anyone have a formalist or contexualist view for van gogh's starry night?

Question

five page research paper due tomorrow

Answer 1

If you need to do a research paper (I assume undergraduate college, or possibly senior year of high school) you'll need to find citations for your interpretation. Journal articles and books, possibly thorough web sources, but NOT Joe Schmoes on Yahoo Answers or Wikipedia.

However, the first step to getting this paper done would be to look at a general overview of Formalism and Contextualism. (Wikipedia Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formalism_%28art%29 )

Basics of the argument of Formalism vs. Contextualism is that Formalists perceive that everything you need to judge a painting is IN the painting itself, in the shape, the colors, the composition, the immediate representative content (possibly). Contextualism posits that you need some context to determine the value of a piece: what certain figures in the painting are supposed to represent, political climate, artist's biography, the list goes on. Contextualism is a LOT easier to argue the case for, because a purely formalist interpretation doesn't even account for figurative content (i.e., is that a moon in the sky represented in the painting? No, it's just a circle of yellowish white in a field of dark blue).

After getting the basics of the two movements in critical theory, pick a side and find a few articles in reputable sources to back up your position (if you have a textbook, cite that for a basic definition and find a few journal articles similar or contrasting in opinion).

A search on Lexis Nexis through my college library (I'm searching using the terms "van gogh formalist criticism") brings up several articles that could be used to cite for this paper. A search on Academic Search Premier or other Ebsco databases at your school or Proquest at a public library would give you some good results. Google didn't give me much in the way of useful information using this search.

Good luck...

Answer 2

It is just a pretty painting. At least that is how van Gogh painted it. It is the state of his mind that 'automatically' transcended the mere nightsky.