Active analysis THE STARRY NIGHT ARTIST TITLE DATE/YEAR MATERIALS AND TECHNIQUE DIMENSIONS LOCATION VINCENT VAN GOGH The Starry Night 1889 oil on canvas 73.7x92 cm New York, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) This painting is one of Van Gogh s last works, painted about a year before his suicide. Van Gogh used two tools to depict his personal vision of reality: the colors, which are not the real colors of the scene, and heavy strokes of a brush loaded with paint. In the left foreground, Van Gogh depicts a group of cypress trees shaped like tongues of flame: they seem to waver as though they were moved by an inner force. On the right, he paint the houses of a village and a church with a tall triangular steeple, a common style in Van Gogh s native country, Holland. The trees and hills in the background are dark because they are far away. The sky is what captures our attention. The stars and the moon are the most important elements in this painting: they are so different in color from the background as to seem to light up the night. The brushstrokes make the painting very dynamic : we seem to feel the wind that cartwheels across the sky and moves the trees. 52 Observe the painting and answer the questions below. 1 How are the landscape elements outlined? with bright halos. with dark, almost black brushstrokes. 2 Why? To pick out the subjects from the colored background. To merge them into the background. 3 Observe the windows of the houses. How do they differ from one another? ........................................................................................... 4 What is in the sky besides the moon and the stars? Is it something tangible? ........................................................................................... Choose the correct word or phrase. 1 The night sky takes up about twothirds / one-third of the space; the swirl of lines and colors that forms the vortex at the center comes from the left / right of the painting and moves toward the left / right, like writing. The whole sky is painted with straight / curved lines of color, which constantly change direction. 2 The moon is shown as a circle / crescent: it is yellow, like the sun, and surrounded by a ring of light that changes color from light yellow to red-orange / blue-green.