilée
Provenance
Acquired through the Lillie P.Bliss Bequest
Style
Post-Impressionism
Viewing Notes
Today the response The Starry Night
provokes is based in part upon its celebrity, but also on its
universality. Throughout the ages people have been drawn to the night
sky, to its stillness, sublimity, and infinitude, which together evoke
in us emotions of peace and humility, awe and wonder. In The Starry Night,
van Gogh fused those feelings with a sense of the surging energies of
terrestrial nature, which he conveyed—in terms of his own style—with the
confidence of his composition, the dynamism of his brush, and the
resonance of his color. Painted from memories of observed experience,
recollections of pictures seen long ago, and in creative competition
with colleagues whose new work van Gogh could only imagine, The Starry Night
is a painting made on the edge, by confidently taking risks. In
isolation he created a work entirely and unforgettably in his own style.
From Richard Thomson, Vincent van Gogh: The Starry Night, New York: The Museum of Modern Art (2008)
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