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Van Gogh... the Astronomer
chrissam writes "The Boston Globe is running a cool article about Vincent Van Gogh and the incredible astronomical accuracy in his depictions of heavenly objects in the night sky. An astronomy class from Southwest Texas State University have been able to pinpoint the exact date and time a recently discovered Van Gogh painting was done - 7pm, June 16, 1890 - based on the location of the painting's subject and the position of Venus in the night sky." The result is perhaps mundane - when a painting was painted is not earth-shattering news. But the process involved is fascinating.
It seems to me that the answered the time and date that it was painted, and from that obviously you can fit it into Van Gogh's biography to know what else was happening in his life around that time. Nevertheless, it seems a little arrogant to claim that you know everything about a painting. I mean, there are psychological factors that we can never really understand -- particularly in a painter like Van Gogh.
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One of the psychological traits that separate people who can draw vs. people who can't is acuity of visual memory. The average person can look at a picture and tell if its accurate or not with first hand knowledge of the scene, but draftsmen can actually reproduce the details of the scene from memory.
Try drawing Darth Vader's mask, and if you're a normal person you'll draw something you know doesn't look right.
I have a friend who can draw, and he could make an accurate depiction of Darth Vader's mask or Darth Maul's face if you asked him with no particular preparation. I'm sure if I showed him around a starry night he'd be able to depict it fairly accurately.
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Van Gogh decided "I think Venus would look better a little lower"?
What if "Venus" is really an accidental splatter of paint he decided to make into a celestial object?
There goes the estimate.
I am a (mainly classical pianist) music geek before I am a computer geek. Music is very math oriented. The greatest composers and performers, classical or jazz, knew their theory inside and out. That's why they could create such amazing music. Then there's the fact that musical instruments were one of the first examples of applied physics, (the piano is particularly cool when studied from a physics perspective in my opinion), but I digress.
- tokengeekgrrl
I would be curious to see, based on this technology, what Starry Night would have looked like, had he painted it on my birthday. Or yours, for that matter. Or any other time. Someone should write a Starry Night generator. Yeah...
The result is perhaps mundane - when a painting was painted is not earth-shattering news.
Uhm, I hope the /. folks don't mind my pointing out that MOST SLASHDOT NEWS is not earth-shattering, or even interesting to probably 90% of the world's population.
Personally I think this is pretty cool.
Feh. Virmir used a camera obscura, a device that's like a camera with lenses but no film, and projects the light onto a light table. Virmir traced, and then filled in with paint. The result is quite increadlbe --- I believe one person called them "exquisuite, hand-painted photographs."
Well, as long as he's an astronomer, he's also an early computer scientist. Ever looked really closely at one of his works? He used only primary colors and didn't mix them. Just like your monitor uses triads to color pixels. The placement of the strokes could be analyzed (we're talkin' lots of beowulf clusters here...) for the infinitessimal gradiations in spatial frequency that contribute to the unique colors.
It is truly amazing how the artists (poets, musicians, etc... included) of the 18th & 19th centuries informed the inventions and cultures of later centuries. There is no way any of them could have imagined the place of their art in our society--or could they? Maybe something to do with absinthe. Anybody holdin?
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The thing a lot of people don't know about art is how incredibly rooted in science and natural understanding it was (I say was, because the last half of the 20th century has moved away from this). Artists grew up keenly studying nature to try to understand natural aesthetics, and developed a set of unwritten standards that are used in virtually all masterpiece paintings. While we may associate this binding of art and science only with Renaissance artists, the fact is it existed throughout art history, and art has always been about representing the world according to natural laws.
With that said, though, this painting probably wasn't painted on a specific date. It may represent a specific date, but paintings took months and months to prepare. For that one painting, van Gogh probably did no less than nine study paintings, each refining the position of every line, every stroke, and yes, the location of Venus. van Gogh could probably paint any sky he wanted to at any time he wanted to, and he would've known exactly where everything should be.
It's kind of sad, actually, that such knowledge (and training) has to be rediscovered, but such are the ways of history.
For those too lazy to use google, the painting in question can be found here.
Last night I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I'll never know.
Scully: "But Mulder, how could a man like Van Gogh reproduce a perfect copy of the starscape at a given moment, when the painting would have taken hours, if not days, to paint?"
Mulder: "Maybe a man like Van Gogh...wasn't a MAN at all!"
Scully: "Are you suggesting...?"
Mulder: "Yes, Scully. Aliens, taking the form of Renaissance artists, visited 19th century Europe, bestowing on European civilisation the Impressionist school of art, in an attempt to destroy the Neo-Classical school, with its tendency towards historical paintings, thus to prevent any historical paintings recording their many visits to earth from being recorded"
Scully: "Yeah, I guess. You know I read in the National Inquirer that that Monet dude got anally probed..."