Appreciation of Van Gogh's Starry Sky

The starry sky is a canvas oil painting. As a work of art, its material carriers, such as canvas and oil paint, exist objectively. Moreover, its formal symbols, especially colors and lines, are different. When I first saw this work, I was shocked by its contrasting colors: bright yellow moon, white stars, dazzling; Dark green cypress shows anxiety; The blue mountains and villages in the distance are in sharp contrast with the sky and full of peace.

Van Gogh is very particular about the use of lines in this painting. Long curves and broken short lines are intertwined to form the whole picture. The sky and cypress trees use a large number of curved long lines to form a swirling sky and dynamic plants. Hillside, churches and villages are often arranged in short lines repeatedly, once again forming contrast and enhancing the sense of the picture. Both material carriers and formal symbols are part of objective existence, and when the viewer appreciates this work, they are the first things he sees, which is a necessary condition for producing beauty.

Second, the essential level of intermediary.

The dazzling and fantastic scenes in the starry sky have obviously divorced from reality, not the starry sky that people can see in real life, but a certain sense of distance from real life. Therefore, from the artist's point of view, Van Gogh did not copy the starry sky at night or the cypress image in reality, but on the basis of objective reality, he transformed it through imagination to create a starry sky like a vast galaxy or a cypress tree burning with black flames, which reflected the unity of subjectivity and objectivity when the artist created.

Similarly, the viewer is subjective and objective when appreciating the work. For the viewer, the starry sky created by Van Gogh is presented in a specific form and has objective stability. In addition, the viewer appreciates this painting based on the starry sky he has seen in his life. It reconstructs and transforms the starry world through memory and subjective choice. In the process of the generation of the image world, the starry sky in people's eyes deviates from the starry sky in artists' works of art, that is, the current artistic image is different from the image in memory and is subjective.

Third, the core essential level.

A crucial link in aesthetics is self-confirmation. The self-confirmation virtual world at the core essence level is divided into three aspects: self-confirmation of life, self-confirmation of life experience and self-confirmation of free creativity.

(A), the self-confirmation of life

From this point of view, when the audience sees the work "Starry Sky", they will first be attracted by the flickering and turbulent galaxies and the tall and straight cypresses. Van Gogh described them with continuous dynamic and fast-moving brushstrokes, bringing the viewer into the sensory world.

The world people live in is full of images of life, but the heavy pressure of life makes people ignore the essence of life. In this painting, stars of different sizes are hashed around the shining moon, forming an endless spiral galaxy. The orange light of the bright moon is more dazzling than the sun. Stars are more like hot fireballs, while cypress trees are like a burning flame. They seem to have life, and they are striving for progress, so that viewers can feel the existence of life again and realize that they are a part of the vast universe and have strong vitality like these living beings. This expressive life image makes the viewer gain self-confirmation and arouses people's concern for life.

(2) Self-confirmation of life experience

It is not easy for the audience to associate life experience with aesthetics in daily life, but in art, when they look at their own life experience as bystanders, they have a certain sense of distance, form a non-utilitarian attitude towards life and get self-confirmation.

Usually, people have had such experiences or feelings: when they encounter setbacks and difficulties in life, they feel pessimistic and disappointed, so they look up at the stars in the silent night, or when they were young, they lie on the broad lawn of their hometown to enjoy the starry sky, look for the brightest stars and connect different stars into patterns. As a result, people suddenly feel that the little hardships encountered in life are very small compared with the vast starry sky and the universe. Inspiring thoughts and emotions such as "looking up at the starry sky and down-to-earth" let viewers know how to face life again.

