Alexis Sarabia
ENG 121
Instructor Bargenquast
April 8, 2013
Starry Night
Have you ever taken a look at a painting or picture and had an overwhelming sense of peace and tranquility? This is how I feel about the painting Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh. To me, Starry Night symbolizes such peace, tranquility, and mindfulness. I have always felt drawn to this painting because Starry Night is a very beautiful piece of art. It does not have many colors, but the way the few colors are used to make such an amazing and elaborate piece of art work that just instills such a great sense of peace and relaxation to me. When I see Starry Night I really stop and think about what was going through Van Gogh’s mind as he was painting this piece. When I look at this piece I wonder how Van Gogh selected and then mixed the very few colors together to get so much detail and precise work. What inspired him to create such a detailed vision? The way he put so much work into this one piece of work is mind blowing to me. I cannot wrap my brain around how one piece of art work can mean so many different things, create so many different feelings or bring back memories for so many diffrent people all at the same time.
First I must describe the painting to you to get a sense of the feeling I have when I gaze at Starry Night. The painting appears to takes place in a small town or village at night. There are very few colors used in this painting, such as blacks, blues, yellows and a hint of reds. There is a church that stands out over the town casting a protective glow. There are also the brightest stars you have ever seen in the sky. They are like giant orbs of energy and light like angels watching over the town. There is also a dark object in the picture that reminds me of an old tree, but feels like an old soul watching out over the small town.
Therefore, I cannot help but be drawn into the piece and become overtaken by a sense of peace and tranquility that draws me into the painting. The painting transports me into another time and place where I am at peace. I am taken back to summer nights in my childhood. Nights when the moon was full and in the still night air you could hear the buzzing wings of the lighting bugs we were determined to catch. We spent hours of our time running up and down the rolling hills through the soft cashmere like grass under our bare feet with only the light of the giant full moon to guide our paths. All the while the little church kept a watchful eye over our sleepy little town providing a blanket of protection that no harm would come to us.
So if you are ever feeling blue or having a bad day I recommend taking a few minutes to gaze upon the amazing painting called Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh. Let it transport you to a happier time and place. It really helps me because it is such an expressive piece that speaks volumes to me.
You May Also Find These Documents Helpful
-
The night sky depicted by Van Gogh in the Starry Night painting is full of brightly colored stars, twisting clouds, and a bright crescent moon. Starry Night is arguably one of Van Gogh's best paintings because of the excellent use of the elements of art, which is hard to achieve in one piece of artwork. This work almost has a dot-to-dot effect on the viewer's eyes because of the swirling motions moving in a circle through the middle of the painting but he uses the large tree and bright moon on different sides of the paper to give the painting unity.…
- 101 Words
- 1 Page
Good Essays -
Vincent van Gogh was a deeply troubled, post-impressionist artist and his painting “Starry Night” is his most famous piece. Working from memory, he painted the oil on canvas passing the time in Saint-Remy-de-Provence located in southern France while undergoing treatment in an insane asylum. The piece is very energetic with eleven fireball yellow stars like connect-the-dots across the big swirly, rolling blue and grey clouds in the night sky. There is a large orange, yellow crescent moon in the upper right corner offset by a tall, spiraling, deep green cypress tree in the lower left area. The pulsating sky contrasted against the little houses and the central figure of the church below, obliviously sleeping with their quiet muted colors, may be conveying that Vincent was feeling unheard and misunderstood by the citizens of the village as well as the institution of the church; the thickly applied paint portrays this emotional intensity. The painting was done in 1898 inspired by the landscape of the asylum grounds outside his window. It is an oil on canvas and is located at The Museum of Modern Art in New York City.…
- 806 Words
- 4 Pages
Good Essays -
I feel this painting show the most emotions in Van Gogh paintings. Since it is before his suicide it explain more he is in deep depression.…
- 425 Words
- 2 Pages
Satisfactory Essays -
