Vincent Van Gogh's "Starry Night on the Rhone" (Starry Night in Arles) was created in September 1888. After 136 years, this work has returned to the place of its birth. Van Gogh lived in Arles for 15 months, during which time he was mostly ignored or regarded as crazy, but his influence profoundly changed the place and the history of art.
Recently, the Van Gogh Arles Foundation launched the exhibition "Van Gogh and the Stars". The exhibition is centered on "Starry Night Over the Rhone" from the Musée d'Orsay collection, exploring the visual culture when this work was created, and bringing together works from 1861 to the present. The 165 works by more than 70 artists relate representations of the night sky to 19th-century cosmic fascination and the emergence of artificial light.
The core work of the "Van Gogh and the Stars" exhibition, "Starry Night on the Rhone"
"You should know that I am in the midst of a complex calculation process. These paintings are completed quickly one after another, but after a long period of preparation Calculate. You see, when people say they paint too quickly, you can reply to them that they see too quickly," Van Gogh wrote to his brother.
In September 1888, Van Gogh painted "Starry Night on the Rhone", realizing his long-standing wish. In the spring of the previous year, he wrote to his friend Émile Bernard: "Paint a starry sky, this is what I want to try." A few days before painting this masterpiece , he wrote to his sister, "I really want to paint a starry sky now. It seems to me that the colors at night are often richer than during the day." This painting, which was planned for a long time, expresses Van Gogh's love for the night. interest, which developed through reading poetry and studying the works of painters he admired.
Van Gogh, "Starry Night on the Rhone", 1888, 73×92cm, collected by the Musée d'Orsay, Paris
It is reported that the first part of the exhibition is dedicated to "Starry Night" itself and Van Gogh's interest in astronomy, while the second part explores The spiritual concepts that influenced Van Gogh and his followers.
Georgia O'Keeffe, "Starry Night at Lake George", 1922, 40.6×60.9cm, private collection
Provençal painter Adolphe Monticelli, who inspired Van Gogh, while other artists Learn from the works of Van Gogh and explore the night, the universe, the stars, and the constellations in your own style. Fontana’s “Concept of Space” pokes holes in the canvas for stars; Giacometti’s colorful sky maps in telescope-shaped frames, Helen Frankenthaler’s “dip-dye” technique created The huge night sky... The fascination with the night and the starry sky has always existed in art.
Fontana, Concept of Space, 1965
In contemporary art, Kiefer’s The Secret Life of Plants (2004) swirls a white vortex around a black hole, a golden withered The stem is placed in the center. This is a companion volume to his sculpture book of the same name, whose lead pages are dotted with flecks of white paint in an attempt to depict the spectrum and ancient concepts of the universe. Kapoor's Untitled (2014), in a transparent glass box, imitates a supernova with a series of successive small explosions, their remaining specks beginning to spread out, pause and freeze in the very center of the glass box.
Kiefer, The Secret Life of Plants, 2004
Just as the glow of a gas street lamp appears to come from the stars in Van Gogh's "Starry Night Over the Rhone," many of the artworks in the exhibition juxtapose nature with modern technology. For example, Ralf Nota and Loneck Godion blend science fiction with natural processes. After studying the flight of starlings, the pair created interactive art pieces that used algorithms to simulate group behavior.
luma arles (Ralph Nota and Longnecke Godion), Drift, 2024, Digital Encoding
exhibition features the new work Nebula Observation by French artist Jean-Marie Appriou At the end of "The One", this is a bronze statue of Van Gogh. The statue walks in a classical antipodal posture, with its head wrapped in a glass ball like an astronaut's helmet.“When I was growing up,” Aprilio said, “while other people had posters of pop musicians on their bedroom walls, I had Van Gogh.”
Indeed, it all started with Van Gogh, in 1888 The banks of the Rhone River in September also originated from mankind's continuous exploration of cosmic science since that era:
darkness
darkness, the initial state close to nothingness... It is the absolute darkness before "creation". "The secret pact between death and night," as Diderot mentioned in his treatise on painting, fascinated Romantic painters and made it the subject of uneasy dreams.
Darkness carries this journey, looking forward to the explosion of light brought by Van Gogh's century. At that time, the dark veil of the universe detected by the telescope was torn apart before the artist's eyes. Since then, their works have celebrated the starry sky – evidence of infinite order, both observed and imagined. Matter once thought to be void coalesced in the blue; planets emerged, setting the rhythm for human life.
Odilon Redon's 19th-century work
The Sky
"Everything has grown larger - there is a starry night, and the sky is full of diamonds." - Van Gogh quoted the French painter Jules Breton in his letter if.
Then the star appeared, and shepherds, farmers and people familiar with nature observed and understood its light: they found in it omens and followed the phenology of their field work. Artists captured the sunrise and sunset, marking the beginning of rest or field work. Van Gogh admired painters of nature who were moved by this eternal change, depicting rural scenes as if modernity posed no threat to these eternal cycles.
For the Symbolists, the firmament represented an ideal—an ideal that the artist strived to realize in poetry or canvas to reach a higher truth, free from the constraints of the material world and modern society.
