Existential reflections : paintings of starry nights, 1888-1931
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- We have long looked to the stars to understand our place in the universe. In the nineteenth century, the stars marked the shift from religious to natural-scientific worldview which was encapsulated by Nietzsche's declaration that God is dead (1882). The loss of an omnipotent creator precipitated a loss of meaning, setting the individual adrift in a chaotic and unintelligible universe. It was at this moment in time that European painters first made the starry night the main focus of their canvases. However, the pronounced painterly qualities and unusual compositional strategies of these landscapes endowed them with an expressiveness that clearly distinguished them from scientific illustrations. While the literature to date recognises the renewed interest in the stars in the nineteenth century, attributing it to astro-scientific advances, it has neither identified nor investigated the proliferation and striking development of the motif at the turn from the nineteenth to the twentieth century. I argue that the configuration of motif, technique, and composition in the starry night skies by, respectively, Vincent Van Gogh (1888), Edvard Munch (1893), and Paul Klee (1931) anticipates later analyses of death, angst, and the absurd by thinkers including Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, and Albert Camus. I draw on close visual analysis, artists' diaries and letters, philosophical texts as well as poetry to explore how painters not only represented a particular motif but also recreated processes of thought in a non-conceptual manner. By uncovering the affinity between paintings of the starry night and existentialist philosophy, my study offers a new interpretation of the modern, subjective landscape, emphasising lines of thinking over the expression of emotion. Moreover, I trace a second conversion undergone by the motif of the starry night at the turn of the twentieth century from natural-scientific to existential-nihilistic. The paintings by Van Gogh, Munch, and Klee may thus be seen to contend with the deficiencies and strangeness of human existence, tying them into the existentialist dialogue.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2022; ©2022 |
| Publication date | 2022; 2022 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Krueger, Helen Deborah |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Gumbrecht, Hans Ulrich |
| Degree supervisor | Nemerov, Alexander |
| Thesis advisor | Gumbrecht, Hans Ulrich |
| Thesis advisor | Nemerov, Alexander |
| Thesis advisor | Denson, Shane |
| Thesis advisor | Lugli, Emanuele |
| Degree committee member | Denson, Shane |
| Degree committee member | Lugli, Emanuele |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Art and Art History |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Helen Deborah Krueger. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Art and Art History. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2022. |
| Location | https://purl.stanford.edu/sh919tq5668 |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2022 by Helen Deborah Krueger
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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