Admittedly insane people are often the most genius of us all. The Starry Night is an oil painting by Vincent van Gogh, painted June, 1889. van Gogh admitted himself into an insane asylum on May 8th, 1889 after mutilating his own ear during a breakdown (Bulmer 521). The painting portrays the view from the window of van Gogh’s second story bedroom in the insane asylum. Vincent van Gogh manipulated The Starry Night to express his emotions and worldview through several artistic elements. The use of color, proportion, and design in The Starry Night serve to depict the mixed emotions and instability experienced by van Gogh.

The color yellow is often associated with enlightenment and creativity. 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. The color yellow is often associated with deities, enlightenment, and creativity. 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 enlightenment everywhere in nature but not in the church. From the painting it seems as if van Gogh saw himself and his creativity as separated from the church. Most of the use of yellow was in the stars in the sky. The stars are separated and looking down upon the city and the landscape. He saw enlightenment and God in the sky which is why he used so much yellow in the stars. 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 God, enlightenment, and creativity, he used shades of grey to signify death. Van Gogh liked to focus on landscapes, portraying beautiful scenes of nature because his religious view was that God could be found in nature. With his view towards nature came an interpretation 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 yellow because he saw God in nature which is why he used yellow throughout his portrayal of 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 to express his view of it.

The use of proportion in The Starry Night depicts Vincent Van Gogh’s emotions. 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. The proportion of nature to the church shows that van Gogh saw God as a greater force than the church. Along with using proportion to depict his emotions about society, it is quite possible he used it to depict his life. van Gogh had a very disproportionate life because of his mental illness. He could have been expressing that it is difficult for him to find a decent balance in his life. This could show that van Gogh’s artistic capacity great surpassed his mental capacity.

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 things in society revolved around the church, nature is what should be the real focus. 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.

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. His emotions were very swirled, chaotic, and hard to interpret with his mental illness. In the painting, the sky is swirling into itself, expressing the idea that forces are fighting inside van Gogh’s mind. The dark shades of blue painted in swirls and curvy lines are van Gogh’s way of expressing his confusion and lack of balance.

Through color, proportion, and design, Vincent van Gogh employed The Starry Night to illustrate his experience mixed emotions and instability. The colors yellow and grey were used to symbolize enlightenment and death. Proportion was used in the painting to compare importance of nature and the church in van Gogh’s mind. Design was used in the painting to express Vincent van Gogh’s mixed emotions and instability during the time that he was in the insane asylum. 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.
