Essay on Vincent Van Goghs Starry Night at St. Rémy

Vincent Van Goghs Starry Night at St. Rà ©my Vincent van Goghs Starry Night at St. Rà ©my of June 1889, expresses the comforting power and spirituality of the infinite night sky over the humbler, earthly brand of nature through a synthesis of exceptional visual power, elements of religious allegory, and of modern spiritualism. This work is the product of van Goghs refusal to depict the purely imaginary, but willful manipulation of what is real in order to achieve a more powerful work, both visually and through symbolism and allegory. Starry Night is more powerful than van Goghs literal Agony of Christ would have been because, in separating itself from imagery that is strictly religious in its connotations, he was able to†¦show more content†¦The church is the only building that deviates from this approach, containing actual planes of color and evidencing a fairly complex outer structure. These features make the church the most motionless building of all by denying it the motion of the brush strokes and giving it the s olidity of a definite form. Calming blue and purple dominate the paintings color scheme, with moonlight, starlight and a band of colored light close to the horizon containing mostly yellows, along with points of red and orange. The moon itself is a yellow-orange, while the two spiraling bands in the sky are greenish-blue in hue. Green tints highlight the glows of all the celestial features and tint the plant life on the ground. Greys and reds are characteristic of the houses, with orange indicating houselights, and powder blue filling in the lines of the church tower. Finally, the writhing lines that define the dark green cypress lines are a rich reddish brown and near-olive green, causing it to emerge as a sharply defined profile against the vivid colors of the sky and purple-greens of the landscape below. Van Gogh was a naturalist who committed to representing the real. He refused to paint the imaginary; however, he was willing to challenge realistic depiction in order to express a mood orShow MoreRelatedAnalysis Of Van Gogh s Agony967 Words   |  4 PagesAnalysis of Van Gogh’s Agony In â€Å"Van Gogh’s Agony†, Lauren Soth proposes the argument that Starry Night by artist Vincent Van Gogh is more than just a landscape created from direct observation, but a nontraditional outlet for Van Gogh’s repressed religious beliefs that could not be expressed through traditional Christian imagery. However, Soth presents little convincing evidence from sources both primary and secondary to support this theory. Although some of the evidence may support his thesisRead MoreVan Gogh s Starry Night1671 Words   |  7 PagesIn Vincent Van Gogh’s Starry Night there are many aspects of the artwork that are symbolic of Van Gogh’s life struggles. 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