Turbulence of Van Gogh
23 July 2006
by Carina Lee
Mathematical analysis of Van Gogh’s paintings has shown that his chaotic artwork actually display signs of turbulence. Several of Gogh’s works were studied by physicists at the University of Mexico and it was concluded that during times of mental distress and instability, Gogh produced art containing the statistical imprint of turbulence, drawing parallels from the theory of turbulence and measured chaos. Jose Luis Aragon, researcher of this study, explained to Nature News “We think that Van Gogh had a unique ability to depict turbulence in periods of prolonged psychotic agitation.” Although its properties are still being investigated by scientists, the modern theory of turbulence is what researchers modelled their study upon. This theory utilises mathematical relationship between the fluctuations in a flow’s speed and the rate it scatters energy as friction. To do this, two points must be compared to each other and the probability that they are different can be calculated; this technique is known as Kolmogorov scaling. In an experiment, Gogh’s paintings were digitally photographed and the probability that two pixels of a certain distance would be the same brightness was calculated. |
Aragon explains to Nature News “The eye is more sensitive to luminance changes than to colour changes and most of the information in a scene is contained in its luminance. We have examined other apparently turbulent paintings of several artists and find no evidence of Kolmogorov scaling.” |
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