Wow. that is really good!
All the details not to be missed in Vincent van Gogh’s The Starry Night
You could spend a lifetime gazing into The Starry Night, but each and every time you’ll find something you missed last time: that’s the beauty of one of the most famous landscape paintings of all time. You simply get lost in it.
Like many pioneers, van Gogh’s work was not fully appreciated during his lifetime, yet his significant and enduring legacy means he is still inspiring artists many generations later.
In fact, The Starry Night inspired LEGO® fan designer Truman Cheng for his winning LEGO Ideas submission that reimagines the famous painting in 3D. After receiving over 10,000 votes from the LEGO Ideas community, we turned it into a real-life LEGO set.
To celebrate its launch, we take a closer look at the details of the real painting, with the help of MoMA (The Museum of Modern Art) in New York and their online resources for this picture.
Setting the scene
Vincent van Gogh (Dutch, 1853-1890). The Starry Night. Saint Rémy, June 1889. Oil on canvas, 29 x 36 1/4″ (73.7 x 92.1 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Acquired through the Lillie P. Bliss Bequest (by exchange)
Van Gogh was inspired by the view from his window at the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum in Saint-Rémy in Southern France, where he spent twelve months in 1889–90.
But when comparing the painting to the actual view, it’s not entirely similar. That’s because the painting is based on the Dutch artist’s imagination, memories and emotions, as well as his direct observations.
MoMA offers this description on their website: The Starry Night is a visually striking “exercise in observation and a clear departure from it. van Gogh assigned an emotional language to night and nature that took them far from their actual appearances.”
So, let’s explore the masterpiece in more detail.
The night sky
Pictured: the LEGO® Ideas Vincent van Gogh – The Starry Night set
It makes sense to start with the glowing night sky that van Gogh beautifully reconstructs with his unique use of color, shapes and famous brushstrokes.
Through these techniques, the night sky looks alive, vibrant and quite different from reality.
But it wasn’t all imagination. Venus was visible in southern France at the time and van Gogh painted the planet (center left), using brushstrokes to create a glow-like effect.
Another MoMA text on this work states, “the whirling forms in the sky. match astronomical reports of clouds of dust and gas known as nebulae.”
The closer you look at the stars and Moon and the swirling wind, the more you get captivated by his portrayal of an active, chaotic night sky.
