Illness, Science & Van Gogh

The chaotic swirls of Vincent van Gogh’s later art 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. Van Gogh’s turbulent artwork may also be unique. Señor Aragón found that other pictures with swirling patterns, such as Munch’s The Scream, do not obey the same mathematical rules.This is not the first time that Van Gogh’s art have been tested. Experiments have shown that bees find his sunflower pictures more attractive than actual flowers. For the full story - click the title Irish Art