Night Sky #2

1991 · Painting

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Art Institute of Chicago

Chicago, USA

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Denna status sedan: 19 aug. 2026
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Om målningen

Vija Celmins fitted an immense star field into Night Sky #2 (1991), less than two feet wide and now at the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago. There is no horizon or familiar landmark to establish a human scale. Her night skies derive from satellite photographs. To build smooth surfaces, she often applies successive coats of pigment, sanding one before adding another. Black and white, with many silvery greys between them, modulate the image. The small canvas and apparently boundless subject make it difficult to judge our distance from the stars.

Med museets egna ord

In the mid-1960s Vija Celmins began using photographs from books, magazines, and newspapers that she found in secondhand stores and at yard sales as the point of departure for her paintings. While she produced work in the wake of Pop Art, her interest in the quotidian had nothing to do with issues of commerce or the media but rather with the illusionistic process of image making itself. Since the early 1970s, the artist has created exacting depictions of such expansive subjects as desert floors, ocean waves, the surface of the moon, and star-studded night skies—the latter derived from satellite photographs. To create her smooth, velvety compositions, Celmins often applies multiple layers of pigment to her canvases, sanding each down before she adds the next. Each work is further modulated through the use of a wide range of black, white, and silvery-gray tones.

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With its jewel-like imagery and suggestion of vastness, Night Sky #2 is at once romantic and unsettling. Lacking the anchor of a horizon, a humanly scaled reference point, or a recognizable landmark, viewers may have difficulty determining their relationship to the image. The enormity of the subject presented on a relatively small scale (the work is less than two feet wide) furthers this sense of disorientation.

Art Institute of ChicagoCC BY 4.0