DKJo! | Vincent van Gogh – “Starry Night”

A swirling sky, huge stars, a dark cypress tree, and a small town. The painting “Starry Night” is so recognizable that it’s easy to stop really looking at it. So let’s try for a moment to forget that we’re looking at an icon and take a fresh look at Vincent van Gogh’s painting from the beginning. Let’s do this together during the November meeting of DKJo!—the One Painting Discussion Club

Van Gogh painted “Starry Night” in June 1889, while staying at the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole hospital in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. The starting point was the view from his window, but the painting is not a faithful representation of it. Van Gogh combines what he actually saw with his memory, earlier studies, and his own vision. The real night sky meets an imaginary town here, and the tranquil landscape almost disappears beneath an expressive sky that seems to be in constant motion.

During the meeting:

• We’ll explore what van Gogh actually saw. We’ll examine the view from Saint-Rémy—the mountains, the stars, and Venus, which was exceptionally bright at the time. We’ll also see which elements of the landscape the artist altered or added, and why “Starry Night” shouldn’t be treated as a depiction of a specific location.
• We’ll break down the composition into its parts. We’ll see how the vast sky is juxtaposed with the low-lying, almost motionless town, and how the dark cypress tree ties the ground to the upper part of the painting. Would the entire composition still work the same without it?
• We’ll take a closer look at the painting technique itself. We’ll examine the thick layers of paint, the strong contours, and the brushstrokes that, rather than calmly depicting the landscape, set it in motion. We’ll consider why Van Gogh’s sky feels more like it’s “happening” than simply looking a certain way.
• We’ll compare the painting with the artist’s letters. Van Gogh called the painting a “study of a starry sky,” and a few months later he wrote about deliberately exaggerating its composition. Interestingly, the painting wasn’t among the works of his own that he rated most highly.
• We’ll talk about what we’re actually looking at. A landscape? A nighttime observation of nature? A painting constructed from memory? Or perhaps the moment when the actual view becomes, for the painter, merely a starting point for creating his own reality?

As always at DKJO!, we won’t be looking for a single, definitive interpretation. We’ll examine the facts, the context, and the artwork itself, and then see where our conversation takes us.

The event will be led by art historian Łukasz Wudarski.