Art theories

The picture I have chosen to reflect on is The starry night by the

Dutch post-impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh. Painted in June,
1889,the view is seen from his asylum room at Saint-Remy-de-Provence,
just before sunrise. It is van Goghs best-known painting and it is now in
the permanent collection of New Yorks Museum of Modern Art.
To begin with, although the particular work of art pictures the
moment when the moon is up, van Gogh had studied the view in multiple
stages of the day and night and different weather variations to get the
accuracy of the elements. In my opinion, there is no dominating element
of the painting. We can consider either the mountain or the sky to be the
central focus of the picture. One theory is that the brightest star is Venus,
as interpreted from van Goghs letters. The moon is stylized, as the phase
was not correctly represented when van Gogh painted this. On the other
hand, even though there is a battle between the two central focuses, we
can say that the village is definitely not pictured according to reality, so
he made it a part of the far-away plan of the painting.
Regarding the art theories, some critics consider van Gogh as being at
the edge of Impressionism and Expressionism. Moreover, the same critics
characterized the brushstrokes as being bright and heavy, sloppy, crude
and childish. While other painters of the time focused more on painting
landscapes and portraits, used his expressive and hyperbolic technique to
envision his state of mind, feelings and his personal impressions of the
subject he painted. While Starry Night was far ahead of the time, it
paved the way for Expressionism, an art movement of the early twentieth
century. Some say this could be interpreted either as Post-impressionism
or a mixture between Impressionism and what would be called
Expressionism.
Sources: http://legomenon.com/starry-night-meaning-of-vincent-van-gogh-painting.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Starry_Night