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Starry sky van. The story of one masterpiece: "Starry Night" by Van Gogh

According to the paintings of Vincent van Gogh, it is quite easy to trace the history of the artist’s illness: from gray plots gravitating towards realism to bright, floating motifs, where both hallucination and oriental images fashionable at that time were mixed.

« Starlight Night is one of Van Gogh's most recognizable paintings. Night is the time of the artist. Getting drunk, he rowdy and forgot himself in revelry. But he could also go melancholy to the open air. “I still need religion. Therefore, I left the house at night and began to draw stars, ”Vincent wrote to his brother Theo. What did Van Gogh see in the night sky?

Plot

Night enveloped the imaginary city. In the foreground are cypresses. These trees, with their gloomy dark green foliage, in ancient tradition symbolized sadness, death. (It is no coincidence that cypress trees are often planted in cemeteries.) In the Christian tradition, cypress is a symbol eternal life. (This tree grew in the Garden of Eden and, presumably, Noah's Ark was built from it.) In Van Gogh, the cypress plays both roles: it is the sadness of the artist, who will soon commit suicide, and the eternity of the run of the universe.

Self-portrait. Saint-Remy, September 1889

To show movement, to give dynamics to the frozen night, Van Gogh came up with a special technique - drawing the moon, stars, sky, he put strokes in a circle. This, combined with color transitions, gives the impression that the light is spilling.

Context

Vincent painted the picture in 1889 in the Saint-Paul hospital for the mentally ill in Saint-Remy-de-Provence. It was a period of remission, so Van Gogh asked to go to his studio in Arles. But the residents of the city signed a petition demanding that the artist be expelled from the city. “Dear Mayor,” the document says, “we the undersigned would like to draw your attention to the fact that this Dutch artist (Vincent van Gogh) has lost his mind and drinks too much. And when he gets drunk, he sticks to women and children. Van Gogh will never return to Arles.

Drawing en plein air at night fascinated the artist. The depiction of color was of paramount importance to Vincent: even in letters to his brother Theo, he often describes objects using different colors. Less than a year before The Starry Night, he wrote The Starry Night Over the Rhone, where he experimented with rendering the shades of the night sky and artificial lighting, which was new at the time.

"Starry night over the Rhone", 1888

The fate of the artist

Van Gogh lived 37 troubled and tragic years. Growing up as an unloved child, who was perceived as a son born instead of an older brother who died a year before the birth of a boy, the severity of his father-pastor, poverty - all this affected Van Gogh's psyche.

Not knowing what to devote himself to, Vincent could not finish his studies anywhere: either he quit, or he was expelled for violent antics and a sloppy look. Painting was an escape from the depression Van Gogh faced after failing with women and failing to build a career as a dealer and missionary.

Van Gogh also refused to study as an artist, believing that he could master everything on his own. However, it was not so easy - Vincent never learned to draw a person. His paintings attracted attention, but were not in demand. Disappointed and saddened, Vincent left for Arles with the intention of creating a "Workshop of the South" - a kind of fraternity of like-minded artists working for future generations. It was then that Van Gogh's style took shape, which is known today and the artist himself described as follows: "Instead of trying to accurately depict what is before my eyes, I use color more arbitrarily, so as to express myself most fully."

Prisoners walk , 1890

In Arles, the artist lived a binge in every sense. He wrote a lot and drank a lot. Drunken brawls scared local residents, who eventually even asked to expel the artist from the city. In Arles, the famous incident with Gauguin also occurred, when, after another quarrel, Van Gogh attacked a friend with a razor in his hands, and then, either as a sign of repentance, or in another attack, he cut off his earlobe. All circumstances are still unknown. However, the day after this incident, Vincent was taken to a hospital, and Gauguin left. They didn't meet again.

The last 2.5 months of his torn life, Van Gogh painted 80 paintings. And the doctor did think that Vincent was all right. But one evening he closed himself and did not go out for a long time. The neighbors, who suspected something was wrong, opened the door and found Van Gogh shot through the chest. It was not possible to help him - the 37-year-old artist died.

The abyss of stars is full.
The stars have no number, the abyss of the bottom.

Lomonosov M.V.

