The Café Terrace on the Place Du Forum by Vincent Van Gogh

In The Café Terrace on the Place du Forum by Vincent van Gogh some (translated it means Café Terrace at Night), at times, is overcome with a sense of serenity, calm, familiarity, and warmth. These emotions almost seem to be coming from the painting itself. Vincent van Gogh uses different elements of art to evoke these strong feelings when one is viewing this particular painting. Among these art elements are line, color, texture, negative and positive space, light and darkness, the illusion of motion, and perspective. In this artistic analysis I am going to explain how these particular art elements contribute to the overall meaning to this painting by van Gogh.

Van Gogh uses directional, straight, and curved lines to help convey to his viewers a sense of familiarity, warmth, serenity, and calm. He does this in several different ways. The first way is with his use of directional lines; these lines seem to lead the viewer's sight directly to the white of the waiters clothing, which acts as the point of emphasis. The next way he achieves this is with straight lines that again lead the eyes directly to the people who are walking on the street. In addition, van Gogh uses curved lines to create a winding city street.

The second art element that van Gogh uses is cool colors, such as blues, yellows, greens, and whites, to convey to the viewer a sense of serenity, calm, and warmth. He does this by blending the colors until they seem to be still and unmoving. Vincent van Gogh also conveys these feelings to the viewer by using the color to create the feeling of warmth. He does this by painting the glow of light that comes from every window, lamp, and even the stars above, a shade of yellow. Even the light reflecting off of the café's roof is a welcoming shade of yellow.

Another art element van Gogh used in this painting was by using texture. He used texture to his advantage in several different ways. The first was to convey the feeling of familiarity through the texture that is seen on both the door and on the doorway as well as on the walls of the buildings. This use of texture enables the viewer to feel as if he can feel the roughened textures of these three surfaces. The second way texture is used is by the smoothness of both the tree's leaves and the wooden deck. Lastly, the texture of the hard cobblestones can almost be painfully felt beneath the soft-soled shoes of one's feet.

The fourth art element used in the painting The Café Terrace on the Place du Forum