Van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night’ held a secret — and scientists just discovered the ‘hidden turbulence’
He really did gogh the extra mile.
“The Starry Night,” the 1889 hallmark artwork by Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh, is remarkably congruent to the astronomic principles of our sky, atmospheric scientists recently discovered. It also alludes to the artist being well ahead of the scientific minds of the 19th century.
Scientists believe that van Gogh’s emboldened brush strokes appear calculated to account for patches of invisible uneven airflow, known as turbulence, that would cause changes in the visuals of the night sky.
Even more miraculously, he had painted the vivid work in daylight at a windowless studio, according to Artnet.
Now, researchers published in Physics of Fluids have identified what they described as a “hidden turbulence” within van Gogh’s stellar style.
The artist appears to have compensated for principles in fluid dynamics that did not come about until almost 100 years later — such as a scale for the motion of aerial energy designed by mathematician George Batchelor in 1959.
“The scale of the paint strokes played a crucial role,” said author Yongxiang Huang.
“With a high-resolution digital picture, we were able to measure precisely the typical size of the brushstrokes and compare these to the scales expected from turbulence theories.”
Beyond that, even, a 2019 study suggested he accounted for turbulence not just within the atmosphere, but also the stars lightyears away.
Current study authors examined different types of brushstrokes in similar circumstances like leaves fluttering in the wind to classify atmospheric conditions of wind such as its shape and energy. Other factors regarding brightness within various paint colors were also examined in relation to the energy of movement.
What they learned most of all through the experiments — including a look at “Starry Night’s” 14 twirling shapes — was how van Gogh had an uncanny connection to the movement of our natural land- and skyscape.
“It reveals a deep and intuitive understanding of natural phenomena,” Huang said.
“Van Gogh’s precise representation of turbulence might be from studying the movement of clouds and the atmosphere or an innate sense of how to capture the dynamism of the sky.”
The spatial work and intentional brightnesses were found to be in alignment with the actual movements of the atmosphere within the scale of its motion-fueled energy — known scientifically as Kolmogorov’s law of 1940.
Specifically from an academic perspective, “The Starry Night” stands out for brightness being diffused throughout the painting along with subtleties of the aforementioned turbulence from the atmosphere.
Now the team is looking at van Gogh’s masterpiece to rethink what we know about the idea of air currents and related “phenomena.”
“It seems it is time to propose a new definition of turbulence to embrace more situations,” said Huang.
