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Van Gogh Painted Turbulence
rangeva writes "Nature is reporting that Van Gogh works have a pattern of light and dark that closely follows the mathematical structure of turbulent flow. From the article: 'Vincent van Gogh is known for his chaotic paintings and similarly tumultuous state of mind. Now a mathematical analysis of his works reveals that the stormy patterns in many of his paintings are uncannily like real turbulence, as seen in swirling water or the air from a jet engine.'"
Just proves his head was full of air and that he had a single neuron, precisely located on it's center. When he cut one of his ear, he created a stream of air, coming from the interior of his head (high pressure) to the outside (low pressure). The single neuron, placed in the middle of the stream, obviously caused some turbulence, explaining why he "painted turbulence".
Absolutely amazing. I mean, what are the chances that he ever saw turbulent streams or windswept clouds living in rural Europe or that he took his inpiration from those pattern as much as from all the other organic/natural patterns he used everywhere in his art?
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Why would he have to intuit chaotic flow? Anyone who's seen smoke rise from a cigarette or viciously stirred an absinthe and water mix, has seen similarly chaotic swirls. I think its safe to say Vincent would have done both.
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Somewhat interesting but not nearly as interesting as the theory that an eye problem or digitalis poisoning was the main cause of his use of color and the halo's he painted around light sources. See -> http://www.psych.ucalgary.ca/pace/va-lab/AVDE-Webs ite/VanGogh.html
Amateur - I code turbulence!
The article goes on about turbulence as if you can only draw these patterns if you know the maths and laws behind it. That's a bit like saying you can't catch a ball tossed to you if you don't know Newton's laws.
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Turbulence is derived from the Latin turbinis which means vortex. The same name also gave way to turbine - a phrase first used by Claude Burdin to describe the aforementioned device in 1828.
Van Gogh lived from 1853 until 1890, so man-made turbines existed during his lifetime, as well as the more natural effects he will have seen that others have mentioned.
Ergo, the entire point of the article is moot, he painted what he saw and understood, that - believe it or not - is what artists do. Why people have to waste their time trying to comprehend why Van Gogh painted turbulence is beyond me...
This reminds me of all of those English classes in high school where the teachers would tell us all of these subtle things that were represented in writers works. I would always wonder if the authors would laugh themselves silly over all of it.
Why does all of this mean Van Gogh new that he was painting turbulence? Why can this not just be a byproduct of the way that he holds the brush and moves the brush on the canvas?
I bet that somewhere out there is a cave drawing where the patterns on the rock are a perfect representation of something in Quantumm Physics. When we find that is it proof that cave men understood Quantum Physics?
Did it occur to you that perhaps part of the reason that you like Van Gogh may have something to do with the fact that he portrayed a natural phenomenon perfectly? The human brain is capable of seeing things that are right or wrong that you may not be able to consciously notice. The math described may be why you like this art.
People, by their very nature, cannot truly produce randomness. Everything we output is laden with the associations and processes inherent in the brain. Jackson Pollack apparently painted with a certain fractal regularity that he wasn't conscious of. I imagine that Van Gough didn't intend to depict turbulence per se, he just painted that way, and others percieve the mechanics.
There's more information on Kolmogorov's scaling laws here, not that I understand most of it. As far as I can tell, in a turbulent system the difference between the values of a physical property at two points follows a power law with respect to the distance between the points; the power laws for different physical properties have different exponents, but they all seem to be multiples of a third (?).
You can see turbulent phenomena. You can feel that representations of such phenomena are correct or incorrect. But that's not the same as seeing turbulence.
Seeing turbulence itself takes more than having the image of a turbulent phenomenon on your retina. That takes place at a higher level of the brain, one that is more imaginative. Artists don't "see" in the way a camera sees. not even photographers, who must search for the right opportunity where what they are looking for can be stripped naked of irrelevant detail.
Painters especially don't just record what they see. They abstract salient details and present them in ways that emphasize or deemphasize. Even the most routine of painters will move a tree in a landscape or improve on a train of clouds in order to produce a more pleasing rhtyhm. But what we are talking about here goes way beyond that.
Naturally, any realistic depiction of landscape will reproduce mathematical relationships, such as the fractal geometry of waves. But only a master like Hokusai can make a wave whose fractal nature is burned into our memory.
Works such as "The Great Wave Off Kanagawa" by Hokusai, or "Starry Night" by Van Goh are not realistic, they are hyper-real. It takes a great drafting skill to paint what is there, yet while it is a talent, it is not genius. Go out and look at some waves or some swirling smoke then try to think how difficult it is to freeze such a moving, evolving phenomenon and boil it down to its perceptual essence. That take genius.
The reason art is valuable to the human race is that it show us how to be aware of what is latent in our perception, but does not enter into our consciousness.
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This article reminds me of a similar study done on Jackson Pollock's drip paintings, which exhibit the characteristics of fractals. Pollock painted in the '50s, before fractal geometry was developed. Works by other artists, who imitated Pollock's technique, do not have the same qualities. Both Van Gogh and Pollock seem to have been able to perceive the mathematical underpinnings of the natural world in an intuitive way, and could communicate that perception through their art.
Some more info (PDF warning).
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