A Vibrant Balance
For evidence of the fantastic successes of van Gogh’s artwork, we need look no further than Starry Night. Painted in June of 1889, during his stay at the asylum in Saint-Remy, it has become perhaps Vincent’s signature work. Swirling strokes of blue dominate the scene, leaving just enough space for the perfect, blurred circles of the night stars to leave their mark. As in Wheatfield Under Clouded Sky , the eye is drawn immediately to the sky in wonderment. However, as much as the deep swirls of the blue atmosphere dominate the picture, the sky and the land lie in perfect harmony. A tall cypress tree reaches its way up into the blue, reminding us of Road with Cypress and Star , and the blaze of the moon above shines from the other side of the painting, providing a perfect balance to the scene. Further adding to this inherent structural balance are the swirls at the center of the picture, as Eric Saxon, in his article “Overall Space: Comparing van Gogh, Mondrian and Pollock,” points out, highlighting the “yinyang-like form that can be seen to represent the union of two opposing forces” (Mashek 351). The two opposing forces Saxon mentions here are the land and the sky; it is life as we know it, posed against the heavens above. It is a familiar contrast in van Gogh’s artwork. Indeed, if we now consider the most poignant image in this sky, the deeply circular moon, we are brought back to Vincent’s thoughts on the round nature of life. “Is the whole of life visible to us,” he wrote to Theo, “or isn’t it rather that this side of death we see only one hemisphere?” (Letter 506, van Gogh) Bringing these thoughts to light in Starry Night, Vincent tries to portray both hemispheres as best he can, picturing not a sky that we can see at night, but one that is visible only through the eyes of an artist. We see here that even in his darkest, loneliest hour, Vincent’s mind was at its best, abandoning realism to create one of his most vibrant scenes.