Vincent Van Gogh The Starry Night

1230 Words5 Pages

The Starry Night is a world-famous oil on canvas painted by a well known and very unusual artist Vincent van Gogh. This painting belongs to the style of post-impressionist paintings due to its formal characteristics and the message that this painting is aimed to deliver to the viewers. The Starry Night is not the only artist 's painting that depicts the night sky and the starts on it. However, even considering the Starry Night over the Rhone and the Cafe Terrace At Night, the manner of painting differs a lot and the perception of the main ideas of the pictures is really different. This work is an exceptional example of art, both in terms of the quality and within the artist’s oeuvre. When compared to favored subjects like irises, sunflowers, …show more content…

This might be connected to the fact that painting this picture was for the artist not a simple task and he had to face a few technical challenges while creating his masterpiece. Some of them he wanted to confront while some of them arose on their own. The challenge that van Gogh has successfully overcome working on this picture is the use of highly contrasting colors. He managed to create the best combination of the dominating on the picture blue and yellow colors and their undertones to create a marvelous picture of the night sky. Another challenge to the artist was the need to paint the picture from memory and not outdoors, as he prefers. As Lauren Soth state in her article, “Van Gogh 's imagination took hold. But it was fed with sources both from nature and art” (303). However, the inclusion of some part of fantasy and subconsciousness in the picture made it as famous as it is now.
The Starry Night is widely believed to represent the state of mind of van Gogh at the time of his staying at the hospital. The combination of various depiction means such as the contrast of blue and yellow colors, placing a large tree on the foreground and the curving lines of hills, mountains, and sky seem to have provided the painter assistance in delivering his main idea to the