The starry sky as a symbol of infinity attracts and fascinates a person. It is impossible to take your eyes off the picture, which depicts a living, twisting sky in a whirlwind of eternal galactic motion. Doubts about who painted the painting "Starry Night" do not arise even among those who are poorly versed in art. Not a real, invented sky is written in rough, sharp strokes, emphasizing the spiral movement of the stars. No one had seen such a sky before Van Gogh. After Van Gogh, it is impossible to imagine the starry sky to others.

The history of the painting "Starry Night"

One of the most famous paintings Vincent van Gogh painted in the asylum Saint-Remy-de-Provence in 1889, one year before his death. The artist's mental disorder was accompanied by severe headaches. To somehow distract himself, Van Gogh painted, sometimes several paintings a day. About the fact that the staff of the hospital allowed the unfortunate and no one at that time unknown artist, to work, was taken care of by his brother Theo.

Most of the landscapes of Provence with irises, haystacks and a wheat field, the artist painted from nature, looking through the window of a hospital ward into the garden. But "Starry Night" was created from memory, which was completely unusual for Van Gogh. It is possible that at night the artist made sketches and sketches, which he then used to create the canvas. Drawing from nature is complemented by the artist's fantasy, intertwining phantoms born in the imagination with fragments of reality.

Description of the painting by Van Gogh “Starry Night”

The actual view from the east window of the bedroom is closer to the viewer. Between vertical line cypress trees growing on the edge of a wheat field, and the image of a non-existent village was placed diagonally across the sky.

The space of the picture is divided into two unequal parts. Most of it is given to the sky, the smaller part is given to people. Up, towards the stars, the top of the cypress is directed, similar to the tongues of a cold greenish-black flame. The spire of the church, towering between squat houses, also strives towards the sky. The cozy light of the burning windows is a bit like the glow of the stars, but against their background it seems weak and completely dim.

The life of the breathing sky is much richer and more interesting than human life. Unusually large stars radiate magical radiance. Spiral galactic eddies swirl with merciless swiftness. They draw the viewer in, take him into the depths of space, away from the cozy and sweet little world of people.

The center of the picture is occupied not by one stellar vortex, but by two. One is large, the other is smaller, and the larger one seems to be chasing the smaller one ... and draws it into itself, absorbs it without hope of salvation. The canvas evokes in the viewer a feeling of anxiety, excitement, despite the fact that the color scheme includes positive shades of blue, yellow, Green colour. Vincent van Gogh's much more peaceful Starry Night Over the Rhone uses darker and gloomier tones.

Where is Starry Night kept?

The famous work, written in a mental hospital, is kept in the Museum contemporary art in NYC. The painting belongs to the category of priceless canvases. The price of the original painting "Starry Night" has not been determined. It cannot be bought with any money. This fact should not upset the true connoisseurs of painting. The original is available to any visitor to the museum. High-quality reproductions and copies, of course, do not have real energy, but they can convey part of the idea of a brilliant artist.

Stylistics

This painting depicts a landscape at night, which has passed through the "filter" of the artist's creative vision. The main elements of the "Starry Night" are the stars and the moon. It is they who are depicted most pronouncedly and in the first place attract attention. In addition, Van Gogh used a special technique to create the moon and stars, which makes them look more dynamic, as if they are constantly moving, carrying a bewitching light through the limitless starry sky.

In the foreground of the "Starry Night" (left), tall trees (cypresses) are depicted, which stretch from the earth to the sky and stars. They seem to want to leave the firmament and join the dance of the stars and the moon. To the right of the picture is an unremarkable village, which lies at the foot of the hills in the stillness of the night, it is indifferent to the radiance and rapid movement of the stars.

General execution

In general, when considering this picture, one can feel the virtuoso work of the artist with color. At the same time, the expressive distortion is quite well matched with the help of a unique technique of strokes and a combination of colors. There is also a balance of light and dark tones on the canvas: at the bottom left, dark trees compensate for the high brightness of the yellow moon, which is located in the opposite corner. The main dynamic element of the picture is a spiral curl almost in the middle of the canvas. It gives dynamics to each element of the composition, it is also worth noting that the stars and the moon seem to be more mobile than the rest.

"Starry Night" also has a stunning depth of display space, which is achieved through the competent use of strokes. different sizes and orientation, as well as the overall color combination of the picture. Another factor that helps create depth in a painting is the use of objects of different sizes. So, the town is far away and it is small in the picture, and the trees are the opposite - they are small compared to the village, but are located close and therefore they take up quite a lot of space in the picture. Dark foreground and a bright moon in the background is a tool for creating depth with color.

