Starry Night

Word of the week: daedal; adjective; Skillful; artistic; ingenious.

For Art 50, I was forced to pick a master work that we are doing studies on. I'm not going to lie, I was more or less in fevered state in trying to pick something off the top of my head. I decided to with Vincent Van Gogh's "Starry Night." At first thought, it didn't seem like anything important to me. However, because of the assignment, it's making me really examine it, and I have to say, I appreciate the daedal work that Van Gogh put into it, exphasising a quality craftsmanship to something that looks so simple on the surface.

Van Gogh may have been less than sane, but the amount of work he put into his paintings always astound me. The painting evokes a state of wonder, as the various hues and shades of the blue night sky seem to move alongside the stars. Much like his other works, it involves very obvious strokes, but the gestures it creates give it a strange life that's hard to capture in something so vast and expansive. While "the night sky" seems like such a broad thing to paint about, it's clear that Van Gogh had a loving and reverent opinion of the his surroundings, capturing a strange essence in the night. The scale is also expanded due to the dwarfed size of the city below it, which pales is given a minute size while still having formidable detail. It's a very interesting piece that has a strange fullness in it's "empty" landscape.