Starry, Starry Night

The Holy Family with St. Anne and St. Catherine
oil on canvas by Jusepe De Ribera

In episode #38 of the HBO series The Sopranos, Tony's wife, Carmela, walks into an exhibit at the Met on 5th Avenue with her daughter Meadow and is moved to tears by a painting done 400 years ago.  Mind you this is the same Carmela that is shown in an earlier episode expertly loading an AK-47 in front of an astonished family priest as she bolts from the house to check on a prowler.  The very same Carmela who finds her son Anthony smoking weed in the garage on the day of his confirmation and screams at him, "Is it so much to ask for you to be a good Catholic for fifteen fucking minutes!?" 

The most startling thing about Carmela, or anyone for that matter, being so deeply 

touched by a painting is the fact that it is considered unremarkable.  Why is it taken as commonplace, rather than a miracle, that a static, man-made image composed of mere dabs of paint applied to a flat surface can elicit a powerful, involuntary emotional reaction from other humans?  Somehow we take all of this for granted yet it is the type of phenomenon that belongs in a Marvel super hero comic or an Arthur C. Clarke sci-fi epic. 

Although I don't ever recall it being mentioned in any of my art history courses, it seems obvious that this is what drove artists to spend several millennia pursuing realism. Paintings made their way from cave walls to ziggerats, then frescoes, to wood panels and finally onto canvas.  As new materials were introduced and knowledge grew regarding human anatomy, perspective, light and color; painted images gradually became increasingly more realistic. All of this was reinforced from observing that the more realistic the image, the greater the impact on the viewer. This effort reached its pinnacle in Northern Europe during the Renaissance beginning with artists such as Jan Van Eyck.

Sunset by Claude Monet 1872

I propose it was this same desire to engage their audience that influenced a group of artists living in Paris to take a radical departure from the established norm and launch a movement in the late 1800s that came to be known as impressionism. The rigid precepts promoted by the Academie des Beaux Arts at the time served as the art world's version of The Stepford Wives. 

The Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh 1889

The impressionists sought to 

escape the academic confines of modest colors, subtle brush strokes and precise representational images.  Surely the advent of photography was a factor in these artists seeking a new direction, but they must have also been encouraged by the success their expressive works achieved in connecting with an audience.  As their split from the Academie widened, so did their appeal until their works so invigorated public interest that painting and the whole of art was changed forever.  

Time lapse photo by Vincent Brady 2015

This desire to heighten the experience for the viewer continues to the present day.   Even photography eventually sought ways to depart from straight realism, adopting techniques and effects.  To what end if not to match the allure created by the work of the impressionists and the many movements and artists that followed.  

Olive Orchard at Saint Remy by Vincent Van Gogh 1889

Don McLean's lyrics to Starry, Starry Night are pure schlock but appear to be a serious attempt to pay tribute to a painting that enjoys great popularity among modern day admirers of Van Gogh's work.  I found it interesting that the artist himself had quite a different take.  It is clear that Van Gogh felt the painting was undeserving of any sort of attention. Starry Night was one of many works that made up his Saint Remy series produced during his stay at the 
Saint Paul Asylum.  

The olive orchard at Saint Remy, photo from wordpress.com

In a letter to his brother Theo he wrote,  "All in all the only things I consider a little good in it (the series) are the Wheat field, the Mountain, the Orchard, the Olive trees with the blue hills and the Portrait and the Entrance to the quarry, and the rest says nothing to me."    

The paintings he considered as "a little good" could not have been created by Van Gogh if left to his own devices.  A lengthy string of external influences had to take place before Van Gogh could ever have walked out in to the orchard and painted those olive trees in the manner that he did.  Van Gogh's work was the result of several factors, not the least of which was new technology.  He began painting soon after European artists shifted from working in tempera to oil.  This advancement revolutionized the world of painting as dramatically as the move from steam to combustion engines affected industry.   

All of the surviving panel paintings of Michelangelo were done using tempera - paint made with pigment, egg and water. This fast-drying medium produced muted colors at best that so limited contrast and depth, scenes and subjects appeared flat. It took a thousand years for the technique of painting with oil to make its way from the Far East to Europe in the 15th century but its arrival made possible the paintings created during the Renaissance. The slow drying oil gave artists brighter colors and more time to perfect their imagery. The new medium also made it possible to utilize prominent brush strokes when it later became fashionable to do so.

The manner in which artists represented the human eye over the centuries is a telling demonstration of how the advancements made to materials such as pigments, brushes and surfaces on which to paint, made possible new styles of painting. 

The three detail images of eyes shown to the right cover more than 400 years and have been taken from works by Michelangelo, Jan Van Eyck  and Van Gogh.

In 1841 metal tubes were invented to hold oil paints.  Without this development it would have been impractical for Van Gogh and other artists to venture outside of their studios to work in the natural world.  

Almond Blossoms by Vincent Van Goch 1990

With the expansion of global trade Van Gogh and others had access to works of art from remote parts of the world.  Van Gogh shared living quarters with Paul Gauguin for a while and both were serious collectors of ukiyo-e wood cuts from Japan.  Many of their paintings such as Van Gogh's irises and almond blossoms drew directly from the style and qualities found in these prints.

The Potato Eaters by Vincent Van Gogh 1885

Van Gogh is technically classified by art snobs as part of post-impressionism as he turned to painting only toward the end of his life, following on the heels of the mark the impressionists had made on the art market in France.  Van Gogh's struggles with poverty and mental illness would have prevented him from painting at all had it not been for the life-long emotional and financial support he received from his brother Theo.  It wasn't until he reached his late twenties that Van Gogh produced

his first paintings after decades of pen and ink sketches.  His early paintings such as The Potato Eaters, were dark and brooding with the same monochrome quality as his drawings. Discouraged when none of his work sold and as Theo was a successful art dealer in Paris, Van Gogh began to heed his brother's advice to lighten up things and incorporate brighter colors into his work.  Despite embracing his brother's suggestions he sold only two paintings in the four remaining years until ending his life at the age of 37 by shooting himself in the chest.  

The most significant elements contributing to the style of his work were not external but came from within. As a youth in school and later advanced studies, as well as the initial work he found as a commercial artist, Van Gogh devoted himself exclusively to drawing.  It was limited to ink and chachoal on paper with a color palette confined to a range between black and grey.  Over many years he produced more than a thousand formal drawings.  The source of the 

brushwork found in his oil paintings is the 

style he developed in his drawings.

The elements of every scene, be they stone walls, paths, plants, fields or hills are not visualized by solid shapes but rather by jabs, slashes and dots.  Comparing his drawings with his later paintings makes it seem as though he used a paint-by-numbers kit.   

The other aspect of his work that came from within was his ability to portray nature in somewhat the manner of a caricature.  Since I could never learn how to do this I always assumed this was a talent that you had to be born with.  I just marvel at the fact that despite the fragmentation, the flurry of colors, the distortion and exaggerated features there's no mistaking the cypress trees. irises or sun flowers in his paintings.  I consider it a kind of small miracle when a 2-dimensional image that is a radical abstraction, can convey the essence of a Cypress tree as much if not more so than a straight photograph.  Unlike Carmela I am not quite brought to tears by Van Gogh's paintings but they never fail to fascinate and inspire me.