One of the most popular oil paintings by Van Gogh’s “Starry Night”; greatest works during Vincent was taken to the asylum at Saint-Remy. Since 1941, this artwork has been in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Dimension 73 x 92 cm (28¾ x 36¼ Inches). The painting depicts the view outside his sanitarium room window at night, although it was painted from memory during the day.
Below described how he define his painting technique derive by his expressive thoughts, with details of repeating lines, feelings, speed and with details of the blue sky, glittering stars, and circling of lights round the moon.
His painting achieved its final maturity as he himself was being subjected to frequent and increasingly nervous attacks. He reached a stage of expressive desperation that made him shout out in line and color all his feelings of bitterness and reject any sort of restraint that might impose more order, more reflection, more patience. It seems as though he sensed the end was near, and he painted at speed, throwing himself furiously into his work, producing an amazing number of paintings, particularly when one considers how often he was incapacitated by illness. This detail from his best known work of the period reminds us of “the cry of anguish” that Vincent himself described: the clouds, the stars and the moon cut through the dense and deep blue sky, accompanied by the rotating haloes, like meteors bearing threateningly down on the earth. Color is associated with obsessively repeated lines that transform reality into an apocalyptic vision. Van Gogh’s soul explodes in a scream and it seems as though his entire life experience has been poured into the painting: the bitterness that he felt about all the things he would have liked to have done, but was not allowed to do, the admission of his solitude and the certainty that only art could recompense him for all his disappointments. Yet again, it is Vincent himself who best summed it up: “When all sound is still one hears the voice of God beneath the stars.”
Drop by to check out my store here, featuring Van Gogh’s reproductions by the talented Chinese artist from Fujian Province.
Related posts: