Date/Time
Wednesday, October 4, 2017
5:30 PM - 7:00 PM
Location
Lyman Allyn Museum
Categories
Members: $5 / Non-members: $10Lecture led by: Professor Robert Baldwin, Art History Dept., Connecticut College
Through visionary nature and subjective aesthetics, Symbolist painters tried to forge a new community of individual sensibilities grounded in the transcendent self and a sublime eternity. The latter existed not just in nature but in art itself. With its peaceful village andvisionary abstraction, Starry Night moved from traditional community (village, starry heavens) to a uniquely modern artistic community, an urban audience of liberated, atomized individuals transformed into kindred spirits by art. Like the inscription chiseled on two slightly later art museums, Starry Night goes beyond sublime nature in proclaiming: “Art still has truth, Take refuge there.”Inspired by Gauguin’s artistic group in Brittany, Van Gogh travelled to the south of France to revitalize his art by returning to his early subject matter – pre-modern landscapes and peasants – but painted now with a Post-Impressionist artistic abstraction. This talk examines Starry Night in the broad picture of larger artistic trends since Romanticism (1790) and the rise of Symbolism (1885-).
Please RSVP to 860.443.2545 ext. 2129 or email us.
Image: Vincent van Gogh, The Starry Night, 1889, oil on canvas. Museum of Modern Art, NYC.