It is safe to say that history has shown that admittedly insane people are often the most genius of us all. The Starry Night is an oil painting on canvas by Vincent van Gogh, painted around June, 1889. Vincent van Gogh admitted himself into an insane asylum on May 8th, 1889 after mutilating his own ear during a breakdown. The painting portrays the view from the window of van Gogh’s second story bedroom in the insane asylum (Citation 1). Vincent van Gogh manipulated The Starry Night to express his emotions and worldview through several artistic elements. Color, proportion, and design are some of the elements of the that van Gogh used to express his feelings and worldview.

Vincent van Gogh used color in The Starry Night to represent his reflection on life and death. The artist used yellow to symbolize the way his saw his own life and life in general in respect to the world. In the painting you can see that there are spots of yellow all over the painting except for on the church, symbolizing that he saw himself everywhere but just could not see where he belonged. From the painting it seems as if van Gogh saw himself as primarily separated from anywhere else. Most of the use of yellow was in the stars in the sky, separated and looking down upon the city and the landscape. His use of yellow in the stars brings up his sense of the afterlife. He saw life in the sky, gazing down on the nature after death. Van Gogh didn’t see himself fit for society in the mental condition he was in, so he separated himself from everyone else by admitting himself into the insane asylum. However, yellow was not the only color van Gogh used as a symbol.

While van Gogh used yellow to represent his life, he used shades of grey to signify death. Van Gogh liked to focus on landscapes and portraying beautiful scenes of nature because his religious view was that God could be found in nature. With this view of nature came a view of the church as an oppressive figure to the lower class and society. In The Starry Night, van Gogh used greys and browns to portray the church windows. To van Gogh, the church windows represented death and oppression. All of the other buildings are illuminated and in the surroundings while the church sits in the center with these dark ominous buildings and the windows portraying the inside of the church are without any life, represented by yellow. Since death is the absence of life, it can be concluded that the windows of the church represented death to Vincent van Gogh. He saw the church as absent of God because he saw God in nature. The church was viewed by van Gogh as a place of death because it distracted people from God in nature. Van Gogh saw the church as an oppressive figure and he used color and proportion to express his view of it.

The use proportion in The Starry Night depicts Vincent Van Gogh’s worldview. By analyzing The Starry Night, it is clear that the use of proportion is intentional. Van Gogh purposefully made the church and the height of the steeple significantly higher than the rest of the town. This use of proportion shows how van Gogh saw the church as an oppressive figure to society. He saw the church as this ominous figure towering over the town and making the people feel small and powerless.

Van Gogh also uses proportion to show not only how he feels about the church, but how he feels about nature. He makes the cypress tree outside of the window of his bedroom larger than any other object in the painting. This was van Gogh’s way of expressing that even though the church is in middle of society and oppressing it, nature is bigger. The town and the church are both encompassed by nature in A Starry Night. The cypress tree reaches all the way up into the highest part of the heavens in the painting. Van Gogh shows that he believes that nature is more important than anything else and it is the portal through which we can get the closest to the heavens.

The designs that were used when painting The Starry Night express van Gogh’s emotions at the time that he created this work of art. Van Gogh used thick, swirly brush strokes in the sky that cause a sense of chaos and uneasiness while the town is painted with somewhat linear brushstrokes that depict a calmness about the town. The sky illustrates van Gogh’s confused emotions of his mental state at the time. While his emotions were very swirled, chaotic, and hard to interpret with his mental illness, he had specks of hope occasionally in his mind. Dark shades of blue painted in swirls and curvy lines are van Gogh’s way of expressing his confusion. Van Gogh was confused at that time because he saw God in nature yet at the same time he felt like he was in need of something. He had the occasional sensation of hope for his mind getting better and he portrayed this sensation with the bright yellows used in the stars.

Through several artistic elements, Vincent van Gogh employed The Starry Night to illustrate his emotions and worldview. The colors yellow and grey were used to symbolize life and death. Proportion was used in the painting to show the importance of some aspects and van Gogh’s worldview of other aspects. Design was used in the painting to express Vincent van Gogh’s emotions during the time that he was in the insane asylum. Everything that van Gogh used to create A Starry Night was intentional. Van Gogh had a purpose for every artistic element that he used in the painting. He may have been mentally ill, but van Gogh was one of the greatest artistic geniuses of all time. He could turn one blank canvas into a tool to express multiple complex ideas in a beautiful yet mysterious way.
