With its seductive swirls, intoxicating composition, and enchanting color palette, Vincent van Gogh's "The Starry Night" is one of the world's most beloved and well-known works of art. In its creation and eventual success, there's much more to "Starry Night".
After experiencing a mental breakdown in the winter of 1888, van Gogh checked himself in to the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum near Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. The view became the basis of his most iconic work although art historians say that van Gogh took some liberties with it because he left out the iron bars. As he wrote in May of 1889, "Through the iron-barred window, I can see an enclosed square of wheat ... above which, in the morning, I watch the sun rise in all its glory."
He should've spent a night at "Riverbend": the biggest sky imaginable, no iron bars, and the mad world kept safely in its asylum outside the gate.
