Understanding Vincent Van Gogh's genius

THE STARRY NIGHT

-By Vincent van Gogh

Painted in June 1889, The Starry Night is an oil-on-canvas painting by Dutch Post-

Impressionist painter, Vincent van Gogh. It is kept preserved at the Museum of Modern Art,

New York since 1941, acquired by Lillie P. Bliss. Van Gogh drew it when he was at the Saint-

Paul-de-Mausole asylum; it is said to be a view from his room with imagination thrown in to

create the masterpiece. The Starry Night is the only nocturne in the series of paintings with a

view from his asylum window painted by van Gogh.

The Starry Night

The theories applied to analyse this work of art are:

1. Formalism

2. Biography/biographical analysis

3. Psychoanalysis/psychoanalytical theory

Saint-Paul Asylum

FORMALISM:

Formalism, in art, compares and analyses form and style. It looks through the lens of

elements of art – line, spacing, forms, colour and texture. It follows the principles of design –

balance, emphasis, movement, pattern, repetition, proportion, rhythm, variety and unity.

Van Gogh wrote to his sister, “It often seems to me that the night is even more richly

coloured than the day, coloured with the most intense violets, blues and greens.”

The fluid, swirling brushstrokes give the impression of movement and the painting seems to

be dancing, full of life. It is bursting with dynamism. The stars and the sky hold an emotional

intensity and the swirl in the centre overwhelms the viewer with its heaviness. The tiny trees

blending into the town bring nature into modernity. The cypress is said to lull down the

dreamy effect of the sky and stars. It carries the dazzle into sinisterness with its writhing, dark

sprawling leaves. It replaces the magic with sinisterness. According to Dondis, the human eye

favours the bottom left area of a visual field; it seems appropriate that van Gogh deliberately

painted the cypress in that corner.

Colour – The choice of colours in this painting has been a debate, particularly the dominance

(or even presence) of bright colours such as yellow and white in a nocturne. These two

colours are used to create swirls and draw attention to the sky. The unfitting verticals such as

the cypress tree and the church tower softly break up the composition without retracting

attention from the sky. The dominance of blue in the painting is balanced out by the orange of

the night sky elements and its hues in the centre of the painting in the form of buildings. The

crescent moon in the top right corner radiates more orange and white than the stars. The dark

blues and mint greens reflect the moon in an almost transcendental manner. The colours here

are used to suggest emotion and character.

Light – The concept might be of a night sky, but van Gogh did not fail to add bright light by

creating space for it in the luminance of the moon and the stars. It seems that he was trying to

create a contrast between life and death using darkness and light.

Brushstrokes – It is said that since he was battling with his mental conditions, his severe

attacks/fits kept on dramatizing his brush work. Hence, the nice thick brushstrokes are very

obviousThe painting seems to be constantly in motion due to the heavy and amoeboid brush

work. Although, the inconsistency adds even more depth to this work of art.

Van Gogh used simple forms, thick impastos and heavily contrasting colours which made his

art stand out and appreciated by the post-Impressionalists.

Hospital in Arles where he stayed for treatment

BIOGRAPHY/BIOGRAPHICAL ANALYSIS:

The main focus of the biographical analysis of art is the life of the artist and the time during

which he created the piece of art. It has been a natural approach for many students of art, for

whom the stories about the artist inform and enrich the artwork itself. This approach connects

the piece of art to the artist’s life and personality and forms a direct connection between the

two. The notion of authorship is detrimental here.

Van Gogh painted the the Starry Night during his stay at the asylum of Saint-Paul-de-

Mausole where he voluntarily admitted himself after the accident in which he cut his ear due

to a fit. He was allowed more freedom in the hospital than anyone else: he was allowed to

paint, draw, read and could leave the hospital grounds if attended. He was given a studio

room. While at the asylum, he painted during bursts of productivity that alternated with

moods of despair which reflected bipolarism but he was diagnosed with epileptic fits. Since

he was an artist who preferred drawing from observation, he drew using his imagination,

using the views outside his room’s window and the surroundings which he could visit with

the assist of a chaperone.

