BellaOnline Forums Education Art Appreciation Starry Night - Vincent van Gogh

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So, what do you think? I'm not sure I see faces in the sky ... it does seem a bit unsettling to me though. That big protrusion on the left looks like the Spires of Mount Doom

I don't see faces in the sky, but the sky itself seems to be in much more turmoil thatn the one in "Starry Night Over the Rhone"

In this "Starry Night" it feels like you are just waiting for a storm to happen.

What the write-up on art.com said was that by this point he was in an institution and he did the entire thing from memory. So if he was locked up in a cell at this point and unable to see the night sky, I imagine there was a lot of turmoil in his mind as he painted this ...

This is from Van Gogh's dark period and if I remember correctly he didn't like it because it didn't seem realistic enough to him.

Also, after he cut his left ear off he begand painting portraits of himself with the bandaged ear. However, in his portraits he paints the bandage on the right ear. Why do you suppose he did that?

Maybe because he was looking in a mirror, and was literally translating the image he saw.

Most people would take into account that it was a "mirror image" and adust accordingly, but if he was in such a mindset - he may have been completely remeoved from himself - and saw that as painting the portrait of another person.

What's the possibility he suffered fomr DID? Did they even understand that back then?

Wikipedia says:

"There has been much debate over the years as to the source of Van Gogh's mental illness and its effect on his work. Over 150 psychiatrists have attempted to label his illness, and some 30 different diagnoses have been suggested.[74]

Diagnoses which have been put forward include schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, syphilis, poisoning from swallowed paints, temporal lobe epilepsy and acute intermittent porphyria. Any of these could have been the culprit and been aggravated by malnutrition, overwork, insomnia, and a fondness for alcohol, and absinthe in particular."

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Just a small correction here. Van Gogh did not cut off his ear, he cut off a small piece of his earlobe. Which, I grant you, is not a normal thing to do, but not quite as weird as cutting the entire ear off. I was told this by an art history professor about 35 years ago and have been trying to correct the mis-perception, whenever I hear it, ever since.

I love Van Gogh's work. I love the brilliant colors, the movement, and knowing that such a tortured soul produced such incredible beauty. Looking at his paintings, to me, can bring me to tears just being in the presence of it, especially in person at a museum.

I have read also - I'm sorry I can't remember where - that that particular painting is a representation of what Van Gogh saw when he had migraine.

Well we know he was in a mental institution when he painted this, so he could have been suffering from all sorts of things

I do really like the colors in a swirly-stained-glass sort of way. If I just look at parts of it I really like it a lot. But all together, it has a dark / ominous look to it for me