The painting is more of a pictorial style than a linear one. This is due to the fact that all elements of the canvas are created using strokes and color. Although when creating the village and the hills, Van Gogh applied contour lines. Apparently, such linear elements were used in order to emphasize the difference between objects of earthly and heavenly origin as best as possible. Thus, Van Gogh's image of the sky turned out to be extremely picturesque and dynamic, and the village and hills - more calm, linear and measured.

In "Starry Night" color prevails, while the role of light is not so noticeable. The main sources of illumination are the stars and the moon, this can be determined by the reflections that are located on the buildings of the town and trees at the foot of the hills.

History of writing

The painting "Starry Night" was painted by Van Gogh during the period of treatment in the hospital of Saint-Remy. At the request of his brother, Van Gogh was allowed to paint if his health improved. Such periods arose quite often, and during this time the artist wrote whole line paintings. "Starry Night" is one of them, while it is interesting that this picture was created from memory. This method was used by Van Gogh quite rarely and is not typical. this artist. Compared to Starry Night early work artist, we can say that it is a more expressive and dynamic creation of Van Gogh. However, after it was written, the coloring, emotional load, dynamics and expression on the artist's canvases only increased.

Vincent Van Gogh. Starlight Night. 1889 Museum of Modern Art, New York

Starlight Night. It is not only one of the most famous paintings Van Gogh. It is one of the most notable paintings in all of Western painting. What is so unusual about her?

Why, once you see it, you won't forget it? What kind of air vortices are depicted in the sky? Why are stars so big? And how did a painting that Van Gogh considered a failure become an “icon” for all expressionists?

I have collected the most Interesting Facts and the mysteries of this picture. Which reveal the secret of her incredible attractiveness.

1 Starry Night Written In A Hospital For The Insane

The painting was painted during a difficult period in Van Gogh's life. Six months before that, cohabitation with Paul Gauguin ended badly. Van Gogh's dream of creating a southern workshop, a union of like-minded artists, did not come true.

Paul Gauguin has left. He could no longer stay close to the unbalanced friend. Quarrels every day. And once Van Gogh cut off his earlobe. And handed it to a prostitute who preferred Gauguin.

Exactly the same as they did with a downed bull in a bullfight. The severed ear of the animal was given to the victorious Matador.

Vincent Van Gogh. Self-portrait with cut off ear and pipe. January 1889 Zurich Kunsthaus Museum, Private collection Niarchos. wikipedia.org

Van Gogh could not stand the loneliness and the collapse of his hopes for the workshop. His brother placed him in an asylum for the mentally ill in Saint-Remy. This is where Starry Night was written.

All of it mental strength were extremely tense. That's why the picture turned out so expressive. Bewitching. Like a bunch of bright energy.

2. “Starry night” is an imaginary, not a real landscape

This fact is very important. Because Van Gogh almost always worked from nature. This was the question over which they most often argued with Gauguin. He believed that you need to use the imagination. Van Gogh was of a different opinion.

But in Saint-Remy he had no choice. Patients were not allowed to go outside. Even work in his ward was forbidden. Brother Theo agreed with the authorities of the hospital that the artist was allocated a separate room for his workshop.

So in vain, researchers are trying to find out the constellation or determine the name of the town. Van Gogh took all this from his imagination.

3. Van Gogh depicted turbulence and the planet Venus

The most mysterious element of the picture. In a cloudless sky, we see eddy currents.

Researchers are sure that Van Gogh depicted such a phenomenon as turbulence. Which can hardly be seen with the naked eye.

Consciousness aggravated by mental illness was like a bare wire. To such an extent that Van Gogh saw what an ordinary mortal could not do.

Vincent Van Gogh. Starlight Night. Fragment. 1889 Museum of Modern Art, New York

400 years before that, another person realized this phenomenon. A person with a very subtle perception of the world around him. . He created a series of drawings with eddy currents of water and air.

Leonardo da Vinci. Flood. 1517-1518 Royal Art Collection, London. studiointernational.com

Another interesting element of the picture is the incredibly large stars. In May 1889, Venus could be observed in the south of France. She inspired the artist to draw bright stars.

You can easily guess which of Van Gogh's stars is Venus.

4. Van Gogh thought Starry Night was a bad painting.

The picture is written in a manner characteristic of Van Gogh. Thick long strokes. Which are neatly stacked next to each other. Juicy blue and yellow colors make it very pleasing to the eye.