Corot, Dawn and Evening, 1864, 130×163cm
Cosmos
In the 19th century, speculation about the universe and its philosophical implications attracted an increasingly wider audience. Amateur astronomical societies proliferated, scientific illustrators became highly skilled artists, and photography added a decisive link to knowledge. A new visual culture became popular, stimulated by the ever-accelerating pace of discoveries—from the understanding of the structure of the Milky Way in the early 19th century to the popular sentiment evoked by the Great Comet in 1843, when it reached its closest approach to Earth and reached its maximum brightness. Then to the discovery of Neptune in 1846 and the mapping of Mars canals in 1877, all of this triggered widespread debate about the existence of other living worlds. By the late 1880s, French astronomer Camille Flamarion's encyclopedic Astronomy for the People had achieved international success and inspired many artists.
While it is unlikely that Van Gogh was free from this scientific craze when he was painting "Starry Night" on the banks of the Rhone, there is no evidence that he read Flammarion's text. However, we know that he also admired Jules Verne's Journey to the Moon and Victor Hugo's Cosmos Psalms.
Exhibition view, left: Malevich, "The Structure of the Universe", 1916, 104×59.5cm; right: Alicja Kwade, "Superheavy Sky", 2022
Light
"I believe that a lot of The yellow and orange gas lights, which deepen the blue, are interesting because the night sky seems darker here than in Paris. If I were to go back to Paris, I would try to paint the effect of the gas lights on the avenue." - Van Gogh His brother Theo's letter
Street lighting became popular in the mid-19th century. By 1840, all of London was illuminated by gaslight; in Paris, it was not until 1855 that the city gained the reputation of the "City of Lights." In Arles, the installation of city lighting began in 1881 and was still in progress in 1888. Van Gogh painted the banks of the Rhône at a time when these modern lights and their reflections were a novel sight to the local residents.In Arles, and later in Saint-Remy-de-Provence, Van Gogh created many paintings depicting the diffraction of colors by artificial light at night.
This new light fascinated Futurist artists, who celebrated the exhilarating potential of sensual cities made of sound, smell, light and movement. Excessive urban lighting is now thought to be responsible for the disappearance of starry skies and disruption of the biological clocks of plants and animals.
Léon Spiliaert, "Ostend Pier in the Rain", 1924, 75×100cm
The Astronomer's Study
Imagine you are in the astronomer's study, accompanied by their thoughts, images and memory... In this space full of reverie, holding a cup of coffee and gazing at the Milky Way, Gloria Friedmann's work "Les Images du Monde" (1995) Evoking those researchers who capture the complexity and fleeting magical moments of the universe in everyday life.
Maurice Chabas, Solar Eclipse or Nine Celestial Bodies, n.d., 30 x 34cm
Reference book, signed prints, astrophotography, a number of rare objects and works of art showcasing those from the 19th century A fascination shared by those who explore the vastness of the universe...but who's lingering in the study? Is it Flammarion? He influenced many artists and Gustave Doré painted a painting of him. Or American astronomer Henrietta Swan Leavitt (1868-1921)? The artist Jean-Michel Alberola painted two portraits of her. Her studies of stellar luminosities allowed us to measure the distances between galaxies, paving the way for astrophysicist Edwin Hubble to demonstrate the expansion of the universe.
Helen Frankenthaler, Stargazing, 1989, 181.6 × 365.8 cm, private collection
spiral
In 1846, the learned amateur astronomer William Parsons (Lord Ross), for the first time Accurately drawn Helix Nebula. His sketch was reproduced in many works (notably that of Flammarion) and bears a striking resemblance to the brilliant effect of his 1889 Starry Night at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, but there is no evidence that Van Gogh ever saw these famous drawing. However, his expression of the infinite vitality of the universe still deeply moves artists and audiences today.
Following in the footsteps of Van Gogh, avant-garde painters turned their sights to the sky. Their depictions of stars and circles often evoke mysterious celestial movements.
Wenzel hablik, "Starry Night", 1909, 200×200cm
eternity
"This does not stop my strong need for religion, so I will go out at night and paint the stars." - Van Gogh wrote to Titus Austria's letter
Van Gogh's spiritual connection with the starry sky seems to be a continuation of the ancient concept, which is reflected in many myths, that the universe is the creation of God and the abode of the dead. Likewise, Flammarion, one of the most famous astronomers of the 19th century, sought to prove that planets could be inhabited by the souls of the dead and hoped to create a scientific religion. His theory, which combined fiction and science, was a huge success and influenced many artists. These theories resonate with words from a letter Van Gogh wrote to his brother:
“I said to myself, why are the points of light in the sky so much more difficult to approach than the black points on the map of France? It’s like when we take the train to Tarras Like Kong or Rouen, we pass through death to another star.” The artist, influenced by Flammarion, depicts this possible interstellar migration in his work.
Kapoor, "Untitled", 2014
Epilogue
Van Gogh's works take us on an interstellar adventure. Artists and astronauts alike have dreamed of those starry skies. In his novel 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Arthur C. Clarke chose to end his hero's journey in a strange room whose walls were decorated with a work by Van Gogh - suggesting that How important Van Gogh was in defining our shared celestial imagination.
Jean-Marie Aprio's "The Nebula Watcher" depicts Van Gogh as an astronaut or spiritual explorer, lost in the sky or in his thoughts. Like the figures in the Egyptian statues, he has one leg forward, for he is the one who takes the decisive step in our consciousness, like the image of Armstrong - Monday, July 21, 1969, he To set out for the first time into unknown and inaccessible territory – that’s exactly what an artist should do.
Exhibition site
Note: This article is compiled from the official website of the exhibition, "Wall Newspaper", etc. The exhibition is one of the "150th Anniversary of Impressionism" activities and will last until September 8, among which "Starry Night on the Rhone" will be on display until 8 January 25th.
