Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Visceral Response

Starry night has been and always will be my favorite work of art. There is something captivating about the sky being so large in comparison to the town and the bush that is in the forefront of the image, also being large and almost unreal in it's size.

Because the stars are portrayed as being large and so close I can imagine myself being able to reach out and touch them and know exactly what they feel like. The sky doesn't seem as if it is far away, in fact it feels like you could simply step from the steeple of the church onto the clouds and then onto the stars. 

When I was a child I always thought that the brown cone shaped thing in the corner was a mountain, like Mount Olympus; however, now that I am older I see that it is some sort of bush and it is painted at the perspective of someone looking down upon the town. Because the things of nature are painted so large and imposing you get the feeling that the perspective that it was painted from was meant to show how insignificant a person is in the larger world. 

However, at the same time the lines of the clouds draw your eyes down to the village. At first the lines seem chaotic, then once you see that each painted line is there to show the depth and texture of each object they come together nicely. 

As a child I also thought that the main part of the beauty was how well the colors complimented each other, that is still an integral part of the beauty but only a small portion. 

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