"Starry Night"

Paper Summary:

An analytical discussion of Van Gogh's painting. The paper examines the artistic styles of the time and looks at "Starry Night" in this context.

From the Paper:

"The thickness, shape and direction of his brush strokes created a tactile counterpart to his intense color schemes through thickly-loaded brush moves back and forth or at right angles, giving a textile-like effect; Van Gogh also would take the paint tube and squeeze dots or streaks upon the canvas. This bold, almost slapdash attack upon his canvases, at least in the eyes of his contemporary art critics, was viewed as highly disturbing; thus, it could be said that Van Gogh, through the use of different paint strokes, both infuriated and calmed the viewer. According to Van Gogh, as mentioned in a letter to his brother Theo, "Instead of trying to reproduce exactly what I have before my eyes, I use color more arbitrarily so as to express myself forcibly" and then adds that the color in his paintings is "not locally true from the point of view of the realist, but is there to suggest the emotion of an ardent temperament" (Tralbaut, 1969), which indicates that Van Gogh's color schemes are ambiguous, meaning that they have the capacity to overwhelm the viewer to the point of utter confusion while expressing a strange calming effect almost as if the viewer was experiencing lucid dreaming."

More papers on "Starry Night":

• Comparison Essay # 138964 : "Van Gogh's "Starry Night" and "Shoes"
• Comparison Essay # 111933 : "Vincent Van Gogh's Style"
• Descriptive Essay # 11665 : "Vincent Van Gogh"

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