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Updated on April 5, 2020

The magical world of Van Gogh’s art

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A landscape in which the starry night sky takes up two-thirds of the picture. In the left foreground a dark pointed cypress tree extends from the bottom to the top of the picture. To the left, village houses and a church with a tall steeple are clustered at the foot of a mountain range. The sky is deep blue. In the upper right is a yellow crescent moon surrounded by a halo of light. There are many bright stars large and small, each surrounded by swirling halos. Across the centre of the sky the Milky Way is represented as a double swirling vortex. The Starry Night, June 1889. Museum of Modern Art, New York.

A small room with paintings on the wall, two chairs, a single bed and a table Bedroom in Arles, 1888. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.

The Church at Auvers, 1890. Musée d'Orsay, Paris.

A painting of a large cypress tree, on the side of a road, with two people walking, a wagon and horse behind them, and a green house in the background, under an intense starry sky. Road with Cypress and Star, May 1890, Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo.

A squarish painting of a closeup of two women with one holding an umbrella while the other woman holds flowers. Behind them is a young woman who is picking flowers in a large bed of wildflowers. They appear to be walking through a garden on a winding path at the edge of a river. Memory of the Garden at Etten, 1888. Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg.

White House at Night, 1890. Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, painted six weeks before the artist's death.                                                         

On the edge of the sea four boats on the water in the distance; closer, four boats are on the dry sand on the beach Fishing Boats on the Beach at Saintes-Maries, June 1888. Van Gogh  Museum, Amsterdam.                                                            

A group of five sit around a small wooden table with a large platter of food, while one person pours drinks from a kettle in a dark room with an overhead lantern. The Potato Eaters, 1885. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.         

Art can be a great source of pleasure in our lives. Even a passing acquaintance with art can enrich and deepen our understanding of the world around us. There’s no need to become an expert to have a meaningful relationship with art. All it takes is a moderate attention to detail, a little bit of patience, and a willingness to reflect on your own feelings.

There are no hard and fast rules about what makes a piece great, mediocre, or bad; remember, Van Gogh’s work was once considered amateurish and forgettable. Art should appeal to you first through your senses. That doesn’t mean a painting has to be beautiful to be good, but it must grab your eye in some way. A work might grab your attention through its subject matter, it’s use of color, an interesting juxtaposition of objects, it’s realistic appearance, a visual joke, or any number of other factors.

 

 

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The magical world of art