Museum Paper

Submitted By bjgorm143
Words: 548
Pages: 3

Britney Gorman
Danielle Susalla
Art 110
Spring 2013
Visual Analysis of Vincent van Gogh’s “Irises”
Vincent van Gogh is a very prominent painter from the 1800’s. He created some of the most memorable paintings still to this day. On May 8, 1889, van Gogh admitted himself to an asylum in France called Saint Paul-de-Mausole in Saint Remy, after he had been hospitalized multiple times for self-injury. The asylum was surrounded with gardens and nature became the main focus in his paintings. It was there he painted some of his most powerful and energetic paintings, one of which is a representational piece called Irises. He spent a lot of his time studying nature and its meaning. He saw spiritual power in nature and that was his place of peacefulness. He painted Irises within the first week of being at the asylum using oil on a 28 x 36 5/8 inch canvas. You can tell Van Gogh really took the time to study nature very well by the distinctive lines and colors he used to create this piece. Lines play a big part in this piece of art work. The lines are very distinctive and if you look closely you will notice that there are little to no straight lines used. Everything in this painting is outlined thick to make it really stand out. Van Gogh mainly uses contour lines in this painting. The grass looks to be razor sharp and the stems are very thin. He uses a darker shade to outline the edges. The pedals are outlined with a darker blue and the pedals themselves are painted a dark violet color. Some of the grass is a bluish color and are outlined in black while the other grass is green outlined in a darker green color. He throws in one white iris and some other flowers that he painted an orange red color in the background. The dirt in the garden is made of up different shades of brown, white, and black thick lines. The colors that Van Gogh chooses to use really give it a serious and