Sorrows are boon for an artist. Vincent Willem van Gogh's works have proved it time and again, though the artist lived in penury during his lifetime.
Van Gogh's The Starry Night continues to be one of the highlights of the exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. The work depicts a turbulent night sky, a reflection of the artist's own mind, drawing large crowds even on a snowy morning when I visited MoMA. It is one of his 150 works, while being admitted in a mental asylum near Saint Remy in France in the summer of 1889. ''This morning, I saw the country from my window a long time before sunrise, with nothing but the morning star, which looked very big,'' wrote van Gogh in a letter to his brother Theo.
Night sky was a perennial source of inspiration for the Dutch artist, who went on to become a stalwart in the history of western art. ''It often seems to me that the night is much more alive and richly coloured than the day,'' he wrote. The artist has made the night sky in The Starry Night all the more vibrant with a swirling pattern and rings of radiance around the stars and the moon. The colour palette he has chosen adds a quaint charm to this work, oil on canvas.
The Starry Night, is one of the most famous works of van Gogh. The village where he spent a lot of time while being admitted in the asylum has also been featured in this painting enriched with fragments of imagination.
Van Gogh did most of his works in the final two years of his life. Most of the works in his series—on wheat fields, cypresses and olive trees—were done during his stay at the asylum.
The artist ended his own life, a tussle with depression and insanity at the age of 37. His death remains as enigmatic as his works.
