Starry Night Virtual Analysis
The piece that I have chosen to talk about for the MoMA virtual analysis is Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh. Starry Night was created in June of 1889 during the 19th Century. Vincent Van Gogh painted this in France, while he stayed in a year long asylum in Saint-Remy. It depicts the view from the east-facing window of his asylum room in France just before sunrise, with the addition of an imaginary village. This painting is a landscape; including a cypress tree, a view from the city of France, mountains, the night sky, and stars. Initially, Vincent Van Gogh was allowed to paint in the asylum garden. He painted the view of a wheat field from his window, but later went out into the countryside where he was accompanied by an asylum staff member. This has been my favorite painting among many because of the color choices and the unique way he recreated the stars. The painting also caught my eye because it is painted in curves, which is also rarely seen by other famous painters and makes the painting unique.
The painting has a height of 73.7 cm and length 92.10. The first feature I would like to highlight is the work’s details. Everything is painted in curves; form the trees, to the sky, to the clouds, to the mountains, and the stars. The painting shows the contrast between the bright night sky and the silence of the village. Starry Night is an oil on canvas painting. The most prominent shapes in the painting are of the circular motion in which the stars and the clouds are portrayed. Normally, clouds are never given the shape of circles in painting but in Starry Nights, Van Gogh has shown them as swirling clouds forming a perfect circle and appear to be in motion. The stars are also painted in a circular form, rather than the typical pointed star form. This results in the painting looking consistent as the stars and the clouds are both circular shapes.Vincent Van Gogh was known for his thick application of paint in canvas called impasto, which is a painting technique where paint is laid thickly so that the texture of the brush strokes or pallet knife are very visible. If you let your eye follow one curve, it seems like you can follow it around the whole painting, it's as though Van Gogh painted the entire scene with one stroke of his paintbrush. Vincent Van Gogh’s art is usually observed as post- impressionism , a style implying the naturalistic description of light and dark color. In Vincent Van Gogh’s Starry Nights, there is a dominance of blue, which is visible in the sky as well as in the village shown in the bottom of the picture. His use of yellow and white is to represent the stars, drawing the viewer’s attention to the sky. The reflection of the moon is shown by streaks of dark blue and greens, complemented with a touch of mint green. The houses of the village in the painting are small blocks of greens, oranges and yellows with a hint of red towards the left of the church. The bright blue colors of the sky are carefully balanced by the orange of some of the elements of the night sky. Finally, Vincent Van Gogh uses Fauvism, which is emphasizing strong color over the representational or realistic values retained by Impressionism. The dominance of blue in Starry Night is balanced by the orange of the night sky elements. Van Gogh paints the rich colors of the night and this corresponds with the true character of this Starry Night, whereby colors are used to suggest emotion.
The main color blue is what mainly attracted me to this painting because it is my favorite color and it led me to imagining my own visions of Starry Night. Visiting Starry Night at the MoMA made me appreciate the different styles of arts like fauvism and others because it leads us to use our imagination and think outside of the box.
Work Cited:
https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/vincent-van-gogh-the-starry-night-1889/
https://www.ukessays.com/essays/arts/an-analysis-of-van-goghs-starry-night.php
Pablo Picasso Virtual Artist Analysis
The artist that I chose for the Painter Virtual Analysis is Pablo Picasso. Pablo Picasso was born October 25, 1881 in Malaga, Spain and died April of 1973 in France. He was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer. He was mainly known for his famous painting called Guernica, painted in 1937 as a reference to the Spanish Civil war, regarded by many art critics as one of the most moving and powerful anti-war paintings in history. Pablo Picasso was known as the creator of Cubism, which is the use of geometric planes and shapes. Pablo Picasso was inspired by archaic and tribal art, that lent his figures more structure and ultimately set him on the path towards Cubism, in which he deconstructed the conventions of perspective that had dominated painting since the Renaissance. We see cubism in his famous painting of Guernica and others. Besides Cubism, Picasso was also known for Expressionism, which is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas. We see expressionism in paintings like the old guitarist. He also uses Surrealism, which is best known for its visual artworks and writings and the juxtaposition of uncommon imagery. We see Picasso use surrealism in Guernica as well. Finally, he also uses Post Impressionism, which is a reaction against Impressionists. He uses post impressionism in his famous painting of Child with a Dove. The Picasso art period, known as the Blue Period, extended from 1901 to 1904. During this time, the artist painted primarily in shades of blue, with occasional touches of accent color. Picasso’s circumstances during his time weren’t easy. Historians attribute Picasso's Blue Period largely to the artist's apparent depression following a friend's suicide. Some of the recurring subjects in the Blue Period are blindness, poverty and the female nude. The Rose Period lasted from 1904 through 1906. Shades of pink and rose imbued Picasso's art with a warmer, less melancholy air than his Blue Period paintings. During his African art and Primitivism period from 1907 to 1909, Picasso created one of his best-known and most controversial artworks, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. Inspired by the angular African art he viewed in an exhibit at the Palais de Trocadero and by an African mask owned by Henri Matisse, Picasso's art reflected these influences during this periodHe was a painter during the Spanish civil war and world war 2. Picasso made the decision to move permanently to Paris in the spring of 1904. His work reflects a change of spirit; especially a response to different intellectual and artistic currents. His political situations while he was alive inspired him to create art as a form his own reaction and feelings towards what was going on at war. For example, Guernica was painted in response to the bombing by the Nazis in Guernica, Spain, as well as to show his sorrow and compassion for humanity. This helps us as viewers to understand the point of view from someone who experienced history. Pablo Picasso became one of my favorite artists because of all the interesting stories behind his paintings and because he is from the same part of Spain as some of my family.
Work Cited:
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Pablo-Picasso
