Starry night
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| Starry night |
|---|
| Vincent van Gogh , 1889 |
| Oil on canvas |
| 73.7 x 92.1 cm |
| Museum of Modern Art, New York (USA) |
Starry Night (French La nuit étoilée , Dutch De sterrennacht ) is one of the most famous paintings by the Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh . He painted the 73.7 × 92.1 cm picture in June 1889 in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France, in the style of post-impressionism or early expressionism with oil paints on canvas . The painting has been in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City since 1941 and is shown there under the title The Starry Night .
History of origin
Little is known about the reasons that prompted the painter to paint this picture. In a letter to his brother Theo (no. 595) the starry night is mentioned directly; van Gogh complains on the one hand how dissatisfied he is with the composition and the exaggeration, on the other hand he is conciliatory in view of the blue in the picture. Since he was in the mental hospital Saint-Paul-de-Mausole at the time the picture was taken and was only allowed to leave the building when accompanied, the picture was probably created from memory in the studio and not in nature. The drawing Starry Night (formerly Kunsthalle Bremen ), which was partly regarded as preliminary work, was only created after the painting between June 25 and July 2, 1889. In contrast to the painting, only ten stars are shown in the drawing and smoke rises into the sky from the farmhouses. On July 2, Vincent van Gogh sent this drawing along with other works to his brother Theo van Gogh in Paris.
Motifs
The perspective of the viewer corresponds to the view from the window of the sick room of the sanatorium in St. Remy. Motifs of the painting are cypress trees and a village. While the cypress trees and the color of the night sky reflect the landscape of southern France, the village is reminiscent of van Gogh's Dutch homeland. The motif of the starry sky appears repeatedly in his works from this period, as in the paintings Café terrace in the evening ( French terrace du café le soir ) and starry night over the Rhone (French Nuit étoilée sur le Rhône ) , created in Arles in September 1888 .
interpretation
The starry night was created in a life situation that was tragic for Van Gogh, when he suffered greatly from the mental state that brought him to St. Rémy. Accordingly, the picture can be interpreted as the artist's impetuous attempt to overcome his illness.
Emotional turbulence was reflected in individual aspects, but the picture exudes a certain calm, hope and consolation. This contradiction can be demonstrated at different levels. The quiet of the village contrasts with the turbulence of the sky, the gloomy colors of the cypress in the foreground are contrasted with the radiant yellow of the crescent moon and the stars, the dominant blue contrasts with individual sprinkles in orange . The bright colors are complemented by a white , which on the one hand is responsible for the characteristic spiral effect and on the other hand harmonizes the composition .
The art historian Meyer Schapiro saw the work as "one of the rare images that were triggered by a religious mood." Van Gogh tried to express his longing for something infinite in nature. Schapiro also saw traces of an apocalyptic fantasy in it. The interpretation corresponds with a letter to the brother in which the artist expressed the intention to paint “difficult scenes from life”: “This does not prevent me from an irrepressible desire for - should I say the word? - to have according to religion. Then I go out into the night to paint the stars. "
effect
The picture has an emotional effect in its subject , the colors and the wild brushwork and has inspired numerous artists to create their own variations on the theme. For example, poems were written about the picture and the English title of the picture, The Starry Night , was the inspiration for the first line of the successful pop song Vincent , which the American singer Don McLean dedicated to the painter. Natural scientists deal with specific details, such as the calculation of the brightness fluctuations in the cloud and light vortices , which, as the analysis of digital photos showed, correspond to the physical laws of Kolmogorow's model .
Provenance
Shortly after the painting was created, Vincent van Gogh gave the Starry Night to his brother Theo. A year after the painter's death, Theo van Gogh also died in 1891, with which his wife Johanna van Gogh-Bonger inherited the picture. She sold it in 1900 to Julien Leclercq , who lived in Paris , who passed it on to the painter Émile Schuffenecker in February 1901 in exchange for another painting . After Johanna van Gogh-Bonger bought the picture back from Schuffenecker, the painting came into the possession of the collector Georgette P. van Stolk from Rotterdam through the Oldenzeel Gallery in Rotterdam in 1906, who kept it until 1938. Through the mediation of Jacob-Baart de la Faille , the author of van Gogh's catalog raisonné, the picture came to the New York branch of the art dealer Paul Rosenberg . In 1941 the 'Museum of Modern Art' acquired the painting with funds from Lillie P. Bliss Bequest .
literature
- Angela Wanzel: 13 Paintings Children Should Know. Prestel, 2009, ISBN 978-3-7913-4323-5 (English).
- Meyer Schapiro: Vincent van Gogh. DuMont Cologne, 1957 (new edition 1982), ISBN 3-7701-0033-6 , p. 94.
- Albert Boime : Vincent van Gogh - The Starry Night - The story of the fabric and the fabric of the story. (Translation by Elke von Radziewsky), Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1989, ISBN 3-596-11237-0 .
Web links
- Video guide for the painting at the artinspector
- Starry night in gigapixel resolution in the Google Art Project
- Information on the painting at the Museum of Modern Art (English)
- The Starry Night
- Vincent (Starry, Starry Night) by Don McLean
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Angela Wenzel: 13 Paintings Children Should Know. Prestel 2009
- ^ Starry Night Analysis. Artble, accessed March 31, 2013 .
- ^ Meyer Schapiro: Vincent van Gogh. DuMont Cologne, 1957 (new edition 1982), ISBN 3-7701-0033-6 , p. 94
- ↑ Schapiro: Vincent van Gogh, p. 26
- ↑ Van Gogh's painted vortices obey the laws of physics. Wissenschaft.de, accessed on September 8, 2019 .
- ↑ Information about the painting on the website of the Museum of Modern Art