the starry night

You all know what Van Gogh's 'The Starry Night' looks like, hence just these close-ups. I had tears in my eyes as I approached this one at the MoMA (but to be fair my eyes were never dry when I was near a Van Gogh in New York) and all I could do was stare at and obsess over the brushstrokes as I could finally understand the murkier parts of the cypress tree and see all the real tones of the village beneath the sky and the glowing lines of the stars and moon in the sky. I texted a friend saying something ridiculous like "I just saw Starry Night in person, I could die happy now." and I meant it! But seeing how I reacted to a long-gone artist's magnum opus makes me want to stick around and see more, from more artists and creatives old, dead, and new.

"I believe that it may happen that one will succeed, and one must not begin to despair, even though defeated here and there; and even though one sometimes feels a kind of decay, though things go differently from the expected, it is necessary to take heart again and new courage. For the great things are not done by impulse but by a series of small things brought together. And great things are not something accidental, but must certainly be willed."

-- Vincent van Gogh

human, all too human

I found this book on my staircase landing and thumbed through it, admiring the vibrant colors/quality of the insets as well as the carefully written analysis on van Gogh and his art. There are some good parts in judging a book by its cover (or its craft) because a well-crafted book will usually (hopefully?) promise equally good insides. My totally biased opinion.