We agreed on Vincent Van Gogh because we were inspired by his ability to create such breathtaking pieces of art which managed to make him an artistic icon, despite the numerous mental illnesses that he suffered from throughout his life. Vincent van Gogh took his own life in 1890. Within twenty years of his death, there were memorial shows of his works all over the world influencing generations of artists to come, including the incredible modern artist, Alex Ruiz. We chose Vincent Van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night’, because we know a great deal of information about the painting, and its powerful significance in the art world. Our second artist of choice was Alex Ruiz, since we happened to find that he had created a digital painting, entitled ‘Starry Night’, depicting how the night sky had looked in his own personal perspective at the moment Van Gogh painted ‘Starry Night’. After further reading about Alex Ruiz, we were deeply inspired by his thriving and successful career in digital illustration, and his ability to break into the art business at such a young age.…
- 650 Words
- 2 Pages
Good Essays -
When comparing Vincent Van Gogh's " Starry Night "painting lines to Sol Lewitt's The Wall Drawing No. 681, the lines are in opposition with each other. In the " Starry Night "painting the lines of the sky are vastly wavy and flowing. The lines of the buildings in the painting are traditional straight. Vincent Van Gogh in this painting is providing you an image that he has had during his period that he was in an asylum. When you look at the painting "Starry Night," the lines in the sky are very unstable, they are all over the place and full of emotions. We can tell that the artist was having a difficult time with his feeling, that he was unstable when he painted this part of the painting. You can see how contempt the artist was when he painted the buildings. How much at peace he was with himself, yet with the sky we do not see the same peace. The sky is not peaceful, yet the buildings are. We can see that the artist Vincent Van Gogh was fighting with himself and it show in his painting" The Starry Night." In "The Wall Drawing No.681," you can see that the lines that the Lewitt's used was straight and exact lines. In the painting, the lines seem to be mathematical. In line is the same design, length, and have the same amount of space between each line. When you look at each one of the lines, you notice that the colors are used more than once throughout the painting. The tense of the color does change throughout the painting. The lines in this painting can be seen to be vastly organized and straight. We can tell that the artist was in control of his feelings and that he was not in…
- 1141 Words
- 3 Pages
Better Essays -
The Starry Night is from late 19th century and is an oil painting Van Gogh used to symbolize events and facts from his early life. While the painting is well known for its remarkable…
- 570 Words
- 2 Pages
Good Essays -
Van Gogh only painted dark and sad paintings at first but eventually discovered other topics. Painting himself was his favorite thing to do. He painted over thirty self portraits between 1886 and 1889. While he was in a mental hospital he produced his most famous artwork, Starry Night. You can still see this painting at the New York Museum of Modern Art today.…
- 1514 Words
- 7 Pages
Good Essays -
In the upper left hand corner of the painting it has darker hues, warm temperatures with contour lines, and it causes a feeling of darkness. As you move to the right side of the painting it starts to lighten up with bright cool hues such as yellow. The painting seems to brighten up as you move along the right, seems less chaotic and has more of a happy feeling. The contour lines moves your eyes right along…
- 628 Words
- 3 Pages
Good Essays -
Why? Because when these paintings were made they came from emotions based on how you are feeling at that given moment. Paintings made by Vincent Van Gogh. “The Starry Night”. 1889. Oil on Canvas. Figure 1.10 in “Living with Art”. Even painter Edvard Munch. “The Scream”. 1893. Tempera and casein on cardboard. Figure 4.35 in “Living with Art”. Edvard Munch’s painting The Scream has a lot of comparisons with Vincent Van Gogh's art Starry Night. Both paintings were painted near the end of the period, during the fin de siècle, using bright embroidered colors and simpleminded figures and shapes. Both artists struggled with mental-illness during their lifetimes, but these paintings are some of the most reproduced and famous pieces of art in creation today. These paintings were made to express emotions and feelings felt from their own life. Although they bear superficial similarities, the differences between Van Gogh and Munch are…
- 819 Words
- 4 Pages
Good Essays -
