Wilfreddy Suarez

Professor Davidow

FIQWS 10113

2 December 2019

Starry Night was one of the most influential paintings by Van Gogh. Vincent van Gogh was a dutch post-impressionist painter and one of the most influential western artists. Van Gogh had a nice childhood, had loving parents, went to a good school, was a positive and sensitive child. Until later in the future after working at his uncle’s art dealership in the Netherlands, he transferred to another dealership in London. Where he fell in love with the landlord’s daughter, sadly he got rejected which was the starting point to his first breakdown. He became very depressed before he became interested in painting in 1881. Van Gogh was emotionally and financially unstable, living on the streets getting fired from multiple jobs. But in 1886, Van Gogh moved to Paris with his younger brother Theo, who helped him physically and mentally. After getting so involved in painting art, Van Gogh would often not eat properly and drink a lot of alcohol which greatly affected his health. Throughout his entire life, Van Gogh painted over 2000+ paintings, after staying two years in Paris, he moved to France hoping to form a community of artist. While in France, he was exposed to the work of Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist artists which made him change his art style from dark and gloomy to light and brighter colors. Later on in his life, his illness got worse, Van Gogh had lots of panic attacks which led him to be taken to Saint-Paul asylum in Saint-Rémy. Van Gogh slowly started to go back to his original dark and gloomy colors, where he then drew Starry Night based on his memory and what emotion he had. Starry Night greatly influenced newer artists by making them see a different and more unique way of painting art.

Starry Night was painted by Vincent van Gogh in 1889 when he was staying at the asylum of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole near Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. When Vincent moved to France, he started painting with brighter colors instead of dark ones. His whole life Van Gogh was on the verge of insanity, he had manic depression and chronic mental illness. After having many attacks, Van Gogh was sent to an asylum to help with his mental health. While staying in the asylum, Van Gogh gradually started painting with darker colors once again. Through memory and his imagination, he then drew the Starry Night. The painting Starry Night is a painting drawn with many little strokes of a brush, the little strokes start to form swirls that shape and engulf the entire painting. On the left-hand side of the painting is an enormous and dark shadow of a cypress tree. In the painting its is the middle of the night, it is painted with many different shades of blue and black, where some big parts have shades of yellow and white mixed together. In the night sky, 11 dim lighted stars are separated throughout the sky. Some stars are giving off a white glow, while others yellow or light blue. On the top right of the painting, there is a big bright waning crescent moon which is the brightest object on the painting. On the bottom left of the painting is a small town that is being lit up by the moon. The houses are very plain and dull with some of the houses having vertical stripes on their roof and some have their windows open, with some light shining through. Throughout the painting, Van Gogh was expressing how he was feeling at that time, especially with the cypress tree because cypress trees are closely related to death, so a year later he committed suicide. Starry Night was maybe a small cry or message for help from Van Gogh himself and his death impacted many lives to this day.

Van Gogh’s Starry Night impacted the future ideas of new artists by showing them a new unique way of panting. Stefan Duncan is an American artist who made a new addition to Impressionism called “Squiggleism” greatly being influenced by Van Gogh, “Van Gogh’s use of this new impressionist and post-impressionist style altered not only his work but also all of art history. One particular artist is leading the contemporary impressionists to become ‘America’s Vincent van Gogh’… Stefan Duncan! Duncan’s amazing work is a plethora of brilliant colors tossed about in a whimsical style he calls Squigglism. Having been greatly influenced by Vincent van Gogh, Stefan utilizes this updated technique to draw the quick strokes of the impressionists into long curvy lines” 

(“Stefan Duncan -Fine Art-.” Van Gogh’s Impact on Art, Stefan Duncan, 28 December 2016, http://www.stefanduncan.com/van-goghs-impact-on-art/).

Van Gogh was alive more than 115 years ago, and to this day his art is still influencing people. Just like how Van Gogh used swirly strokes with bright colors in Starry Night, Ducan switched it up and made it into his form and art style. Another example is how Duncan created a similar style of painting is Starry Night called Still Standing. The painting Still Standing shows a giant lake that has a beautiful orange glow because of the setting sun. You could tell how this easily resembles Starry Night but with a different setting and his twist on it. You could see all the little strokes that surround and shape the entire painting, how the sun is shining upon everything, just how the moon in Starry Night was doing to the small town. Stefan Duncan was greatly influenced by Starry Night because in his paintings you can see the impact and resemblance Van Gogh has had on his paintings. This is how Starry Night impacted the future ideas of new artists.

Starry Night was one of the many paintings that introduced artists to a new way of painting. How it influenced Stefan Ducan and American who because of Starry Night, made his art style named “Squiggleism” and how he created a painting called Still Standing. Starry Night is a beautiful painting showing how greatly depressed Van Gogh was if only someone had got his message, would they have been able to save him?