Vincent Van Goghs Starry Night and Hans Hofmanns Spring - Essay Example

Introduction Vincent Van Gogh’s Starry Night and Hans Hofmann’s Spring were selected for comparison and contrast becauseboth titles suggest a connection with nature and landscape. Another interesting observation is the time spand between the two paintings. Van Gogh’s Starry Night was painted in 1889 during which time, the artist was an asylum patient. Han Hofmann’s Spring was painted in 1944.Van Gogh is described as a post-impressionist artist and Hofmann is described as an abstract expressionist. Despite the similarities in the titles to the two works of art, they reveal a differences which reflects on the artist as a person and as an artist given expression to his experience and perspectives. Where Van Gogh looked to create work that was an interpretation of life through his own deeply emotional brush, Hofmanns works were directed at all expressions that his audience could relate to. However, since art is both an expression of mood/emotion and the artist’s own experiences, the contextual backgrounds of both Hofmann and Van Gogh help to explain why similar titled paintings convey different emotions. Van Gogh In Context Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) was an iconic nineteenth century Dutch painter of the post-impressionist movement. Van Gogh was a deeply religious man, known for his struggles with mental illness (Blumer: 519). Van Gogh’s letters and accounts of his life indicate that he suffered episodes of high energy and moods swings that are consistent with Bipolar Disorder (Blumer: 159). In the last two years of his life, a French doctor diagnosed Van Gogh with ‘temporal lobe epilepsy’ (Blumer: 159). Still, Van Gogh’s life is described as ‘extraordinary’ due to his special artistic talents (Blumer: 159). After studying in Belgium, he spent time in Paris which exposed him not only to both the classical and then modern works of the French avant-garde, but as a metropolitan city exposed him to the Ukiyo-e style of Japan which echoes throughout his paintings with their adoration of nature. Van Gogh favored landscapes and portraits. However, due to his own emotional instability, his work captured his personal impressions of the subject matter of his art. Thus the finished work was the heartfelt reaction to this environment and each captured image contained a more profound emotion of what he saw and how he reacted to what he saw based on his own experiences and perspectives. His work was often unguarded and included colors that symbolized his personal emotions and would eventually be captured in a number of art movements including Fauvism and Abstract Expressionism. Hoffmann in Context German forerunner of America’s abstract expressionist movement, Hans Hofmann (1880-1966) found himself coming into the art world in the early 20th century allowing him to witness both the creation of the likes of cubism and fauvism, while he mingled with their creators. After studying at Mortiz Heyman School of Art and working as an artist in his own right for a time, Hans Hofmann founded his own school in 1915 . Hofmann was fascinated by the works of Matisse, and also the Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky who served as a major inspiration with his philosophy concerning what would be called abstract painting, and in his school Hofmann taught the idea that “Art does not exist in the objectivized realization of reality” but rather “the artist must create his particular view of nature i,e his own experience, be it from nature or independent of it”(Hofmann, cited in Friedel, Dickey & Hofmann: 92). Hofmann with his school would teach the likes of Jackson Pollock, Helen Frankenthaler, Wolf Kahn, Joan Mitchell and many others of the abstract expressionist movement. Throughout his body of work there is often heavy use of a multitude of vivid colors, his subjects changed over time, from his earlier days wherein there was an obvious subject, to his considerably more abstract works. Hofmann believed that it was the artist’s responsibility to create push and pull in his or her work. What this meant was that the artist should create images that were comprises of colors, forms and texture in contrasting exhibition. There should also be a connection to the objects in the world, regardless of the abstract nature of the work(The Art Story [A]). In addition, Hofmann believed that a painter is required to express himself with paint as opposed to words. For Hofmann, color was his means of expression of the world as he visualized it. Van Gogh Analysis Characteristic of a large part of Van Gogh’s work are the brush strokes; short, sometimes rough, and visible. The colors are layered together for the most part in a progression, rather than being meticulously blended which lends to Van Gogh’s distinct style. There is a