TRANSCRIPT:
Liz Lidgett 0:01
Welcome to Ten Minute Masterpieces, where we explore curious stories behind the world's most renowned works of art. I'm Liz Lidgett. I'm an art advisor and gallery owner in Des Moines, Iowa. And all my life I've been passionate about art. One of the things I love most about what I do is the opportunity to help people connect with a new piece they love, or to see a new perspective through art.
Liz Lidgett 0:25
You may be able to close your eyes and picture the artwork in each of our episodes. But how much do you know about each masterpiece? Today we're going to dive into one of the most recognizable works of art in the world, Vincent van Gogh's The Starry Night. Even within this episode, you'll hear his last name pronounced different ways. That's because depending on where you're from, there are various phonetic ways to say the artist’s name. In the traditional Dutch, people say VON-GOUGH. Many people in Britain in Europe use a simpler VAN-GOFF. And for this podcast, since I'm American, I'm going to say VAN-GO. To set the scene of Vincent van Gogh's The Starry Night, here's one of the artists we represent at Liz Lidgett Gallery to describe this Ten Minute Masterpiece.
Jessi Raulet
1:10
My name is Jessi Raulet, and I am a painter in Strasbourg, France. The Starry Night is an oil painting on canvas. A pulsating night sky takes up almost three quarters of the painting. The sky is dominated by chromatic blue swirls, and a glowing yellow crescent moon. White, yellow, orange and blue stars are painted as radiating points of light. The brushstrokes swirl and follow each other, creating streams of dynamic energy throughout the sky. In the left foreground, cypress trees partly obscure the sky with their dark branches. Behind the trees, blue rolling hills lead to a village nestled in a valley in the distance on the lower right of the canvas. The straight lines of the village cottages and slender church steeple create an orderly corner in an otherwise turbulent scene.
Jessi Raulet
2:08
Like many artists, I am a huge fan of van Gogh's work. Last spring, I visited the sleepy village featured in the painting, Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. It was a beautiful and quiet village filled with shops, cats on windowsills, colorful doors, and rose bushes. I ate lavender ice cream while strolling the colorful winding streets. Visiting little towns like Saint-Rémy-de-Provence is like an exercise in daydreaming and exploration, encouraging me to stay curious as an artist.
Jessi Raulet
2:42
In an undergrad art history class, I was fascinated to learn that if you stuck a needle into The Starry Night, you would still find wet oil paint underneath. This might be an art history rumor, but I like the idea that van Gogh's wet brushstrokes are still very much alive and awake in the painting, much like the feeling the vibrant sky creates above the sleeping town below. At the time, van Gogh's style was radical, it was outside of the box. As an artist, The Starry Night lets me explore breaking the rules of art a little bit. I'm inspired to try new techniques, to test the boundaries, to push myself creatively and to look to the night sky and beyond for inspiration.
Liz Lidgett 3:30
Thank you for that, Jessi. The Starry Night was painted by Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh in 1889 when he was a patient in a mental health institution in the south of France called the asylum of St. Paul de Mausol near Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. While van Gogh had similar rolling hills outside the bars of his asylum window, he painted The Starry Night from his memory and imagination. Van Gogh suffered from paranoia and epileptic fits for most of his life. A year before he painted The Starry Night he fell into a deep depression after a fight with his fellow painter, Pierre Auguste Renoir. He cut his ear and then admitted himself to the asylum where he was hopeful he could find healing for his mental illness. From the asylum, Vincent often wrote to his brother Theo. From these letters, we know that Vincent completed The Starry Night on June 19, 1889. Due to his insomnia, Vincent was often up very early in the morning. In a letter to Theo on June 1st, he wrote:
Vincent Van Gogh (Quote) 4:26
"This morning I saw the country from my window a long time before sunrise with nothing but the morning star, which looked very big."
Liz Lidgett 4:35
In 1985, University of California art historian Albert Boime compared The Starry Night to a planetarium recreation of the early morning sky view from van Gogh's asylum in June 1889. With the help of UCLA astronomers, Boime concluded that the morning star that Vincent saw from his east-facing barred windows was the planet Venus. In 1889, Venus was passing through the end of an eight-year cycle where it attained maximum brightness and it dominated the pre-dawn sky. In a letter to a sister, Wilhelmina, Vincent wrote about the stars:
Vincent Van Gogh (Quote) 5:11
"If only you pay attention to it, you will see that certain stars are citron yellow, others pink or green, blue and forget-me-not brilliance. It is obvious that putting little white dots on the blue-black is not enough to paint a starry sky."
