Illness helped Van Gogh to capture the perfect storm

Times Online ^ | July 15 2006 | Paul Simons and Jack Malvern

[Marius3188]

THE chaotic swirls of Vincent van Gogh’s later paintings may owe as much to science as they do to art. Physicists believe that some of his works are uncannily accurate pictures of the complex mathematics of turbulence, the phenomenon behind bumpy aircraft rides, cloud formations and the flow of ocean currents.

Van Gogh painted three of his most agitated paintings, A Starry Night, Road with Cypress and Star and Wheat Field with Crows, towards the end of his life when he was suffering prolonged bouts of epilepsy.

José Luis Aragón, a physicist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, believes that Van Gogh’s delusions may have given him an insight into how turbulence works.

One of the artist’s doctors noted that the seizures involved “acute mania with hallucinations of sight and hearing”, which Van Gogh described as “the storm within”. Symptoms included visions and unprovoked feelings of anger, confusion and fear.

Señor Aragón, aided by physicists and mathematicians from Mexico, Spain and Oxford, discovered that the patterns of light and dark in Van Gogh’s paintings follow Kolmogorov scaling, the model of turbulent flow described in 1941 by the Russian scientist Andrei Kolmogorov. Using Kolmogorov’s formula, physicists can predict the speed and direction of particles in relation to other particles in a fluid. The model can be observed in smoke leaving a chimney and can even be applied to fluctuations in foreign exchange markets. Señor Aragón took digital images of the paintings and calculated the probability that two pixels a certain distance apart would have the same brightness, or luminance.

“Starry Night and other impassioned Van Gogh pictures were painted during periods of prolonged psychotic agitation and captured the essence of turbulence,” he said.

Van Gogh apparently lost the ability to depict turbulence while he received treatment for psychosis. While in hospital, after mutilating his ear, he was prescribed potassium bromide. During this period, which Van Gogh said was “absolute calm”, his works contained no evidence of Kolmogorov scaling.

Steven Schacter, Professor of Neurology at Harvard University, said that Van Gogh might have been influenced by his epilepsy. “Someone may gain new or novel awareness during seizures,” he said. “I occasionally think of the cortex as an attic, and a partial seizure to shining a flashlight in the attic, revealing feelings or perceptions that are not considered normal, such as out-of-body experiences .”

Van Gogh’s turbulent artwork may also be unique. Señor Aragón found that other pictures with swirling patterns, such as Edvard Munch’s The Scream, do not obey the same mathematical rules.

This is not the first time that Van Gogh’s pictures have been tested. Experiments have shown that bees find his sunflower pictures more attractive than actual flowers.

EPILEPSY SUFFERERS FROM HISTORY

# St Paul’s visions on the road to Damascus — bright flashing, temporary blindness and the inability to eat — are similar to symptoms of epilepsy # The prophet Ezekiel displayed epileptic symptoms such as frequent fainting spells and episodes of dumbness # The author Fyodor Dostoevsky used his experience of epilepsy to create four epileptic characters, including Prince Myshkin in The Idiot # Doctors have speculated that Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland was inspired by temporal lobe seizures. The sensation of falling down a hole and of objects shrinking and growing are both symptoms # Julius Caesar was afflicted with the “falling sickness” in the last two years of his life

[Marius3188]

van Gogh..Emotion...Emotion...Emotion

Interesting article. At the end they blame epilepsy for some notable religious experiences.

[Marius3188]

van Gogh ping!

[kylaka]

Who would have thunk. Van Gogh, father of the mathematics that made the Big Dig possible.

[SpaceBar]

His nickname in the sanitarium was "Fractal Eddie".

[fieldmarshaldj]

"A Starry Night"

"Road with Cypress and Star"

"Wheat Field with Crows"

[GATOR NAVY]

Or he may have just been a whack job. Who knows?

[fish hawk]

OR, maybe he just ate "magic mushrooms".

[battlegearboat]

Never been too impressed with "Van's" work.

Hard cheese, hard bread and hard of hearing.

