Analysis Of Starrry Night By Van Gogh

et , Renoir , Cézanne , Baudelaire .. and many others are famous impressionist artists that marked the nineteenth century with their work. Trying to maintain close ties with tradition, and establishing the aesthetic outcome of an artistic creation , they all used their own words and images to paint the world from their own point of view , regardless of what other people could think . Van Gogh was also one of them . His painting ‘Starry Night ‘, published on 1889 ,is nowadays one of the most known paintings in the world .

This masterpiece appears to be simple at first sight : a beautiful rural landscape laying above a shiny sky full of stars. He painted this in a psychiatric asylum , one year before his suicide . He was actually behind bars
The cypress tree and the church are the two components that gives this feeling of depth and structures the painting. The fact that the lines used are diagonals , gives the feeling of movement and escaping . On the other hand , the round and wavy shapes describes the psychological state of the artist . These circles con be considered as the vicious spiral or the circle of life .The audience is located in a high point of view , staring at the village from the top , which gives a sensation of diving into this world .In this oil painting , we can mention the big contrast between the two main parts : the sky and the countryside . Indeed, the sky is clear and the colors used are bright and give the feeling of weightlessness . The ground on the opposite is firm , rough , and the figures that are drawn show the strength and the mystery of this place . The cyprus tree , is a tree that is often linked with death and cemetery which refers to the psychological state of Van Gogh during this period of time . It appears to be a ladder , a way to travel from the mortal world to the immortal one . Last but not least , after staring at this painting for hours , we can start noticing a face in the middle of the painting just above the church ,it could be the face of death , or the face of god or the holy spirit that travels from place to place trough wind . This face reminds me of the ‘Scream’ , painting of Edvard Munch even though it has been published 40 years later