Below are the lyrics to Don McLean's hit song Vincent (Starry, Starry Night) and a comparison to Van Gogh's Actual Life.
Starry, starry night.
Paint your palette blue and grey,
Look out on a summer's day,
This is giving Van Gogh's vantage point looking out from the asylum at Saint-Remy. When he first entered the asylum, he painted mainly from his room or the courtyard garden, but later went further afield to paint.
With eyes that know the darkness in my soul.
Shadows on the hills,
Sketch the trees and the daffodils,
Catch the breeze and the winter chills,
In colors on the snowy linen land.
Now I understand
What you tried to say to me
How you suffered for your sanity
How you tried to set them free.
They would not listen
They did not know how
Perhaps they'll listen now.
Starry, starry night.
Flaming flowers that brightly blaze, Swirling clouds in violet haze,
Flaming Flowers - The Sunflower Series, Swirling Clouds - Starry Night
Reflect in Vincent's eyes of china blue.
Colors changing hue, morning field of amber grain,
Field of Amber Grain - Wheat Field with Crows
Weathered faces lined in pain,
Weathered Faces: The Potato Eaters
Are soothed beneath the artist's loving hand.
For they could not love you,
This is Van Gogh's tragic Death. Even though he loved painting, his paintings could never love him back.
But still your love was true.
And when no hope was left in sight
On that starry, starry night,
You took your life, as lovers often do.
Van Gogh attempted suicide by shooting himself in the chest, which ultimately led to his death two days later. But I could have told you, Vincent,
This world was never meant for one
As beautiful as you.
Starry, starry night.
Portraits hung in empty halls,
Frameless head on nameless walls,
With eyes that watch the world and can't forget.
Van Gogh's artistic legacy is contained within his paintings, drawings and writings. They are everlasting and will never "forget" the style that created them. They are Van Gogh's eyes that watch the world. This is all metaphorically speaking though.
Like the strangers that you've met,
The ragged men in the ragged clothes,
The silver thorn of bloody rose,
Lie crushed and broken on the virgin snow.
Now I think I know what you tried to say to me,
How you suffered for your sanity,
How you tried to set them free.
They would not listen, they're not listening still.
Perhaps they never will...
Finally we come to the conclusion of realizing Van Gogh's eternal struggle.
The world-premiere of the new Immersive Van Gogh Exhibit from the creators of the blockbuster show at Atelier des Lumières seen by over 2 million visitors in Paris.
We were so excited to actually go to an event, we've only been doing small car trips since lockdown in March.
Our tickets were ordered in February as pre-sales as soon as the show was announced. We chose a date in May as we assumed we would be back from our winter travels (NOT) by then. The tickets were rescheduled to July as the show scrambled to provide the social distancing requirements. The exhibition is custom designed to the historic space that housed the Toronto Star’s printing presses at 1 Yonge Street — transforming the industrial into the magical. Experience the organic landscapes of Van Gogh’s imagination, and ride the rollercoaster of Van Gogh’s brilliance and madness.
Be immersed in 600,000 cubic feet of stunning projection animating the masters’ oeuvre and illuminating the mind of the genius. Wander through giant projections that highlight brushstroke, detail, and colour as you have never experienced them.
Tickets are for timed entry, the video runs in a 35 minute continuous loop so you can enter at any time and stay as long as you like.
Masks are mandatory and you must stay in a social circle but you can move about to any vacant rings.
It was much fuller than it appears here. People come and go.
Visitors will be immersed in Van Gogh’s works — from his sunny landscapes and night scenes, to his portraits and still life paintings. The installation includes the Mangeurs de pommes de terre (The Potato Eaters, 1885), the Nuit étoilée (Starry Night, 1889), Les Tournesols (Sunflowers, 1888), and La Chambre à coucher (The Bedroom, 1889).
Van Gogh saw the Potato Eaters as a showpiece, for which he deliberately chose a difficult composition to prove he was on his way to becoming a good figure painter. The painting had to depict the harsh reality of country life, so he gave the peasants coarse faces and bony, working hands. He wanted to show in this way that they ‘have tilled the earth themselves with these hands they are putting in the dish ... that they have thus honestly earned their food’.
Nowadays, the Potato Eaters is one of Van Gogh’s most famous works.
Starry Night
Vincent van Gogh painted Starry Night in 1889 during his stay at the asylum of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole near Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. If attended, he could leave the hospital grounds; he was allowed to paint, read, and withdraw into his own room. He was even given a studio. While he suffered from the occasional relapse into paranoia and fits - officially he had been diagnosed with epileptic fits - it seemed his mental health was recovering.
Unfortunately, he relapsed. He began to suffer hallucination and have thoughts of suicide as he plunged into depression. Accordingly, there was a tonal shift in his work. He returned to incorporating the darker colors from the beginning of his career and Starry Night is a wonderful example of that shift. Blue dominates the painting, blending hills into the sky. The little village lays at the base in the painting in browns, greys, and blues. Even though each building is clearly outlined in black, the yellow and white of the stars and the moon stand out against the sky, drawing the eyes to the sky. They are the big attention grabber of the painting.
Van Gogh’s paintings of Sunflowers are among his most famous. He did them in Arles, in the south of France, in 1888 and 1889. Vincent painted a total of five large canvases with sunflowers in a vase, with three shades of yellow ‘and nothing else’. In this way, he demonstrated that it was possible to create an image with numerous variations of a single colour, without any loss of eloquence.
The sunflower paintings had a special significance for Van Gogh: they communicated ‘gratitude’, he wrote. He hung the first two in the room of his friend, the painter Paul Gauguin, who came to live with him for a while in the Yellow House. Gauguin was impressed by the sunflowers, which he thought were ‘completely Vincent’. Van Gogh had already painted a new version during his friend’s stay and Gauguin later asked for one as a gift, which Vincent was reluctant to give him. He later produced two loose copies, however, one of which is now in the Van Gogh Museum.
While he was in Arles, Van Gogh made this painting of his bedroom in the Yellow House. He prepared the room himself with simple furniture and with his own work on the wall. The bright colours were meant to express absolute ‘repose’ or ‘sleep’. Research shows that the strongly contrasting colours we see in the work today are the result of discolouration over the years. The walls and doors, for instance, were originally purple rather than blue. The apparently odd angle of the rear wall, meanwhile, is not a mistake on Van Gogh’s part – the corner really was skewed. The rules of perspective seem not to have been accurately applied throughout the painting, but this was a deliberate choice. Vincent told Theo in a letter that he had deliberately ‘flattened’ the interior and left out the shadows so that his picture would resemble a Japanese print. Van Gogh was very pleased with the painting: ‘When I saw my canvases again after my illness, what seemed to me the best was the bedroom.’
