Wheat Field, with Cypresses and The Starry Night, by Vincent Van Gogh - Essay Example

Wheatfield, with Cypresses and The Starry Night, by Vincent Van Gogh: An Analysis

Two of Vincent Van Gogh’s famous paintings – Wheat Field, with Cypresses and The Starry Night – are the main subject for this essay. The first panting is considered classic in the truest sense of the word. This was agreed upon by many critics of art. The Starry Night is a landscape painting, an inspiration to many poets and musicians, particularly Don MacLean and his “Starry, Starry Night”.

A painting in oil and canvas, Wheat Field expresses unity between earth and sky, the round world with all its mysteries and fantasies, and in Van Gogh’s paintings the vertical, horizontal and any kind of line intersect, or have to go together. In his window in the asylum, Van Gogh looks up and imagines, then penetrates the realm of the unknown, the world of artists.

Calmness is the primary feeling I get. And this must be what Van Gogh felt as he painted it. He was not tired and did not feel lonely, but he must have the feeling of fulfilment as he was doing it, because this is emotion that I get when I stare at the painting.

When I look at it, I get the desired feeling, contrary to the feeling of a chaotic life we experience in the city. The image is truly real; it urges you to “stop and smell the roses.” When you feel lonely, look at the blue sky and you’ll never be lonely again. Look at the painting, and feel you created the painting.

The strokes used and the colors introduced portray some unique styles of artwork that is original. I like to explore and study how it was created, but I cannot because creating belongs only to the artist – that’s the power of the artist. My role is to just admire and feel the beauty, and that’s the power of any work of art.

Wheat Field, with Cypresses, by Vincent Van Gogh

Impressionism and neo-impressionism showed much in Van Gogh’s works. This painting can be located in the National Gallery. In Van Gogh’s paintings, the colors are bright but they are mostly applied on landscapes. Many critics agree that this is classic in the truest sense of the word. The cypress trees were drawn in contrast to the horizontal lines, or bending lines, produced by the wheat field. It is functional in the sense that it was painted during the time when Van Gogh was in the healing process. He painted because he wanted get healed – to feel better. Paintings heal our physical illness and soul’s anguish, the primary reason for Van Gogh’s mental illness. And Van Gogh was right – he retired, or to use the right term “surrendered”, to open up to be healed. Many thought that he was out of this world, but that is what he was trying to prove: to be out of this world is to discover the things in art, which others failed to discover.

The value of the color is superb, because it depicts the true and real colors in the sky – bright and dark shades of green that interrupt the blue skies, and the various shades that intermingle with one another. And the texture? It provides an imaginative photograph of nature, with smoothness and naturalness. Since it is natural, it looks like the sky, actually. The clouds look fluffy while the trees look like a wind is blowing through them. There is balance of lines, colors, texture and form, as seen from the simple elements shown in its entirety. You can feel the sky, as if it is real – the blue color depicts the real sky, present in that lonely place where Van Gogh spent his time in the asylum.

Historical Perspective

Van Gogh was confined in St-Rémy, an asylum for those suffering from depression and other mental illnesses. The scene, including a few others depicted in other paintings of nature, made him return to his senses because of the naturalness of the surrounding skies, the wheat fields, the cypress trees with a background of the sky and the mountain. It was reported in a few biographical lines that Van Gogh sold only one painting in his lifetime although he created more than 900 paintings, and his landscape paintings became famous when he was long gone (“The National Gallery” par. 1). Artists and art connoisseurs later discovered what a great artist was this man, whom many considered as deranged.

What inspire artists, what make them feel they are normal but awesome human beings able to create artistry never been created by other human beings? Artists can feel what Van Gogh felt during those times he created those extraordinary works of art.

Social and Cultural Implications and Public Response

Through his application of bright colors that deeply depict nature, Van Gogh showed his artwork in a manner that expressed truth and emotion. This cannot be clearly said, this cannot be undoubtedly by ordinary artists, albeit it is one of the primary goals of artists – to plainly state the truth in their art, or to speak of it, paint about it by showing what they perceive and feel.

Twilight in the Wilderness by Frederick Edwin Church is a suitable opposite to Vincent Van Gogh. Church is regarded an outdoor personality because he loved nature, walked, rode on canoe, fished, and made a lot of sketches of sceneries and nature (“The Cleveland Museum of Art” par. 4). Van Gogh loved nature but he liked to be alone. Church’s painting gives a view of a stream in a mountain with the clouds looking as though they could be touched. Like Van Gogh, Church also painted landscapes and formations of nature. Church made some sketches on the Twilight when he witnessed such view at Mount Katahdin in Maine, but the famous painting was painted in his New York studio.

The Starry Night

The Starry Night is another creation of Van Gogh while inside the asylum. He saw this beautiful scenery in the sky, but Van Gogh painted it from memory. The painting is under the possession of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Three paintings depict Van Gogh’s love for the stars and the dark sky: The Sidewalk Café at Night, The Starry Night Over the Rhone, and The Starry Night (Unger 9). Van Gogh expresses that to paint is to “say the word – for religion”, so when he goes outside to paint, he preaches. Van Gogh once relayed to his sister that he wanted to paint a starry night because he felt the night was more “richly colored than the day, colored in the most intense violets, blues and greens” (Unger 10). Van Gogh needs no explanation, because this is shown in the intensity of the colors in The Starry Night.

Van Gogh moved to Arles as he wished to have a thriving and lively studio with other artists, but it was only one, Paul Gauguin, who was ready to accept him. After this meeting at Arles, he went to Saint-Rémy to seek refuge. His religious theme “consolation” was the subject of most of his most paintings and images in Arles. This tells that Van Gogh was a deeply religious man, deprived of the comfort in life. He attempted to capture the image of Christ, such as the portrait of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, but he was unsuccessful in this endeavour. Then, he turned to painting impressions of religious scenes, and finally to cypress trees, olive groves, and stars over Saint-Rémy. Natural elements in Van Gogh’s paintings seemed like to represent Christian iconography (Unger 13).

