Describe the characteristics of the Vincent Van Gogh in this artwork's Sources of Inspiration.
Outsider is one of the first paintings to register Bennett's shift toward a more deconstructive mode. It is a homage and a deconstruction of Vincent Van Gogh's Bedroom in Arles (1888) and The Starry Night (1889).
Outsider was inspired by the 1988 bicentennial anniversary of Australia since the arrival of the first British convict ships. It was also painted in 1988 which marked a centennial anniversary since Van Gogh's Bedroom in Arles in 1888. He describes this coincidental and parallel relationship as a decision to reflect "what was happening in Australia [and] to Van Gogh in his own particular situation". This was to show both the isolation of Indigenous Australians and Van Gogh.
Bennett also drew inspiration from Van Gogh's The Starry Night (1889) and its conception within an asylum. In an interview with Pat Hoffie, Bennett describes this as an interest in the "pain and frustration" of Van Gogh. He articulates a mood of displacement within Outsider through combining the decapitated torso with the spurting blood turning into the spirals of Van Gogh's sky.  By appropriating famous works of Van Gogh, Bennett posits that his painting is inspired and informed by "postmodern deconstruction and… strategies of appropriation" to produce an ironic strategy of ‘history’ paintings. His goal is to draw on the iconographical paradigm of Australia and by extension Europe, to investigate Euro-Australian representation but with a particular focus on Aboriginal people. By recontextualising images Bennett seeks to incite change and to create a "turbulence in the complacent sense of identification with… history" where new possibilities for representation can arise.
Australia iconographical The Starry Night (1889) ‘history’ paintings. postmodern displacement recontextualising deconstructive The Starry Night Bedroom in Arles Indigenous Australians Bedroom in Arles (1888) Indigenous Australian bicentennial anniversary Van Gogh Vincent Van Gogh's Bedroom in Arles (1888) appropriation