Communicating with Images - Task 1 Famous Artwork

Task 1 - Famous Artwork

Description

This is an artwork from Vincent Van Gogh given title "The Starry Night". It is painted in 1889 using oil painting on canvas. There from the painting you can see an old wood at the left of the painting with a small town behind it with the mountain with a very beautiful night view and night effects. It is a very nice landscape which painted by Vincent Van Gogh.

Analysis

From the painting, I can see a old chocolate brown wood is at the left of the painting which is painted in front and a seen quiet small town is behind of it with a night view of the town and night effects with the moon. The night effects and night rise is very blue and yellow which really bring out the feel of night view.  From front to back, I can tell that maybe I am standing on a mountain watching this small town from it in the night with a old wood beside me. This artwork uses a lot of strokes and likes to paint. This painting only show contrast which is the chocolate brown old wood and the night sky colour which is blue. The night sky occupy almost half of the artwork, I think that this is to show that this small town in night is very beautiful.

Interpretation

The fact that he had painted this from his mental image may have contributed to this piece having such a strong sense of great mental dislocation and emotional intensity. One almost feels as if he was hardly able to contain his feelings and that all his angst and passion seem to have spilled onto this piece. The moon and stars seem so huge that we feel that the sky is about to fall in on us. The cypress bush, a usually inconspicuous and solemn funeral plant seems almost sinister as it confronts us right smack in front of the picture. It's as if Van Gogh was creating his own kind of reality and chose to emphasise objects he felt were important to him even though this resulted in perspectives being distorted.

The painting seems to be seething with life as the fluid brushstrokes give the impression of movement. In particular, it's the night sky that seems to be the life force of this piece with its bursting dynamism. It seems as if galaxies are in motion and that the stars would plunge into the sleepy town at any moment. The stars and the sky seem to possess such great emotional intensity with its variety of strokes and colours all merging together to form a spiral-like mist in the center.

The cypress, on the other hand, seems to somewhat dampen the dazzling effect of the night sky with its writhing, dark leaves sprawling up on the left side of the picture. It has this snaky form to it and seems totally uncharacteristic with the rest of the painting. It disturbs the whole equilibrium to what had could have been a magical depiction of a starry night. Dondis states that the human eye usually favours the lower left area of any visual field and it seems that Van Gogh had quite deliberately painted the cypress bush in such a prominent position. A possible interpretation could be that the bush was a representation of the inner anguish he was going through at that time. The turmoil he was going through might have been writhing out the intensity he had for life.

The little houses, on the other hand, seem pretty quiet. All the lights are out and everybody's asleep, unaware of the night sky that's bursting with life and the cypress bush writhing in front of them. This depicts some sort of alienation and ignorance. I feel that the sleepy village represents the rest of the world, unaware of whatever raging passions and agony Van Gogh was going through at that moment. Perhaps this is why the houses seem to appear so far away even though they are actually more or less in the foreground.

Judgement

I think that this painting is very famous and successful because I knew this painting when I am studying Foundation in Art and Design which is already 2 years from now,  but I still remember this painting very well because of it images or the message in it? I really do like this painting much because I see myself in this small town enjoying a quiet and beautiful environment without noisy and stress from daily life. Everyday I can live my life as I want in this town without stress from the society. That is how I look and feel from this painting.