Most of Van Gogh’s paintings have intense relations with nature. Van Gogh expressed in his letters earthly and ordinary things, sometimes plainly stated without major representation, philosophy, or thought, when thinking is no longer exhausting and no longer exists (Orte 61). Van Gogh recollected nature in his paintings as if he had created nature, made it sweat, or made nature spurt forth in luminous beams onto his canvas, in large clusters of colors, or the secular crushing of elements.

Van Gogh’s paintings are rich in color combination. Combination of blue and other texture seems making ends meet, the important stimulation to make things work, and what seems confused in the mind of the painter is now cleared in The Starry Night. As we see through the stars, they are not moving, but out there are millions and billions that are about to break, but something is holding and that is the Creative Hand. When a painter brushes, he feels he is the Creative Hand controlling the millions and billions of stars. These must be working in the mind of Van Gogh, and he is able to control it – he is healed of depression in the process.

As I examined further into The Starry Night, I sense there is truth to what Lauren Soth speaks of the visionary nature of the artist. Van Gogh also sees the vision of Walt Whitman, who pronounced in his poems the combination of earth and sky. Whitman wrote: “I am he that walks with the tender and growing night, I call to the earth and the sea half-held by the night!”

The earth, the sky, the night, the stars – all these are the usual parts of a landscape. They can be shown in various images, works of art, ads, or backgrounds of books or periodicals. But do we realize the importance of each image – not, until we give it a real thought. I tried to picture myself in an asylum of people under depression, and be one of those people. I look through my window and what do I see but stars and sky and fields. Van Gogh must be lucky to have those at his grasp and capture them through his painting.

Van Gogh is the real artist who realized the real significance of these elements of nature and integrated these in his art. Not only did he use it as subject, but he painted them perfectly by using appropriate colors, and intensity and texture of colors. In both paintings, Wheatfield, with Cypresses and The Starry Night, I feel there is always the sky and the stars watching, waiting for us to reveal our secret, our problems, and everything that is lacking in us. The colors also provide the aesthetic feeling. So, when you look at and observe the paintings, you feel enjoyment and healing – healing about the “hidden sicknesses” inside that if it were not for these and those works of art, we all get sick all the time.

The value of the color is superb, because it depicts the true and real colors in the sky – bright and dark shades of green that interrupt the blue skies, and the various shades that intermingle with one another. And the texture? It provides an imaginative photograph of nature, with smoothness and naturalness. Since it is natural, it looks like the sky, actually. The clouds look fluffy while the trees look like a wind is blowing through them. There is balance of lines, colors, texture and form, as seen from the simple elements shown in its entirety. You can feel the sky, as if it is real – the blue color depicts the real sky, present in that lonely place where Van Gogh spent his time in the asylum.

Historical Perspective

Van Gogh was confined in St-Rémy, an asylum for those suffering from depression and other mental illnesses. The scene, including a few others depicted in other paintings of nature, made him return to his senses because of the naturalness of the surrounding skies, the wheat fields, the cypress trees with a background of the sky and the mountain. It was reported in a few biographical lines that Van Gogh sold only one painting in his lifetime although he created more than 900 paintings, and his landscape paintings became famous when he was long gone (“The National Gallery” par. 1). Artists and art connoisseurs later discovered what a great artist was this man, whom many considered as deranged.

What inspire artists, what make them feel they are normal but awesome human beings able to create artistry never been created by other human beings? Artists can feel what Van Gogh felt during those times he created those extraordinary works of art.

Social and Cultural Implications and Public Response

Through his application of bright colors that deeply depict nature, Van Gogh showed his artwork in a manner that expressed truth and emotion. This cannot be clearly said, this cannot be undoubtedly by ordinary artists, albeit it is one of the primary goals of artists – to plainly state the truth in their art, or to speak of it, paint about it by showing what they perceive and feel.

Twilight in the Wilderness by Frederick Edwin Church is a suitable opposite to Vincent Van Gogh. Church is regarded an outdoor personality because he loved nature, walked, rode on canoe, fished, and made a lot of sketches of sceneries and nature (“The Cleveland Museum of Art” par. 4). Van Gogh loved nature but he liked to be alone. Church’s painting gives a view of a stream in a mountain with the clouds looking as though they could be touched. Like Van Gogh, Church also painted landscapes and formations of nature. Church made some sketches on the Twilight when he witnessed such view at Mount Katahdin in Maine, but the famous painting was painted in his New York studio.

The Starry Night

The Starry Night is another creation of Van Gogh while inside the asylum. He saw this beautiful scenery in the sky, but Van Gogh painted it from memory. The painting is under the possession of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Three paintings depict Van Gogh’s love for the stars and the dark sky: The Sidewalk Café at Night, The Starry Night Over the Rhone, and The Starry Night (Unger 9). Van Gogh expresses that to paint is to “say the word – for religion”, so when he goes outside to paint, he preaches. Van Gogh once relayed to his sister that he wanted to paint a starry night because he felt the night was more “richly colored than the day, colored in the most intense violets, blues and greens” (Unger 10). Van Gogh needs no explanation, because this is shown in the intensity of the colors in The Starry Night.

Van Gogh moved to Arles as he wished to have a thriving and lively studio with other artists, but it was only one, Paul Gauguin, who was ready to accept him. After this meeting at Arles, he went to Saint-Rémy to seek refuge. His religious theme “consolation” was the subject of most of his most paintings and images in Arles. Read More