van Gogh often painted scenesfrom the world around him. But rather than depicting reality, he drew inspiration,largely from his imagination and memory. He wrote about his fascination with thenight sky stating, it often seems to me that the night is much more alive andrichly colored than the day. Curator Ann Temkin. What's remarkable of The Starry Nightis the depiction of the sky itself. We have an intensely turbulent,vibrant, excited, agitated night sky. The stars have radiatingconcentric rings of light. The moon has the sameset of rings around it. And also they're set in the sky, which is not like the sky thatwe look up into at night. But one in which the variousblues that van Gogh uses, are positioned intothese swirling patterns. The village below is Saint-Remyin the south of France. van Gogh spent a year in a mental hospitalthere, making more than 150 paintings depicting the hospital grounds andsurrounding landscape. >> And I think one would be able tospeculate, rather than being a portrait of what one might see looking ata night sky in the summer of 1889. It's much more an expressionof the turmoil in the artist's own imagination thathe's projecting on to that sky. Chances are you aren't standingin front of this painting alone. You're probably surrounded by quitea few people also looking at it. And I think with this painting onerealizes that part of the reason for it's status as such a treasure andthe way it's beloved by so many people has to do with van Gogh'sway of touching one's emotions.