Description
Widely celebrated as Vincent van Gogh's masterpiece, the painting depicts the nighttime view from his asylum window, although it was in fact painted from memory during the day.
"Looking at the stars always makes me dream, as simply as I dream over the black dots representing towns and villages on a map. Why, I ask myself, shouldn't the shining dots of the sky be as accessible as the black dots on the map of France? Just as we take the train to get to Tarascon or Rouen, we take death to reach a star."
The artist wrote to his brother about this almost transcendent experience: "This morning I saw the countryside from my window a long time before sunrise, with nothing but the morning star, which looked very big." This morning star, or Venus, is thought to be the large white star to the left of center in The Starry Night. The village, on the other hand, is imaginary, and its church spire evokes Van Gogh's native Netherlands.
The painting, like its daytime companion piece, The Olive Trees, is rooted in imagination and memory. Van Gogh turned his work into a symbol for all the Expressionist painting that would follow.
An interesting fact about this painting is that Van Gogh created it from his own room at the asylum, working from memory and the view from his window, as his condition prevented him from going outside. The image of a starry night over the village was one of many he painted during his stay at the asylum, but it is the one that has become one of his most iconic works.
Moreover, although the image is popularly associated with the tranquility and beauty of the night, Van Gogh was going through a period of profound personal suffering when he painted this work. The Starry Night can be seen as a metaphor for his inner struggle and his longing to find peace amid the storm.
It is also worth noting that The Starry Night has been the subject of extensive interpretation and critical analysis over the years, and has been deeply influenced by Japanese art and culture, which Van Gogh admired greatly. The work has since been reproduced across countless formats in popular culture — from posters and T-shirts to mugs and phone cases — becoming an enduring icon of the modern world.
In a 2014 TED talk, science research associate Natalya St. Clair explained how the movement in the painting hinted at an extremely complex mathematical concept known as turbulent flow, decades before scientists identified it.
In 2004, using the Hubble Space Telescope, scientists observed the swirling patterns of a distant cloud of dust and gas around a star, and it reminded them of Van Gogh's Starry Night. That observation prompted scientists to study Van Gogh's paintings in detail, and in doing so, they discovered a distinctive pattern of turbulent fluid structures hidden within many of the artist's works.
The Starry Night ranks No. 2 on our list of famous paintings.