5 Interesting Facts About a Van Gogh Drawing “Starry Night”
1. Van Gogh painted “Starry night” in a mental hospital
The moment of creating the picture was preceded by a difficult emotional period in the life of the artist. A few months earlier, Van Gogh's friend Paul Gauguin had come to Arles to exchange paintings and experiences. But a fruitful creative tandem did not work out, and after a couple of months the artists finally quarreled.
In the heat of emotional distress, Van Gogh cut off his earlobe and took it to a brothel to the prostitute Rachel, who favored Gauguin. So they did with a bull defeated in a bullfight. The matador got the severed ear of the animal.
Gauguin left soon after, and Van Gogh's brother Theo, seeing his condition, sent the unfortunate man to the mental hospital in Saint-Remy. It was there that the expressionist created his famous painting.
2. "Starry night" is not a real landscape
Researchers are trying in vain to figure out which constellation is depicted in Van Gogh's painting. The artist took the plot from his imagination. Theo arranged at the clinic that a separate room was allocated for his brother, where he could create, but the mentally ill man was not allowed out into the street.
3. Turbulence is depicted in the sky
Either the heightened perception of the world, or the sixth sense that opened it, forced the artist to depict turbulence. At that time, eddy currents could not be seen with the naked eye.
Although 4 centuries before Van Gogh, another brilliant artist, Leonardo da Vinci, depicted a similar phenomenon.
4. The artist considered his painting extremely unsuccessful
Vincent van Gogh believed that his "Starry Night" was not the best canvas, because it was not painted from life, which was very important to him. When the painting came to the exhibition, the artist said of it rather dismissively: "Maybe it will show others how to depict night effects better than I did." However, for the expressionists, who believed that the most important thing is the manifestation of feelings, "Starry Night" has become almost an icon.
5. Van Gogh Created Another Starry Night painting
There was another "Starry Night" in the Van Gogh collection. It was called “Starry night over the Rhone”. The stunning landscape cannot leave anyone indifferent. The artist himself, after creating this picture, wrote to his brother Theo: “Why can’t bright stars in the sky be more important than black dots on the map of France? Just as we take a train to get to Tarascon or Rouen, so we die to get to the stars.”
Vincent van Gogh's "Starry Night" is considered by many to be the pinnacle of expressionism. It is interesting that the artist himself considered it an extremely unsuccessful work, and it was written at the time of the master's mental discord. What is so unusual in this canvas - let's try to figure it out further in the review.
