The Starry Night
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
| Starry Night |
| Vincent van Gogh, 1889 |
| Oil on canvas |
| 73 × 92 cm, 28¾ × 36¼ inches |
| Museum of Modern Art, New York City |
The Starry Night is the title given to one of the best known and most reproduced paintings by Dutch post-impressionist artist Vincent van Gogh. Since 1941 it has been in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
Contents |
[edit] Genesis
In autumn 1888, while Van Gogh was staying in Arles, he executed a painting commonly known as Starry Night Over the Rhone. Almost a year later, mid June 1889, he announced "a new study of a starry sky"[1], and later, he incorporated a pen drawing in a set of a dozen based on recent paintings.
In mid September 1889, following a heavy crisis which lasted from mid July to the last days of August, he thought to include this "Study of the Night"[2] in the next batch of works to be sent to his brother Theo in Paris. In order to reduce the shipping costs, he withheld three of the studies ("above-mentioned – Poppies – Night Effect – Moonrise"). These three went to Paris with the shipment to follow.[3] As Theo did not immediately report its arrival, Vincent inquired again.[4], and finally received Theo's commentary on his recent work.[5]
[edit] Subject matter
This composition compiles various elements to be seen in the neighbourhood in Saint-Rémy with the intermediary hills which also seem to be derived from a different part of the surroundings, south of the asylum. A tree — the top of a cypress, on the left — was added into the north to the south in his painting Starry Night Over the Rhone.
[edit] Recent Commentaries
- As pointed out by Simon Singh in his book Big Bang, The Starry Night has striking similarities to Whirlpool Galaxy, a sketch made 44 years before van Gogh's work.
- The painting has been compared to an astronomical photograph of a star named V838 Monocerotis, taken by the Hubble photograph in 2004. The clouds of gas surrounding the star resemble the swirling patterns van Gogh used in this painting. The image is rated number one on space.com's collection of astronomical images. [6]
[edit] Aims and Ends
Van Gogh was not so happy with this painting, considering it a study, not a definitive painting. In a letter[2] to Theo from Saint-Rémy he wrote:
| “ | The first four canvases are studies without the effect of a whole that the others have . . . The olives with white clouds and background of mountains, also the moonrise and the night effect, these are exaggerations from the point of view of arrangement, their lines are warped as that of old wood. | ” |
Later in this letter, Vincent referred once more to the painting:
| “ | In all this batch I think nothing at all good save the field of wheat, the mountain, the orchard, the olives with the blue hills and the portrait and the entrance to the Quarry, and the rest says nothing to me, because it lacks individual intention and feeling in the lines. Where these lines are close and deliberate it begins to be a picture, even if it is exaggerated. That is a little what Bernard and Gauguin feel, they do not ask the correct shape of a tree at all, but they insist absolutely that one can say if the shape is round or square - and my word, they are right, exasperated as they are by certain people's photographic and empty perfection. Certainly they will not ask the correct tone of the mountains, but they will say: In the Name of God, the mountains were blue, were they? Then chuck on some blue and don't go telling me that it was a blue rather like this or that, it was blue, wasn't it? Good - make them blue and it's enough! Gauguin is sometimes like a genius when he explains this, but as for the genius Gauguin has, he is very timid about showing it, and it is touching the way he likes to say something really useful to the young. How strange he is all the same. | ” |
painting was to show use that everything we see is alive.
[edit] Legacy
The painting was the inspiration for French composer Henri Dutilleux's orchestral work "Timbres, Espace, Mouvement" and for Don McLean's song Vincent, which is also known by its opening words, Starry, Starry Night.
[edit] Resources
[edit] Notes
- ^ Letter 595
- ^ a b Letter 607
- ^ Letter 608
- ^ Letter 609
- ^ Letter T19
- ^ V838 Monocerotis Space.com's Most Amazing Galactic Images Ever
[edit] References
Boime, Albert: Vincent van Gogh: Starry Night. A history of matter, a matter of history (also available on CD-ROM: ISBN 3-634-23015-0 (German version))
[edit] Links
- The Starry Night in the MoMA Online Collection
- Lyrics to Don McLean's "Vincent" aka "Starry, Starry Night".
- Multimedia study of van Gogh, McLean and Sexton
| Vincent van Gogh |
|---|
 Groups and series of works: The Décoration for the Yellow House | The Roulin Family | Display at Les XX, 1890 | Auvers size 30 canvases | Auvers Double-squares and Squares |