progression in the sky’s coloration. At the top of the frame the sky is at its darkest, but as it nears the village the blues of the sky lighten up, until the blues of the sky becomes the darker blues of the landscape. Below the seemingly moving clouds is a village succumbed in darkness. This creates a sense of isolation and gloom. Looming to the left of the landscape is a dark rigid structure which also lends a sense of gloom to the work. The sky itself is twisting and swirling in what is often described as turbulence. There is a roundness to the natural elements of the scene; from the wavelike hills that border the sky, to the cypress trees throughout the village. The stars of the sky are sparse and exaggerated in their scope. The light from each star ripples out and lends to the sky’s flowing. This puts the village into contrast, with its more solid colors and straighter lines. Hoffmann Analysis In stark contrast to Van Gogh’s Starry Night Han Hofmann’s Spring has no clear or distinct subject, it is purely a painting by Hofmann. And although there is no discernible physical subject matter, there is still a very clear background and foreground made up of nothing more than colors although with differences in painting technique. The background contains a lot of earthy colors, but featured most prominently are varying shades of green and yellow with white making up most of the foreground. The white coloring swirls around in much the same manner as the clouds in Van Gogh’s Starry Night. The only difference is that Hofmann’s white swirls are much brighter and Van Gogh’s white clouds. Therefore, where Van Gogh’s white swirls deliver a sense of gloom, Hofmann’s white swirls can be viewed as uplifting and perhaps even cheerful. The various colors are wound together rather wildly with a sense that the brighter colors outperform the darker shades. There is a black object that captures the eye to the top left of the painting. One can almost make out a pair of eyes and ears on what might be the head of a creature. However, the dark object is pushed to the background by swirling brighter colors of green, yellow and lilac. Therefore, unlike Van Gogh’s Starry Night, Hofmann’s Spring buries the gloom beneath brightness. Van Gogh’s Starry Night instead, buries the brightness with gloom and isolation. What can be concluded here is that Hofmann’s Spring is an exercise is surrealism in which spontaneous strokes and drips are intended to portray an unconscious stream of thought. The burying of objects renders the painting an amalgamation of the artist’s spontaneity in visualizing objects. Van Gogh’s Starry Night, although an exercise in post-impressionist art, it is a reflection of the artist’s own stream of consciousness which is often described as moody and unstable. The swirling clouds in Starry Night can be said to symbolize Van Gogh’s mental instability and the darkened village with the pronounced dark object can be described as symbolic of the artist’s moodiness and perpetual sense of gloom. Conclusion The titles used in Van Gogh’s Starry Night and Hofmann’s Spring immediately speak to similar consciousness. By the titles of the respective works, one would expect to see a bright starred filled and cheerful night in Van Gogh’s work and a lot of bright colors in Hofmann’s work. Only Hofmann delivers in that bright colors were prominently displayed and in doing so pushed back and outperformed the darker colors. True to his teaching and his philosophies on art, Hoffman created a push and pull with the brighter colors pushing back the dark colors. Van Gogh’s Starry Night, although a starry night in the form of scattered stars and crescent moon, this starry night is overshadowed by the dark, gloomy and isolated village below. Although seemingly peaceful, the dark isolation of the village is disturbing all the same. In other words, Hoffman’s Spring is decidedly a cheerful work of art which realistically portrays that gloom lurks in the background. Van Gogh delivers the opposite message in that while there is cheer as symbolized by the night sky, there is trouble brewing in the swirling clouds and there is a powerful sense of darkness and gloom below. Appendix 1 Van Gogh’s Starry Night Source: Van Gogh Gallery.Vincent van Gogh: Starry Night. (2015). Available online: http://www.vangoghgallery.com/painting/starry-night.html (Retrieved 9th December, 2015). Appendix B Hofmann’s Spring Source: Abstract Expressionism.Hans Hoffman. (2015). Available online: http://theabstractexpressionists.weebly.com/hans-hofmann.html (Retrieved 9th December 2015). Works Cited Blumer, D. The illness of Vincent Van Gogh. The American Journal of Psychiatry, Vol. 159(4) (April 2002): 519-526. Hofmann, Hans. Texts by Hofmann, 1951-1963. In Friedel, H.; Dickey, T. and Hofmann, H. (Eds.) Hans Hofmann. Hudson Hills, (1998): 92-100. Read More