Special Feature—City of Stars

The Starry Night

THE STARRY NIGHT Vincent van Gogh, 1889 Museum of Modern Art 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue  and Avenue of the Americas Manhattan

A personal favorite, The Starry Night is perhaps the world’s most famous painting with a cosmic theme. Vincent van Gogh, the nineteenth-century Dutch postimpressionist, painted it while living in the south of France. The stars, painted as yellow-white blobs, appear to undulate. The thin crescent Moon is almost a caricature, with its illuminated cusps almost meeting around back. It, too, appears to undulate against the dark blue sky. The painting feels as though its sky is a living, breathing entity.

If van Gogh actually saw the stars and Moon behave this way, assuming he did not suffer from a bad case of astigmatism, then that night must go down in the annals of astronomy as the worst clear-weather atmospheric disturbance ever recorded.

Much of The Starry Night’s recent fame derives from its appearance in the 1972 hit single “Vincent,” by Don McLean.

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