Hang Shi

CSU ID: 830149692

Art 100

Introduction to The Visual Arts

“The Starry Night” Vincent Willem van Gogh

Vincent Willem van Gogh is one of my favorite artists, and I believe is the best artwork of him. “The Starry Night” is now locating in The Museum of Modern Art in New York. I traveled to New York during spring break. I have been privileged to see this amazing artwork in person. The Museum of Modern Art is holding more than 150,000 individual pieces in addition to approximately 22,000 films and 4 million film pictures. The collection of Western art includes the painting by many famous artists, such as Monst, Picasso, Matisse, and Van Gogh. “The Starry Night” was created by van Gogh during the year in the asylum in 1889. “The Starry Night” is a kind of Post-Impressionism oil paint artwork.

There is the night sky filled with swirling, clouds, stars ablaze with their own luminescence, and a bright crescent moon. Although the features are exaggerated, this is a scene we can relate to, and also one that most individuals feel comfortable and at ease with. This sky keep the viewer’s eyes moving about the painting, following the curves and creating a visual dot to dot with the stars. This movement keeps the onlooker involved in the painting while the other factors take hold. “The Starry Night” Oil paint is made up of two different lines, the first one is long bending line, and another one is shore straight line, because of this two different line, the output of this oil paint become very dazzling, beautiful and fantastic beauty. In the composition level, the dynamic starry sky in sharp contrast to the peaceful village in the ground the vertical cypress tree in the paint and the horizontal mountains comes to the visual balance. The basic color of this oil paint is dark blue, van Gogh used dynamic and continuous line to present the nebula and the cypress tree and it make the nebula and the cypress tree looks like the burning hot fire in the starry night which is full of visual impact and very impressive.

There is also another famous oil painting in Museum of Modern Art which is “The Young Ladies of Avignon” from Picasso’s. Compare “The Starry Night” and “The Young Ladies of Avignon”, they are from different painting style. “The Young Ladies of Avignon” present the modernism painting and “The Starry Night” present impressionism painting. For “The Young Ladies of Avignon”, it is the most famous example of the way in which the use of geometric forms and planes in African masks helped to inspire the rise of cubism and abstract art. Picasso plays with the tradition that makes the female nude a symbol of natural purity. Also, Picasso’s distortion of the women’s faces makes the painting a famous example of primitivism in modern art. For “The Starry Night”, in my opinion, the basic color of this oil paint is blue, I can see a feeling of melancholy runs through this “The Starry Night”, we can also understand that van Gogh may also very unhappy when he created this oil paint, the view of this oil paint is a view out of a window. The tree in “The Starry Night” is cypress tree, but van Gogh made it looks like dark flame tongue all the way go through to the starry sky, which make me have a tightly capture the felling of uneasiness. The texture of the starry sky looks like Whirlpool Galaxy comes with many little stars. Van Gogh used short straight lines in the bottom of this oil paint to present a peaceful village surrounded by mountains. The dynamic and fantastic starry sky and peaceful village contrast, the formation of a strong visual impact. We can understand van Gogh was anxious and stressed when he was painting this “The Starry Night”.

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