Van Gogh is a widely famous artist of the late 1880s. He is most famous for his work Starry Night. Born in 1853, Vincent’s artistic career started in his twenties after having many different types of careers (Living with Art 11). From being a student to a preacher to a bookseller, he finally found a life of art (Van Gogh Museum). He seemed to have struggled greatly with self-esteem and self-worth, as he struggled with many women in his short time and, as his work shows, his art follows his path of self- pity and sorrow.…
- 701 Words
- 3 Pages
Good Essays -
In the painting The Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh you see a dark blue sky filled with enormous stars swirling throughout it imposing an immediate sense of peacefulness. The small town underneath is dark and even looks to be at rest. The stars are so bright and the moon seems to just pop out almost as if it were right in front of you. It even seems to shine some sort of life into a gigantic dead tree stump protruding into the sky. It seems as if the only movement at all is the spiraling light emanating from the massive stars.…
- 288 Words
- 2 Pages
Good Essays -
During one of his seizures, he cut a part of his ear when he tried attack his friend. Van Gogh self-checked himself in an asylum and while he stayed he was able to finish three artworks, one of them being “The Starry Night,” in which he later describes to his brother as unsatisfactory and not even a little good. Many artist tend to despise their artwork because they cannot capture the image they see in their head onto the canvas. Vincent van Gogh was able to visually depict turbulence which can be portrayed in some of his painting, it is also a complex mathematical principle. Despite putting his painting as “not good enough,” van Gogh continued to thrive in the arts with his mental illnesses. Vincent van Gogh loved living but he often questioned if it was worth it, yet he continued on until 1890. I admire this of van Gogh, he had unbelievably lows of the lows and he conquered them, until he could no longer fight, that is strength few people posses, yet so many…
- 895 Words
- 4 Pages
Good Essays -
Pretty much as Vincent Van Gogh, I likewise thought amid his period that present-day life, with its steady social change and concentrate on advancement and achievement, estranged individuals from each other and from themselves. As we all know individuals experiencing an unbalance mental condition as Van Gogh did were not in contact with the truth. I think Van Gogh unbalance condition was overpowering while he searched for a puzzling impact to his depiction. Concerning myself, it is difficult to center when I drink alcohol so contrasting it with Van Gogh mental condition must had likewise been troublesome for him to center which is the reason he paint expressionism conceptual. The Starry Night, 1889, oil on canvas, 28 ¾ x 36 ¼", by Vincent…
- 224 Words
- 1 Page
Good Essays -
Distintively visual features have been used in the colour, shading, lighting and placement in starry starry night. The use of the colours in the painting have been choosing to grabe your attention and get your eyes onto certain points of the painting. The bright yellow of the moon and star’s with shading around them of the deep purple of the skyhelp see the emotions of van gogh. The lighting of the painting is a very bright feactures with a dark background, but also the town is seen in a dim light and seen as almost a different element in the painting. This is done to show van gogh’s absent from society. The placement of these elements on other elemsnts of the paintings placement of the large moon and the stars with large trees but a small…
- 443 Words
- 2 Pages
Good Essays -
The Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh is consistent of his typical artwork. He uses the lines free and loose making it an expression of his contour lines. The spacing between the stars and the curving contours making it a dot to dot effect. Van Gogh’s, The Starry Night” portrays his personal emotion. He writes to his brother about his painting almost as if he would be confused himself about the painting. The village is dark but at the same time it is peaceful compared to the dramatic sky life. In Sol Le Witts, Wall Drawing it uses an ordered form and symmetrical form called classical lines. The line Sol Le Witts uses is considered a connection between two separate points. Although his work is displayed throughout various art museums, the actual work is not his own. Le Witts has the ideas and then gives the workers instructions on what he wants done. This reflects his personality in the way that his art work is controlled. The line form he uses is symmetrical. Sol Le Witt is unlike Van Gogh’s when it comes to his personality. In which Le Witt’s personality is logical and Van Gogh’s is emotional and chaotic. Both artists’ have clearly shown their personality in their art work through their different line forms and expressions.…
- 699 Words
- 3 Pages
Good Essays