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NARRATOR: Yeah, you know this picture.
You can probably name its creator and at least
one detail about his life.
And I bet you know the title, too.
I mean, heck, you might have even done the puzzle.
It depicts some trees, a town, and, of course, a night sky,
something we've all seen in one form or another.
So what's so special about it?
Is it the image itself that enchants us, the thickly
applied whorls of paint?
Or is it the story of the tortured artist behind it?
Let's better know "The Starry Night."
When Vincent van Gogh--
and, yes, I'm going to try to say my own botched version
of his Dutch name--
painted the picture in June of 1889,
rapid industrial development was underway
in much of Western Europe and the world.
Railroads made travel easier than ever.
Karl Benz had begun to sell the first commercially available
motor wagon.
The first skyscrapers were going up.
The Moulin Rouge opened that year in Paris,
along with that kind of famous structure, the Eiffel Tower,
marking the entrance to that year's World's Fair.
Charlie Chaplin was born in 1889,
followed four days later by Adolf Hitler.
That year, Mark Twain published "A Yankee
in King Arthur's Court."
Nellie Bly circumnavigated the globe in 72 days.
And Chef Raffaele Esposito invented the Pizza Margherita.
In the wider world of art, Impressionism was out.
The more methodical, scientifically rigorous
Neo-Impressionism was in.
And Cezanne and the artists who would later
be called Post-Impressionists were bubbling up.
Rather than making new optical impressions of the world,
like the Impressionists, these artists
were more interested in expressing
their emotional and psychological impressions
through style, symbol, and bold use of color.
Our man Vincent was among them.
Born in the Netherlands in 1853, he bounced around Europe
throughout his teens and early 20s
until returning home in 1880, committed
to becoming a great painter.
His surroundings became his subject matter,
developing his skills as a draftsman and painter,
using a mostly dark palette to document
rural landscapes, still lifes, and Dutch peasants.
He moved around Europe and eventually made his way
to Paris in 1886.
There, he encountered and metabolized
the work of the Impressionists and collected Japanese prints.
We can see his brushwork loosen and palette brighten.
But he found the city frantic, overwhelming, and cold,
and decided to move south to Arles,
where he embraced what he thought of as a more purer
subject matter--
the countryside, more still lifes, a small town,
and its residents, who became his friends.
He depicted the changing seasons with an increasingly
acute and intense attention to color.
Vincent corresponded frequently with his younger brother
Theo, who supported him both financially and emotionally.
In his letters, Vincent sensitively and eloquently
shares thoughts about art, life, and his unrelenting struggle
with his mental health.
On April 9, 1888, he wrote to Theo,
"I must also have a starry night with cypresses, or perhaps
above all a field of ripe corn; there are some wonderful nights
here."
That summer, he painted several night scenes, which
he found to be, quote, "much more alive
and richly colored than the day," a gaslit interior of Cafe
de la Gare, a portrait of his friend
Eugene against a starry sky, and the banks
of the River at night.
Night was not a new preoccupation for painters.
And van Gogh was certainly aware of his contemporaries' efforts.
While productive, he longed for contact with other artists.
So Theo arranged for Paul Gauguin,
who had been painting in Brittany,
to come his way in October of '88 for artistic exchange
and to be Vincent's roomie.
But it didn't last long.
The two disagreed.
And by the end of December, Gaughin was gone,
and Vincent suffered a psychological crisis
that involved his infamous mutilation of his own ear.
In 1889, he entered himself into an asylum at Saint-Rémy,
situated at the foot of the Alpilles Mountains.
And it's here that he painted our picture in question,
one of many he made of the landscape that surrounded him.
He wrote to Theo, "This morning, I saw the countryside
from my window a long time before sunrise,
with nothing but the morning star, which looked very big."
Now, there are a number of ways this picture is not accurate.
He couldn't see the town from his window.
And even if he could, the steeple
didn't look like the one he painted,
which bears closer resemblance to the steeples
of his native Holland.
The morning star is probably Venus,
which he could have seen.
But at the time, the moon was unlikely to have
been a crescent but instead a waning gibbous.
The dramatic swirling patterns in the sky,
which dominate the canvas, do kinda, sorta match
then-published observations of spiral nebulae or galaxies.
But they wouldn't have been visible to him.
Some studies claim the swirling sky and radiating stars
demonstrate luminance, with scaling
similar to that of the mathematical theory
of turbulence.
Some have even linked this depiction
of physical turbulence with times
of psychological turbulence for van Gogh.
But other theorists convincingly speculate
the swirls represent--
wait for it-- wind, clouds propelled
by the mistral, the strong northwesterly wind of Provence
that the artist wrote of.
Accuracy is not the point.
The picture is based on observation and memories
of places but is driven by emotion.
The sky is painted wet on wet, executed quickly
and confidently.
The composition is superbly balanced.
The vertical of the cypresses and steeple
counteract the horizontal of the town
and stabilize the diagonal of the tumbling mountain range.
The town is still, emphasizing the dramatic action
everywhere else.
The hills are rolling.
The cypresses flicker like flames.
And the sky is in spectacular motion.
There are many interpretations of this piece.
Cypress are often associated with the afterlife, a bridge
between the Earth and Heaven.
And Vincent wouldn't live much more than a year
after the painting's creation, dying by suicide
in July of 1890.
Some see the painting as inspired by a religious mood
or achieved in a state of heightened
reality or great agitation.
But the evidence doesn't show this.
He had written of the vast peace and majesty of the night sky,
in fact.
And wrote, "The sight of the stars always makes me dream."
Theo didn't love the piece and wrote,
"I think that the search for some style
is prejudicial to the true sentiment of things."
But it's style that Vincent was desperately seeking,
which he had committed to discovering for himself.
Back in 1874, he wrote to his brother,
"Painters understand nature and love it, and teach us to see."
With "Starry Night," van Gogh does just that.
He teaches us to see the sky, not as it looks but perhaps
as it feels.
This image is universal in that we've all
looked out on a night sky.
But never have we seen it quite like this.
In a career that lasted only a decade,
van Gogh articulated a style that we can't forget,
that continues to draw crowds and captivate us.
"The Starry Night" inspired Don McLean in 1971
to write a song about its misunderstood creator, never
appreciated during his lifetime, which
was played on repeat in 1996 in Tupac Shakur's hospital room
as he died.
Vincent's life story has been adapted to film
on a number of occasions, including the recent "Loving
Vincent," a fully painted, animated film that
brings "The Starry Night," among other works, to life.
But "The Starry Night stands for much more than the search
for recognition or immortality.
With this work, we feel our smallness standing
on the Earth and the hugeness that lies above and beyond.
We feel the striving and the desire
to share with others the world, not as it is but as we see it.
If you're interested in better knowing the why behind things
we encounter every day, then check out the new series
"Origin of Everything," from PBS Digital Studios.
It explores the unfamiliar history behind familiar ideas
and objects, from where the hashtag came from to why
we get grades in school.
I found the episode on why women give birth lying down
to be particularly interesting and kind of
wish I'd watched it before giving birth
to two children lying down.
This episode is supported in part by viewers like you
through Patreon.
Special thanks to our Grand Master
of the Arts, Indianapolis Homes Reality.
If you'd like to support the channel,
go to patreon.com/artassignment.
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