However, Van Gogh himself considered his work a failure. When the picture got to the exhibition, he casually commented about it: "Maybe she will show others how to depict night effects better than I did."

Such an attitude to the picture is not surprising. After all, it was not written from nature. As we already know, Van Gogh was ready to argue with others until he was blue in the face. Proving how important it is to see what you write.

Here is such a paradox. His “unsuccessful” painting became an “icon” for the expressionists. For whom imagination was much more important outside world.

5. Van Gogh created another painting with a starry night sky

This is not the only Van Gogh painting with night effects. The year before, he had written Starry Night over the Rhone.

Vincent Van Gogh. Starry night over the Rhone. 1888 Musée d'Orsay, Paris

The Starry Night, which is kept in New York, is fantastic. space landscape darkens the earth. We do not immediately even see the town at the bottom of the picture.

Vincent van Gogh is a Dutch post-impressionist painter who had a tremendous impact on art. His works are worth tens of millions of dollars, and there are admirers of the painter's work all over the world. But all this happened after the death of the artist. Van Gogh lived through a difficult and short life, only 37 years old. He was in constant search himself as an artist, struggled with serious illness, often he did not have enough money for food, and spent all his money on paints, brushes and canvases. Nevertheless, Vincent, and he was intensively engaged in creative work for the last seven years of his life, left a huge legacy - more than two thousand paintings and graphic works. One of Van Gogh's most famous paintings is Starry Night. This masterpiece was very significant for the artist himself.

Background. Quarrel with Gauguin. The painting was preceded important events in Van Gogh's life. Everyone knows the story of the cut off ear after a quarrel with the artist Paul Gauguin. Vincent lived in Arles in 1888, where he dreamed of creating an artists' residence in the yellow house he had rented. He invited Gauguin, and the artist agreed to come. Van Gogh rejoiced like a child, he admired the talent of Paul Gauguin, painted pictures with sunflowers especially for his arrival (he wanted to decorate his friend's room with them).

During his visit to Arles, Paul Gauguin painted a portrait of Van Gogh at work.

For some time, Gauguin and Van Gogh worked fruitfully together, but more and more often creative differences arose between them. Paul Gauguin believed that the artist should fantasize more in creating his works, while Vincent was an adherent of working with nature. Gauguin wrote: “I feel like a complete stranger in Arles. Vincent and I rarely agree, especially when it comes to painting. He hates Ingres, Raphael and Degas, whom I admire. To put an end to the arguments, I tell him, "You're right, General." He really likes my paintings, but when I work on them, he constantly points me to one or the other shortcoming. He is a romantic, but I like primitives.

"Self-portrait with cut off ear and pipe" Van Gogh wrote after a quarrel with Gauguin

In total, Gauguin spent two months in Arles. During quarrels, he often threatened Van Gogh with his departure. And on December 23, 1888, he decided to leave the yellow house and spend the night in a hotel. Vincent thought the artist had left. The next morning, all of Arles was seething with the news that Van Gogh had suffered a fit of insanity that night. The artist cut off the earlobe, wrapped it in a scarf and took it to brothel to give to a prostitute. Returning home, Van Gogh lost consciousness. In this state, he was found by the police, who were called by the inhabitants brothel. Vincent was taken to the city hospital, and Gauguin left without saying goodbye. More artists never met.

Work on " starry night». After the story with Gauguin, Van Gogh was diagnosed with temporal lobe epilepsy. Vincent agreed to stay in the monastery hospital for the mentally ill in Saint-Remy.

Unlike other patients, Van Gogh was not assigned to the clinic. After daily work he could leave the monastery walls, he could return to his cell. He was under such supervision as was deemed necessary, and as independent as possible; and Van Gogh believed that the treatment would help him. The low wall that surrounded the monastery remained for many weeks in his imagination a boundary that he could not cross. Striving for recovery, the voluntary patient remained within limits that were not binding on him. He wanted to find safety and protection. Gradually, he became interested in the surrounding landscape, fascinated by cypress trees, olive groves and rare vegetation on the hills. The motives surrounding the artist already possessed that strange originality, that dark, demonic side, to which his art more and more aspired.

