Vincent van Gogh’s, The Starry Night
...nificant change the Projector verified is that the phase of the moon on June 19th would not have been in the crescent shape as it appears in the painting, but rather in a gibbous shape. Boime’s article also discusses the possibility of religion in relation to the painting. But concludes, Van Gogh did not intend The Starry Night to allude to biblical thought. Boime supports his belief with a quote Van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo, “Starry Night did not signal “a return to romantic or religious ideas,” but rather expressed “ the purer nature of a country side compared with the suburbs and cabarets of Paris” (Boime, 90). Latter in the article written by Boime, he examines the well-known astronomer of Van Gogh’s time, Flammarion. Flammarion’s interest ranged from extraterrestrial life to parapsychology and psychical research. Boime explains how Flammarion influenced Van Gogh and how they “looked to science for the solution to humanity’s pressing problems” (Boime, 96). Another author, Lauren Soth, wrote the article “Van Gogh’s Agony,” in June of 1986. In this article Soth discusses “the Starry Night in light of its conceptual history: when it came into Van Gogh’s mind and how his ideas about it developed; its circumstantial history: when and where it was done and what its sources were; and what Van Gogh wrote about it” (Soth, 301). Finally, Soth argued “that the Starry Night is a religious picture, a sublimation of impulses that, since Van Gogh’s loss of faith in the Church, could not find their outlet in conventional Christian imagery” (Soth, 301). Soth explains that the thought of painting a starry night had preoccupied Van Gogh for over a year. This thought of the perfect starry night sky resulted in the painting of two other paintings, Café Terrace at Night and Starry Night Over the Rhone, before Van Gogh created his perfect night sky with The Starry Night. With the examination of what Van Gogh wrote about his perfect painting, Soth supports her belief that The Starry Night is indeed a religious painting. For example, Soth uses exerts from letters Van Gogh wrote to his brother. In one such letter, Van Gogh writes, “by going the way of Delacroix” (Soth, 306). Delacroix was a religious painter, whom Van Gogh admired because of his use of the colors citron-yellow and Prussian blue. Soth compares Van Gogh’s usage of these two colors in the starry night sky with Delacroix and their spiritual association. Soth also argues that Van Gogh often writes about his need to console. Soth explains that this “compulsive urge to console, was essentially religious” (Soth, 308). A third author who questioned the intent of Van Gogh’s, The Starry Night, was Charles A. Whitney. Whitney takes a somewhat different approach to Van Gogh’s painting in that he is an actually astronomer interested in knowing if the stars of Van Gogh’s painting are in alignment of where they would have been when Van Gogh created the piece. Whitney’s article is entitled “The Skies of Vincent Van Gogh,” and was written in September of 1986. Whitney “soon realized that imagination, realism, and mysticism played complex roles in his painting” (Whitney, 351). Through reading letters written from Van Gogh to his brother Theo, Whitney was able to determine that Van Gogh was trying something new. Van Gogh, more and more, was trying to paint from imagination than from reality. Although Van Gogh was grasping this new approach, Whitney was sure that Van Gogh was still referring to the actual n...