The Painting.........(The Cafe Terrace at Night)

It is an experience, myriad of reception of some dulcet ideas and a story. There is always a story that you receive when you see a painting. It is like a visual percept that is thrown at you to comprehend. What is incredible is the representation of what is perceived. It’s the most beautiful thing, how a painting communicates what it has to convey. It is made by someone, it is repainted by someone else, and it is touched up by someone totally different. All these people have different mentations about the same painting, and so it translates itself on the canvas. A painting kept in a museum has been through so many painters, it has a different tale to tell, to whoever would listen.

There is an overflow of thoughts and emotions when I see a painting. And different versions of the same painting have different meanings, and an even more different communication value. It is strange how a warm toned painting, and a slightly less warm version of the same painting has differences in their basic component, in formation of an idea on any mind canvas.

How should I put it? When I see a painting, I am flooded with an overwhelming poetic narration of the ideas, stage setting, background, and a lot more than what this whole page can encompass. It is like going into a trance and being possessed, you are a different person altogether when you experience a painting. It might not be what the painter has wanted to convey, it might not be what the painting’s object might want to convey, but there is a communing that takes place. And that is so choked with details that you cannot even begin to describe it to anyone. It is ingrained in some cubby space of your convoluted mind frame that you cannot give the exact details of it, without a mechanism that can convert the sensory impulses into a visual medium.

So here it goes, I am giving you a painting to experience, it is an art piece by Vincent Van Gogh, called the “Café Terrace at Night”. It has got a history, that is as intriguing as the painting itself. I wanted to write about the series of events that happen in my mind when I see this paricular painting, but then I wanted you to feel it yourself. However, with the painting are listed some cue words for you to see and feel in the painting.

1. The Warm colours

2. The Pebbled roads

3. The starry night( The starry night in the painting, it has no connections whatsoever with “The Starry Night” by Gogh)

4. The people

5. The waitress

6. The couple

7. The houses, dark but lit from inside

8. The Small tables, petite chairs

9. The shed

10. The gallery

11. The lamp

12. The tree

13. The dark buildings

14. The Café’s Verge

15. The Grey threshold

16. The Windows

17. The Dark Alley

18. The pointed tower

19. The short man or the someone…

20. The lady in Red.