I was reading an article about Iranian film and saw this picture, and, well… it’s fucking fantastic. I haven’t seen it high yet, so tell me if it lives up. Whatever score I’ll give it will be an average of any comments left on this picture in the next couple of days. Here’s the article if you want to read it: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/04/world/middleeast/04iranfilms.html?ref=movies
If there are no comments, I guess I’ll just give it a 71; but I like user feedback, so please, tell me what you think it should be.
Filed under: Artwork | Tags: Artwork, Starry Night Over the Rhone, van Gogh, Weed
I’m going to try a new thing on the weed feed, which is to recommend pieces of art to look at when you’re high. I like to look at art when I’m high, so I guess that you guys might like it too.
I think this is one of Vincent van Gogh’s best pieces of artwork, or at least one of my favorites from what work of his I’ve seen. This piece has a heavy contrast between yellow and blue, as well as shades of black put perfectly to emphasize the dark nature of the blue. In essence, I think that blue is the protagonist of this painting, and in a way van Gogh shows the duality of the color by showing how it can interact with the hints of yellow (the stars in the Starry Night) and the flashes of red on the opposite shore. It’s interesting that the portions of the night closest to the stars become lighter and lighter as the approach, and consequently, as they stray from the stars they get darker and darker, until van Gogh hits you with those occasional patches of black.
One of the sort of ironic aspects about this painting is that it is extremely busy and energetic, which seems out of place because it’s a starry night, something that you would usually look at for a calming effect. Instead, van Gogh overwhelms you with the blotches of yellow and splashes of green that juxtapose the dark elements of the blue. In essence, I feel as if this painting is saying that these things (such as starry nights) that we oftentimes take for granted as simple and a waste of time to fully analyze, are really much more vibrant than we otherwise thought, that the world is really a much more enjoyable place than we see it as, because of these very simple things that make what would seem to be dull, actually extremely vibrant.
There are essentially two things about this piece that make it really enjoyable to look at when you’re high. First, when you look at it as a whole, it can be a little overwhelming, but in a good way. It’s nice to just try to stare and take in the whole thing, even though you know it’s a failed effort. This is the sort of piece that needs to be appreciated bit by bit. So eventually your eyes sort of glaze over and you just look at different parts of the artwork and enjoy the depth of every single section. That’s the reason why I think this is such a great picture to look at when you’re high: being high allows you to just stare at it for a long time and concentrate on every single piece of the painting. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
