When in Singapore: Gazing at Van Gogh's starry night at the ArtScience Museum

A starry night in broad daylight. Why not?

It was an overwhelming experience. Sitting on a bench, gazing past the cypress at swirling clouds, the gleaming moon, and the twinkling stars. It is The Starry Night as I see it and the starry night as Van Gogh saw it through his window more than a century ago…in an asylum at Saint-Remy.

Great minds and great artists are always labeled as mad, maybe because they see more and beyond what the normal eyes can perceive. Vincent Van Gogh, the Dutch post-Impressionist painter, may be madder than usual. He had his bouts of insanity throughout his life and passed away at a young age of 37 with the knowledge that only one of his paintings was sold among the couple of thousand art pieces he created. In over a decade, Vincent van Gogh created 900 paintings and 1,100 drawings and sketches that included portraits and self-portraits, landscapes and wheat fields, cypresses and sunflowers. It was too soon for him to pass on to witness his success as an artist and a master.

Van Gogh’s interest in art started at an early age, and he continued dabbling in it until he decided to become an artist. In his late twenties, he started painting, and at 32, he painted his first major work—a somber-toned "The Potato Eaters." When the artist moved to France a year after, he discovered the French Impressionists and the sunny Provencal landscape. None sooner, his canvases exploded with bright hues, a unique style highly recognizable as his own. In the last couple of years before his demise in 1890, Vincent van Gogh was able to create his masterpieces.

From admiring Van Gogh’s artworks in art books to seeing the masterpieces in real time, I am truly lucky. Traveling abroad has afforded me the opportunity to gaze at the world’s greatest Impressionist pieces in person.

At the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, I gazed at "The Potato Eaters" and rooms full of the master's opuses. At the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, La nuit étoilée (The Starry Night over the Rhone), The Church at Auvers, and an artist's self-portrait serenaded me with their sumptuous hues. In New York City, the deep blue skies swirled and danced before me once more at the Museum of Modern Art while more irises bloomed at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. 

It was this visit at the ArtScience Museum that brought back the wonderful encounters with Van Goh across the globe. It was a reminder how blessed I am. While the galleries abroad presented Van Gogh's masterpieces in two dimensions, the ArtScience Museum's presentation was quite unique. 

In the "Van Gogh Alive—the Exhibition," the masterpieces are turned larger than life. Art took a new channel to every art lover's heart. "Self-Portrait," "Vase with Twelve Sunflowers," "Vincent’s Chair with His Pipe," and "The Starry Night"—these Van Gogh opuses were projected across the rooms, turning walls, columns, and even the floor into giant canvases. It was an immersion in a brilliant world of color, movement, and light.

Yes, the clouds were swirling and the stars twinkled brightly long before sunset…in the ArtScience Museum.