The Starry Night By Vincent Van Gogh

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The Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh is one of the most well-known paintings in the world. It is beautiful and complex, yet plain and boring. Like the man himself, Van Gogh’s paintings are complex and require a second look. Vincent van Gogh was a deeply troubled man throughout his life. He suffered from anxiety and mental illness, ultimately causing his suicide at the age of 37. At the time of his death, he was hardly well known, although after his death his paintings became much more popular. Today he is considered to be one of history’s greatest painters ever known. Van Gogh did not start painting until his late twenties, and his most famous works were in his last two years of life. The Starry Night was painted during these last two years. The Starry Night was painted while Van Gogh was in an Asylum at Saint-Remy. He had a similar painting a few years earlier called Starry Night over the Rhone. The Museum of Modern Art curator Joachim Pissarro explained Van Gogh awareness of light. Van Gogh was the first artist “to blend together gaslight—artificial, urban light—with starry light like in the painting”. Both lights blaze with “the same king of buzzing, bursting of energy, a kind of weird kinship”. In his early years Van Gogh wanted to evangelize the poverty stricken and, it is believed that some of the symbolism is religious. The eleven stars in the painting are meant to reflect the eleven stars in Genesis 37:9. (And he dreamed yet another dream, and told it his brethren, and said, Behold, I have dreamed a dream more; and, behold, the sun and the moon and the eleven stars made obeisance to me.) The Starry Night is one of my favorite paintings. It feels as if Van Gogh wants the viewer to see the movement and lighting in what he is painting. The swirls of the clouds and the glow of the stars Van Gogh was truly a master of color and texture. There are aspects

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