The famous painting Starry Night painted in 1889 by Vincent Van Gough evokes an emotion of playfulness and joyful celebration. In the painting there are many fantastically bright colors the painting has a flowing dancing movement to it. Although the painting is of the night’s sky the moon seems to be as bright as the sun and the stars also light up the night sky to the point where the sky is blue instead of black the way we would see it normally at night this use of color gives the painting its joyful fun feeling. Along with the blue of the sky there are also hints of green and obviously a lot of yellow and white these exaggerated colors make this painting an abstraction of the night sky which gives this feeling a lot of its emotion and interest. If had Van Gough painted the scene exactly as he had seen it the painting would have shown a black sky with white small stars and had very little visual interest.
There is a unity in the brush strokes that brings everything together this unification is very helpful to the viewer because there is so much in the painting to look at. As the viewer looks at the painting their eye is drawn immediately to the bright moon in the upper right corner of the piece the viewer also notices the dark bush on the left of the painting. This bush helps to anchor and add balance to the painting if it were missing the picture would seem extremely off balance and possibly the lack of contrast between these two objects would take away from the intense brightness of the moon. Because there is so much movement in the upper half of the picture the viewer doesn’t pay as much attention to the town below the sky the one building that does stand out in the town is the church. This seems to suggest that Van Gough had some sort of religious motivation when he was painting this piece. It’s obvious that he wants the viewer to focus on heaven rather than earth when they look at the painting.
Van Gough's Starry Night
