Vincent van Gogh, The Starry Night

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

This pigment analysis is based on the work of the scientists at the Rochester Institute of Technology and the Museum of Modern Art in New York (1). The scientists employed the method of multispectral imaging to prepare maps of individual pigments throughout the whole painting.

1 The deep blue sky surrounding the stars: predominantly artificial ultramarine.
2 Brighter blue swirling sky and the area surrounding the Moon: predominantly cobalt blue.

3 Green strokes around the Moon: emerald green.
4 The deeper yellow of the Moon and the stars: Indian yellow and zinc yellow.
5 Brighter yellow surrounding the stars and the Moon: possibly cadmium yellow.

6 Brown branches of the cypress tree: burnt umber.
7 Green of the cypress tree: possibly Prussian blue and either burnt umber or one of the yellow pigments.

References

(1) Yonghui Zhao, Roy S. Berns, Lawrence A. Taplin, James Coddington, An Investigation of Multispectral Imaging for the Mapping of Pigments in Paintings, in Proc. SPIE 6810, Computer Image Analysis in the Study of Art, 681007 (29 February 2008); doi: 10.1117/12.765711. Available as pdf.

(1) Yonghui Zhao, Roy S. Berns, Lawrence A. Taplin, James Coddington, An Investigation of Multispectral Imaging for the Mapping of Pigments in Paintings, in Proc. SPIE 6810, Computer Image Analysis in the Study of Art, 681007 (29 February 2008); doi: 10.1117/12.765711. Available as pdf.

(2) Vincent van Gogh. The Starry Night. 1889, MoMA Multimedia, Audio courtesy of Acoustiguide.

MoMA Learning: Vincent van Gogh, The Starry Night

Google Arts and Culture: The Starry Night