[woofie]

Art Ping !!!!

[Atchafalaya]

Thanks.

[geopyg]

I never knew Van Gogh made it all the way to Illinois!?

[fieldmarshaldj]

Illinois is kinda "swirly", ain't it ? ;-)

[Rembrandt_fan]

The argument of the article is that Van Gogh's epilepsy (if that's what it was) gave him a kind of transcendent insight into the 'essence of turbulence', as if his work was utterly spontaneous, the profundities of a madman. Fact: Van Gogh was a meticulous student of color, owning a box containing dozens of varied-colored yarns, with which he would carefully match complements and color schemas. He followed Delacroix's maxim and 'planned carefully, executed freely'.

This notion that mental illness, alcoholism, or drug addiction is in any way a facilitator of the creative process is a pernicious lie. Hemingway, Faulkner, and Fitzgerald wrote beautifully in spite of, not because of their alcoholism. Van Gogh's greatest works were created--in all probability, since there's no way of knowing for sure--during periods of relative lucidity. It diminishes Van Gogh's work, subtracts from his accomplishment, to imply that his mental problems gave him a creative edge. Personally, I think mental illness and addiction are disproportionately greater among creative types partly because of heightened sensitivity to stimuli such as color and sound and people and surroundings, for example, which (perhaps) lends itself to various neuroses, and partly (perhaps) because this ridiculous Bohemian Artist cultural construct leads creative people into lifestyles that exaggerate or exacerbate existing predispositions. Would Modigliani have died as he did if it wasn't half-expected of him?

This particular subject strikes a chord with me. I currently make my living by writing and making art, but at one time I was one of those ragged, homeless men you see on the street, mumbling to imaginary friends. Needless to say, I wasn't getting much writing or painting done at the time. I hate the idea that insanity, a little or a lot, is a requisite of great art, writing, or music.

[dennisw]

Interesting article. At the end they blame epilepsy for some notable religious experiences.

Such as Muhammad's revelations. I'm not joking and think there might be something to it.

[Salamander]

Phi ping.

[Marius3188]

-I am not strictly speaking mad, for my mind is absolutely normal in the intervals, and even more so than before. But during the attacks it is terrible - and then I lose consciousness of everything. But that spurs me on to work and to seriousness, as a miner who is always in danger makes haste in what he does.

-The emotions are sometimes so strong that I work without knowing it. The strokes come like speech.

van Gogh

[stillonaroll]

This particular subject strikes a chord with me. I currently make my living by writing and making art, but at one time I was one of those ragged, homeless men you see on the street, mumbling to imaginary friends. Needless to say, I wasn't getting much writing or painting done at the time. I hate the idea that insanity, a little or a lot, is a requisite of great art, writing, or music.

Fascinating post. Thanks!

In past years, when I had dabbled a bit in artsy endeavors, there were two conditions which led to some creative breakthroughs:

1) A slightly funky frame of mind; not insane or disfunctional, but a little bit ticked off about something, usually a girl.

2) Deadlines--time pressure was helpful (i.e., don't get it right, get it written). This still works for me today in my for-profit pursuits.

[Casie]

Beautiful post. Couldn't agree more.

[Oschisms]

I agree with what you say, but...Hemingway, Faulkner (I don't know about Fitzgerald) are not good writers.

[Rembrandt_fan]

Get outta town. Hemingway's novella "My Old Man" is one of the finest short pieces ever written. Unlike Hemingway's novels--particularly his later novels--it holds up perfectly, beautifully over time. Faulkner's 'Sound And The Fury' was...I'm sorry, I can't go on. I just don't know how to respond any further. I never thought I'd be in a position where I would be defending the literary merit of Hemingway and Faulkner, both of whom won the Nobel Prize for Literature when winning a Nobel Prize in the arts actually meant something.

As an aside, the Fitzgerald I was referring to was F. Scott Fitzgerald. His 'Great Gatsby' was required reading in high school, at least for me, way back when.

I guess I have to ask: who do you consider good writers?