Compare And Contrast Van Gogh And The Night Cafe

In this essay I will discuss the ways that Vincent Van Gogh’s, The Night Cafe, 1888 was used as influence for Ernest Ludwig Kirchner’s, Street, Dresden, 1908. To prove my point I will provide visual analyzations of the pieces, some background to the artists and the art movements they were associated with, and events that happened around the time the paintings were created that affected many artists and the work they created. Vincent Van Gogh’s painting, Night Cafe, depicts a scene a cafe with four empty tables as well as three with people seated at them. There is a green pool table at the center of the room that casts a large orange shadow onto the yellow floor. There is a man with neon green hair in a yellow suit standing to the right of …show more content…
The same intense contrast of reds and greens that were so essential in The Night Cafe were also used in Street, Dresden as a way to create an uncomfortable and sickly feeling, especially when the olive green was added to some of the faces in the painting. Similar yellows were used in both paintings as well. The bright yellow color of the man’s suit in Van Gogh’s piece is extremely similar to the jacket and the petticoat of one of the women in Kirchner’s piece. Both paintings depict a feeling of isolation, depression, discomfort, and anguish. This is done through the use of intense color palettes, isolation of figures, and expressions of the figures. Both paintings have a decent amount of empty space that translates to the ground and floor. There is a lot of movement in both of the empty spaces, although they each speak for the compositions differently. I felt that the presents of movement in the floor in Van Gogh’s piece was symbolic for the passage of time and was an outspoken aspect of the painting. Whereas in Kirchner’s painting the purpose of the ground seemed to be more along the lines of showing the area as a poisonous or radioactive environment. One huge different between the two pieces is the amount of movement and energy that the figures emit. In The Night Cafe, the figures feel very permanent to the space, showing their rejection what is happening around them. As if the cafe is their hiding place from the real world where life is too difficult and miserable to handle. Meanwhile, in Street, Dresden, the figures carry a very large amount of movement right in the middle of the negative environment. The figures look just as miserable as in Night Cafe, although they seem to be engulfed in the cynical reality. They don’t try to escape, although they also don’t seem to be facing anything, they’re simply living with the unfortunate actuality that