“Looking at the stars always makes me dream. Why, I ask myself, shouldn’t the shining dots of the sky be as accessible as the black dots on the map of France? Just as we take the train to get to Tarascon or Rouen, we take death to reach a star.”
The Starry Night
Van Gogh’s night sky is a field of roiling energy. Below the exploding stars, the village is a place of quiet order. Connecting earth and sky is the flamelike cypress, a tree traditionally associated with graveyards and mourning. But death was not ominous for van Gogh. “Looking at the stars always makes me dream,” he said, “Why, I ask myself, shouldn’t the shining dots of the sky be as accessible as the black dots on the map of France? Just as we take the train to get to Tarascon or Rouen, we take death to reach a star.” The artist wrote of his experience to his brother Theo: “This morning I saw the country from my window a long time before sunrise, with nothing but the morning star, which looked very big.” This morning star, or Venus, may be the large white star just left of center in The Starry Night. The hamlet, on the other hand, is invented, and the church spire evokes van Gogh’s native land, the Netherlands. The painting, like its daytime companion, The Olive Trees, is rooted in imagination and memory. Leaving behind the Impressionist doctrine of truth to nature in favor of restless feeling and intense color, as in this highly charged picture, van Gogh made his work a touchstone for all subsequent Expressionist painting. The Museum of Modern Art, MoMA Highlights, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, revised 2004, originally published 1999, p. 35 Find out more about The Starry Night at:
mo.ma/starrynight
Подробнее
- Название: The Starry Night
- Создатель: Vincent van Gogh
- Годы жизни автора: March 30, 1853 – July 29, 1890
- Национальность автора: Dutch
- Пол автора: Male
- Место смерти автора: Utrecht, Netherlands
- Место рождения автора: Groot-Zundert, Netherlands
- Дата создания: 1889
- Место создания: Saint-Rémy-de-Provence
- Фактические размеры: w921 x h737 mm
- Style: Post-Impressionism
- Provenance: Acquired through the Lillie P.Bliss Bequest
- Original Title: La nuit étoilée
- More Info:
Vincent van Gogh, The Starry Night
Van Gogh painted his Starry Night in the asylum of Saint-Rémy de Provence one year before his death. The painting’s strength lies in the stark contrast between the calm sleeping village and the dramatic, swirling, and menacing sky. Recently it has been discovered that the swirling sky in this painting is surprisingly similar to the physical phenomenon of turbulent flow observed in nature in the formation of clouds or in the turbulent flow of water.
The pigment analysis helps us to better understand Van Gogh’s painting technique and his mastery of colours.
“Looking at the stars always makes me dream. Why, I ask myself, shouldn’t the shining dots of the sky be as accessible as the black dots on the map of France? Just as we take the train to get to Tarascon or Rouen, we take death to reach a star.”
Vincent van Gogh
Mathematical Background to the Swirls in the Sky
Mathematical analysis of several Van Gogh’s paintings uncovered a striking similarity between the swirling skies in ‘The Starry Night’ (and some other of his paintings too) and turbulences observed in nature such as in swirling water or in cloud formation. The investigation was inspired by an image of a distant star with its surrounding eddies which reminded the astronomers of the stars in Van Gogh’s painting (2).
Image of the star named V838 Monocerotis (V838 Mon)
Image credit: NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI)
The natural turbulence is exceedingly difficult to describe mathematically. The first theory was proposed by the Soviet mathematician Andrei Kolmogorov. The researchers investigating Van Gogh’s paintings (1) have shown that the luminance distribution in the swirling sky in ‘The Starry Night’ follows the Kolmogorov’s equations very closely.
See also the video by TED in the section ‘Videos’ below: The unexpected math behind Van Gogh’s “Starry Night“ by Natalya St. Clair, TedED Lessons worth sharing.
It is noteworthy and also surprising that Van Gogh seems to be the only painter who was able to depict the turbulence with such precision. Several paintings by other artists that look very similar to ‘The Starry Night’, notably ‘The Scream‘ by the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch were also investigated and they do not fit the equations at all.
Edvard Munch, The Scream, 1893
(1) J.L. Aragón, Gerardo G. Naumis, M. Bai, M. Torres, P.K. Maini, Turbulent luminance in impassioned van Gogh paintings, arXiv:physics/0606246 [physics.flu-dyn].
(2) Space Phenomenon Imitates Art in Universe’s Version of van Gogh Painting, Hubble Site, News Release Number: STScI-2004-10, March 4, 2004.
(3) Philip Ball, Van Gogh painted perfect turbulence, Nature, Published online 7 July 2006 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news060703-17