For example, in Van Gogh's work Starry Sky, the viewer seems to be standing on the same windowsill as the artist, without any utilitarian pursuit of life. Although my heart is full of negative emotions such as anxiety, depression and even mania, under the starry sky, this entanglement is insignificant in a larger space, but my heart is full of hope. The viewer's life experience is aroused, and he feels that he is not an isolated existence, and then he gets a refreshing strong psychological hint, which produces the pleasure and intimacy needed for aesthetics, that is, the non-utilitarian emotional identity, and thus obtains self-confirmation. Just as the poet Su Shi wrote in his poem, "I don't know the true face of Lushan Mountain, but I am only in this mountain", the viewer stands outside the life experience when facing the works of art, and this sense of distance creates conditions for aesthetics, making it easier to reach the realm of unity of things and me.

(3) Self-confirmation of free creativity

On the one hand, from the artist's point of view, the self-confirmation of creativity includes imagination and communication. Art comes from life and is higher than life. Starry Sky is a work that Van Gogh uses imagination, expressionism and oil painting techniques to convey his thoughts and feelings on the basis of reality, which embodies one aspect of self-confirmation of creativity.

On the other hand, from the viewer's point of view, people with artistic accomplishment can appreciate the artist's creativity and get corresponding affirmation. The creativity of the viewer is mainly embodied in the figuration of images, the logical development of the relationship between characters and events in the virtual world, and the discovery and creation of the meaning of works. Taking the painting "Starry Sky" as the carrier, from the artist's point of view, like Van Gogh in those days, we have developed a rich imagination, experienced the creative process with him, and personally felt that the artist was full of melancholy spirit or tragic illusion in the madhouse in Saint Remy. Subsequently, there was a sense of excitement in creation, and the viewer's creativity was self-confirmed.

(D), beyond the essential level

The in-depth reflection and confirmation of the essence of free creation has produced the highest artistic beauty. Van Gogh's Starry Sky is not an object directly seen by the artist, but an association of fictional images and colors, which is rare in other paintings. Its performance in transcending essence has the following aspects.

First of all, there are hidden mathematical formulas in the works. For example, a starry sky picture taken by Hubble Space Telescope has a wonderful "coincidence" with Van Gogh's work Starry Sky. According to the British Times in 2006, Jose Aragon, a physicist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, found that through the mathematical analysis of Van Gogh's later works, people found that the light and shadow patterns in many works were strikingly similar to the vortex in fluid mechanics or the airflow ejected by jet engines. In other words, the swirls of different shades in Van Gogh's paintings coincide with the mathematical formula used by scientists to describe turbulent phenomena half a century later.

Perhaps Van Gogh, in a state of insanity, had an insight into the principle of whirlpool in his subconscious mind and described it. Under normal circumstances, Van Gogh may lose this ability, which we can see from his works.

Secondly, the starry sky has its symbolic significance. Van Gogh hinted at the relationship between the apostles and Jesus with stars and the moon. His paintings of exploding stars are more closely related to space exploration in that era than to the era of mysterious belief. "

So that some people regard it as the "final judgment" of the solar system. This work created by Van Gogh with restless brushstrokes makes people fall into a maze of yellow and blue. The lines seem to have life and spread, which makes people who fear nature suddenly feel hopeless fear.

Thirdly, the rotating motion in the starry sky seems to be related to the Taiji diagram. "The universe is infinite, so it is called Tai Chi, but the universe is tangible, that is, it has substance. According to the viewpoint of Yi-ology, tangible things come from the intangible, so they are infinite, which is Tai Chi. The entity of Tai Chi is always healthy, that is, the universe is moving, and when it moves, it produces Yang. When it moves to a certain extent, it appears relatively static, and when it is static, it produces yin. So when it is moving and static, Yin and Yang are the root of each other and run in infinity. "

On the one hand, artists may want to show the vastness of the universe; On the other hand, it also implies that life is endless and cyclical.

Van Gogh's works contain profound subjective tragic thoughts, unique forms, and the pictures move under the strong spiritual control. The uniqueness of his paintings lies in transcending nature and normal human feelings. Starry Sky is a work that can not only give viewers a sense of distance, but also breed a sense of closeness. It can cause the image of self-confirmation of non-utilitarian subjects, which is the embodiment of artistic beauty.