Liz Lidgett 5:28
It's clear that Vincent van Gogh was an observant student of the cosmos. If you look closely, the stars in The Starry Night almost seemed to flicker. The effect is caused by luminance, the intensity of the light and the colors on the canvas. Our visual cortex has two different parts that process luminance in opposite ways. One part of our brain blends different colors that have similar luminance. The other part of our brain sees contrasting colors without blending. This dissonance causes the squirrels and lights in the starry night to appear as if they are pulsing, flickering or radiating.
Liz Lidgett 6:04
In 2004, through The Hubble Space Telescope, scientists saw a distant cloud of gas and dust swirling around a star. The swirls reminded the scientists of The Starry Night. Jose Luis Aragon and his colleagues at the National Autonomous University in Mexico analyzed the swirling structures in The Starry Night. The researchers found a nearly perfect mathematical correlation between van Gogh's brushstrokes, and the turbulence measured in natural phenomena, like ocean waves and molecular clouds that give birth to stars.
Liz Lidgett 6:41
Vincent van Gogh died by suicide in 1890, just one year after painting The Starry Night. His brother Theo inherited all of his works. Theo soon passed away and his widow, Johanna Gezina van Gogh-Bonger helped elevate Vincent van Gogh to artistic fame. Van Gogh considered The Starry Night a failure. He felt it was too abstract, too difficult to understand. This, of course, was through the lens of the 1880s, about 50 to 60 years before many artists fully embraced abstract expressionism.
Liz Lidgett 7:15
From college dorm posters to gift shop umbrellas, to creations made entirely of LEGO bricks or jelly beans, The Starry Night has woven its way into pop culture. In 1972, songwriter Don McLean catapulted from a little known folk singer to a major recording artist, with the hit single from his album of the same name, American Pie. The next single on the album was Vincent, which was inspired by van Gogh and The Starry Night.
Don McLean (singing) 7:47
Flaming flowers that brightly blaze, swirling clouds in violet haze, reflect Vincent's eyes of china blue.
Liz Lidgett 7:59
Here's Don McLean in a 2011 interview with Dutch Public Television about the song:
Don McLean 8:04
I read a book about him written by his brother, Theo. I took his most famous painting and used the colors and the energy and the forms and everything to try to grab hold of his essence as a human being. He is his art.
Don McLean (singing) 8:24
Starry Starry Night.
Don McLean 8:26
So much of his life is about feeling
Don McLean (singing) 8:29
Portraits hung in empty halls.
Don McLean 8:31
Sensation. Pain. Pain is a very important part of art. Artists are missionaries in a sense, they're on a mission to change the world a little bit.
Don McLean (singing) 8:45
How you suffered for your sanity. How you tried to set them free. They would not listen, they're not listening still. Perhaps they never never will.
Liz Lidgett 9:06
The Starry Night is a piece that has mesmerized audiences for over a century. But beyond how the masterpiece is entwined with pop culture, the story of its actual creation, Vincent's time and a mental health institution, and the artist considering the work of failure is lesser known.
Liz Lidgett 9:22
For me, The Starry Night illustrates how we all can fall into the trap of self doubt. How even one of the most incredible painters in history felt that his work wasn't good enough. It reminds me not to be so hard on myself and my work because who knows? Maybe 150 years from now, someone will be discussing my work on a podcast about art that has changed the world.
Liz Lidgett 9:47
If you or someone you know is struggling with mental health, there is help. United Way's 211 Helpline provides free and confidential health and human services information, 24 hours a day 7 days a week. If you need assistance locating long term mental health resources, talking through a problem, or exploring mental health treatment options, dial 211 in the US to speak with a live person who can help. Additional mental health resources are also linked in our Show Notes.
Liz Lidgett 10:15
Ten Minute Masterpieces is a production of Liz Lidgett Gallery and is produced by Maribeth Romslo. Special thanks to Jessi Raulet and Dutch Public Television. Check out our show notes for links to our research about The Starry Night and credits for this episode. Join us next time when we uncover stories behind the most mysterious smile in art, the Mona Lisa. Until then, take ten minutes and look at some art. You might just discover your favorite masterpiece.