Unfortunately, his relapsing phase began and he started suffering from hallucinations,

plunged into depression and had thoughts of suicide. Consequently, there was a tonal shift in

his art. He shifted back to using darker colours like he did at the start of his career and the

Starry Night is a classic example of that shift. The dominating colours in the painting are dark

blue (in the sky), and brown and grey (at the base). This is a classic example of biographical

analysis as to how the life of the artist is reflected in his or her work.

Van Gogh depicted this view at different times of the day and under various weather

conditions such as sunrise, sun-down, rainy days, overcast days, windy days. He used to draw

newer versions on top of old ones. The cardinal element which binds the all of the 21

paintings of this series is the diagonal line coming in from the right depicting the low rolling

hills of the Alpines mountains. Van Gogh extensively observed and studied the night sky

from his window in the room. He wrote a letter to his brother, Theo, explaining his

perceptions about the same in which he described a beautiful view of the morning star in the

summer of 1889. It is debated whether the Starry Night came purely from his imagination or

he drew it watching the view of the village. He learnt an expressive style while he stayed in

Paris in which he directly applied paint from tube on the canvas which resulted in thick

impastos and intense shades. The painting was indicated by Theo as favouring style over

substance, although van Gogh considered this creation of his as a failure.

This painting gained fame posthumously as van Gogh committed suicide the following year,

giving in to his declining mental condition.

PSYCHOANALYSIS:

Psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud gave the theory of Psychoanalysis in 1890s which stated that

human behaviour is largely determined by irrational drives that are rooted in the unconscious.

When applied to art, psychoanalysis can bring to the surface the underlying motivations and

thoughts. Art here is used as a method to study the ongoing thought process of the artist by

studying his or her creations by the analyst.

Van Gogh used paint with a violent effect using thick layers. He was strongly drawn to

natural objects under stress – whirling sun, twisted cypress and surging mountains. This led

him to produce brilliant masterpieces such as The Reaper, Cypresses, The Red Vineyard and

the most famed Starry Night.

The painting is a whirl, which can be a potential representation of his mental state. It

embodies an inner, subjective expression of his response to nature. Vincent van Gogh said,

“Looking at the stars always makes me dream. We take death to reach a star.”

Van Gogh has always used colour to represent symbolic and expressive values and not the

literal surroundings. He always left out his emotional turmoil and mental state on the canvas;

his works bearing his psychological condition. Apart from his mental illness, his addiction to

tobacco and alcohol made negative impacts in his life, which lead on to affect his art work.

His agitated brushwork depicted his anguish and despair.

The striking colours, violent brush work and distorted, whirling shapes and contours express

the disturbance in his mind. He went through two distinctive episodes of reactive depression

and as reflected earlier, there were bipolar aspects, too. The following periods were high in

energy, productivity and enthusiasm and the Starry Night is one of its results. Since his life

was so full of mental conflicts, his dual nature is observable in this painting in the form of

contrast between the light and dark (the dark sky with bright stars in whirls). His suffered

from fits of melancholy and atrocious remorse as a result of which, the colours lost their

intensity and lines became curves.

Contemporary artists largely admire van Gogh’s approach towards art and the use of colour

as the chief symbol of expression. But according to the artist himself, his life was a terrible

waste and failure. This can be argued since he was able to produce deeply moving works of

art even while he suffered a large part of his life from mental illnesses which were on the rise

with time. The fact that he painted the Starry Night using his imagination shows that he was

trapped by mental dislocation and emotional intensity. The moon and the stars in the painting

are so huge that it seems like the sky might fall on us any moment. A funeral plant, cypress,

takes up a large part of the painting with its sinisterness and deadly vibrations.

The painting is a result of accumulation of all the objects that van Gogh thought were of

importance and significance to him, portrayed in a distorted manner which was probably an

unconscious notion which needed to be reflected in the most prominent activity of his life.

A potential perception of the prominent cypress could be that the bush was a reflection of his

inner anguish he was going through then. The turmoil might have been writhing out the

intensity he had for life.

The Starry Night holds tremendous power to represent nature; the church spire and cypress

tree – represented as man and nature - both point towards the Heaven.

Van Gogh's art had tinge of intimacy, was powerful and dramatic. The artist’s concern for

human suffering turned his art into melancholiness. He never failed to explain the conflict

between reality and unconscious sufferings.

“We spend our whole lives in unconscious exercise of the art of expressing our thoughts

with the help of words.”

- Vincent van Gogh