Who Goes to See Van Gogh’s “Starry Night”?

On a busy Thursday afternoon, visitors to the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York packed into the institution’s fifth-floor display of collection objects from the 1880s through the 1940s, where a large crowd gathered in front of Vincent van Gogh’s “The Starry Night” (1889). Created during the artist’s year-long stay at the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum in southern France, it has since become one the most reproduced artworks in history.

The gallery that houses the painting also displays works like Henri Matisse’s “Dance (I)” (1909), and Salvador Dali’s “The Persistence of Memory” (1931). But there’s something about Van Gogh’s evening scene that draws us. The artist and his night sky even became the subject of a solemn song — which one visitor audibly hummed — released by Don McClean in 1971, the same year as his more famous “American Pie.” What’s behind the work’s allure?

A security guard stationed at the painting frequently told people to back away from the artwork, which is secured by a low rope. Earlier this fall, 16 climate protesters were arrested when they refused to leave the museum’s lobby as part of a protest against MoMA’s board and the fossil fuel industry.

Nearly a month later, some visitors at the museum said they were unaware of the action. In front of “The Starry Night,” they had friends take their photos, took pictures of the painting, and snapped selfies. Most viewers stayed in front of the work for the few minutes it took to wait in what had become a line to capture unobstructed photographs. Other visitors stayed longer, lingering at the back of the crowd — a sight not unlike the scene in front of Leonardo’s Mona Lisa at the Louvre.

“I wanted to finally see ‘Starry Night’ while I was away from the office,” Scott Minert, in the city for a week-long work trip from Iowa, told Hyperallergic. He had been standing in front of the painting for nearly a half hour, left to call his mother, and returned. He remembered seeing a Van Gogh exhibition in Washington, DC in elementary school but had never seen the iconic artwork in real life.

Minert said his mother had asked him if he cried when he finally saw the piece in person.

“She still remembers what she felt with it,” Minert said, adding that his parents saw “The Starry Night” 20 years ago. He admired the aesthetic elements of the painting, namely the swirling brushstrokes that made it so intriguing, but couldn’t quite put the emotive quality of the work into words.

Victor Ferrara, on a last minute stop before he flew back to Brazil the following afternoon, said he had tried to get a print for his room but couldn’t find a good one. “So I decided to see it with my own eyes,” he said.

Ticket prices at MoMA — which will increase from $25 to $30 dollars on October 16 — are not much cheaper than a poster. Unlike institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the museum does not offer free admission to New York residents.

“It’s smaller than I thought,” Ferrara added.

That observation was echoed by another visitor, Grace Howard from North Carolina, who was in the city for the American Institute of Graphic Arts’s annual design conference. “I was in here for a long time,” she said. “And I turned around and was like, ‘Is this real?’” She spoke to the “feel of it,” describing the painting as “powerful.”

“You can tell he was like, ‘How do you capture stars?’ And he did his best,” she said.

“The Starry Night” hangs next to Van Gogh’s “The Olive Trees” (1889), a painting the artist also created while living at the asylum in Southern France. The gallery where they are displayed, dedicated to the work of Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Georges-Pierre Seurat, and Vincent van Gogh, is filled with modern masterpieces — excluding, perhaps, the paintings of the endlessly predatory Gaugin. On the adjacent wall, Seurat’s “Evening Honfleur” (1886) beams a foggy light into the room.

“It’s kind of random,” Christian Turner, in town from Maryland, said in regard to the superstar status “The Starry Night” has earned. He was on a day trip to get a tattoo and didn’t know what to expect at MoMA before he walked in.

“It was cool seeing it, but I like the olive tree one better. It’s the same concept,” Turner said. He gestured toward the nearby painting. “Now that I’ve seen it, I want it to be more famous.”

One visitor mentioned that she had expected the painting to swirl in front of her eyes. As for the psychedelic potential of Van Gogh’s night sky, Alan Reyes, who was on the first day of a 10-day trip from Mexico with his brother, said, “When I was a teen I had [a poster of] that painting, but maybe you can appreciate it better with absinthe.” Van Gogh drank the highly alcoholic drink in excess, a habit that scholars have blamed for his declines in physical and mental health. The beverage was favored by other Modern artists as well, including Pablo Picasso and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

Alan’s brother Aaron said the painting was better than he expected. “You can feel that he’s still here, still in life.”

Around an hour later, Mintert returned to see the painting one last time. 

“I have a print,” he said. “But it doesn’t do it justice.”

Source: Hyperallergic.com