During his stay in the monastery, Van Gogh in June 1889 painted the painting "Starry Night", fantasizing this plot. Perhaps the influence of Gauguin, who believed that one should work more with imagination than with nature, affected here. The artist is looking down at the village from an imaginary high point. To her left, a cypress rushes into the sky, to her right an olive grove crowds, shaped like a cloud, and waves of mountains run towards the horizon. The manner in which Vincent interprets these newly found motifs evokes associations with fire, fog and the sea, and the elemental force of nature is combined with the intangible cosmic drama of the stars. The eternal spontaneity of the Universe at the same time idyllically rocks the dwelling of man in the cradle and threatens him. The village itself could be anywhere: it could be Saint-Remy or Nuenen at night. The spire of the church seems to reach for the elements, being both an antenna and a beacon, it resembles the Eiffel Tower (whose passion was always reflected in Van Gogh's night landscapes). Together with the vault of heaven, the details of the landscape sing of the miracle of creation.

Another night landscape by Van Gogh Night terrace cafe"

“I painted a landscape with olives and a new study of the starry sky,” Van Gogh wrote about this picture to his brother Theo, “and although I have not seen the last paintings of Gauguin and Bernard, I am deeply convinced that the two studies mentioned were written in the same spirit. When these two studies have been before your eyes for some time, you will get from them a much more complete idea of the things that we discussed with Gauguin and Bernard, and which occupy us, than from my letters. This is not a return to romanticism or religious ideas, no. It is through Delacroix, that is, with the help of color and design, more arbitrary than illusory precision, that rural nature can be expressed sooner than it seems.

Features of the picture. Starry Night was not Van Gogh's first attempt at depicting the night sky. A year earlier, in Arles, the artist painted the painting Starry Night over the Rhone. Night scenes attracted the master, he often worked in the dark, attaching candles to his hat, as the old masters did.

Now the painting "Starry night over the Rhone" is stored in Paris

Van Gogh wrote to Theo that he often thinks about the stars: “Whenever I see the stars, I begin to dream - just as involuntarily as I dream, looking at the black dots that geographical map cities are marked. Why, I ask myself, should the bright dots in the sky be less accessible to us than the black dots on the map of France? Just as we are driven by a train when we go to Rouen or Tarascon, death takes us to the stars. However, in this reasoning, only one thing is indisputable: while we live, we cannot go to a star, just as, having died, we cannot board a train. It is probable that cholera, syphilis, consumption, cancer are nothing but celestial means of transportation, playing the same role as steamboats, omnibuses, and trains on earth. And natural death from old age is tantamount to walking.” While working on Starry Night, the artist wrote that he still needs religion, which is why he paints stars.

There are many interpretations of the Starry Night painting. Some even note that it accurately conveys the position of the stars in the June night sky in 1889. And this is quite likely. But the winding spiral lines have nothing to do with the northern lights, milky way, some kind of spiral nebula or something like that. According to other interpretations, Van Gogh painted his own Garden of Gethsemane. As proof of this assumption, there is a discussion about Christ in the Garden of Gethsman, which Van Gogh at that time was in correspondence with the artists Gauguin and Bernard. This is also possible. It is also possible that this picture also reflects the forebodings and mental suffering of the painter himself. But biblical allegories run through all the works of Van Gogh, and he did not need a special plot for this. Rather, it was a desire for a synthesis in which scientific, philosophical and personal ideas were compared. "Starry Night" is an attempt to convey a state of shock, shock, and cypresses, olives and mountains served only as a catalyst. Then Van Gogh was more than ever interested in the material essence of his subjects, as well as their symbolic meaning.

It is noteworthy that many scientists in Van Gogh's paintings reflect natural phenomena. Facts about how it works Dutch artist help researchers, collected in her material "Komsomolskaya Pravda".

The original painting "Starry Night" (oil on canvas 73.7x92.1) is kept in New York at the Museum of Modern Art. The work moved there in 1941 from a private collection.

USEFUL

In what Russian museums there are Van Gogh masterpieces

Paintings by Vincent van Gogh can be seen in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Yes, in the museum. fine arts them. A. S. Pushkin, “Red Vineyards in Arles”, “The Sea in Sainte-Marie”, “Portrait of Dr. Felix Rey”, “Walk of Prisoners” and “Landscape in Auvers after the rain” are kept. And in the Hermitage there are four works by the famous Dutchman: “Memories of a Garden in Etten (Ladies of Arles)”, “Arles Arena”, “Bush”, “Huts”.