Ray Demnitz_Starry Night Prompt_Blog#2

Vincent Van Gogh’s famous painting Starry Night emphasizes the insignificance of human works in comparison to the majesty of the natural world. The painting portrays a village nestled between rolling hills, under a sky bright with stars. A tree in the foreground reaches into the night sky, its growth reminiscent of the village church, but on a much grander scale. This comparison between natural and man-made structures of similar shapes makes the church, whose steeple is barely taller than the rolling hill of the background, seem even smaller next to the tree, its branches scraping the heavens.

            Van Gogh also illustrates the difference between the lights of the village and the stars above them. The hills behind the village, outlined in black, serve to divide the earth and sky.  This division makes the viewer subconsciously compare the sections of the piece above and below it, and makes the village appear even smaller, in comparison to the bright sky. While lights are on in many of the village houses, the yellow paint is mixed with darker colors, and surrounded by subdued blues, greens, and browns, while each of the stars in the night sky is surrounded by a halo of bright white, and Van Gogh’s thick brush strokes lend a sense of power to the celestial bodies.

            Van Gogh also paints his landscape to be strongly reminiscent of the ocean. He uses strong brush strokes and uses a lot of blue to make the landscape appear almost as if it were underwater. He makes the rolling hills and flurries of clouds in the sky blue, so that they remind the viewer of waves on the ocean. He does this because the ocean is used time and again as a metaphor for all that is grand and, inversely, all that is insignificant. Be it a grain of sand on a beach, or a single fish in the sea, Van Gogh hammers home the idea that the village, representing the works of man, is infinitesimally small in comparison to nature.