The life of Vincent Van Gogh, like an interweaving of all kinds of accidents and events, is covered in secrets and rumors. Scientists are still arguing about the reasons mental disorder And sudden death great author. Hidden intentions are found in his paintings, and letters to his brother reveal the harsh truth about the artist’s difficult life.
Fate was cruel, allowing Van Gogh to remain active for only 10 years creative life, but even this short period of time was enough for him to turn into a master with an original style of painting. Thanks to constant work, developed talent and his own unique view of the world, Van Gogh was able to create real masterpieces of impressionism.
Self-portrait with a pipe |
Story about the ear
According to one version, Van Gogh cut off his own ear. There are several common assumptions associated with this fact: some believe that he did not cut off the entire ear, but only the lobe due to severe pain caused by inflammation, others that he cut off the ear due to the lack of demand for his paintings. However, it is reliably known that Van Gogh at that time lived in southern France with another artist, Paul Gauguin, with whom a small scuffle ensued over a local prostitute. Van Gogh's ear was damaged in this scuffle.
Interactive interpretation of the painting “Starry Night”
Vincent created his famous painting “The Starry Night” while staying in a psychiatric hospital in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence (France).
Eccentric weirdo
Van Gogh often surprised his brother with strange actions. One day he rented a four-room outbuilding for 15 francs a month and bought furniture for 300 francs. In 1888, Van Gogh acquired a small workshop in Arles, in the south of France, where he escaped from those who did not understand him Parisian artists and critics. Soon he decides to paint Van Gogh's Bedroom in Arles. “The whole thing here is in color,” he writes to his brother Theo, “by simplifying which, I give the objects more style so that they suggest the idea of rest and sleep.”
Unrecognized genius
The mystery of death
Vincent van Gogh died in 1890 after shooting himself in the chest. He was in despair from hopelessness. He understood that he was a burden for his brother Theo, who was there in the most difficult moments of his life. The suicide attempt failed, he lived for two more days until he died. Theo Van Gogh collected most of his work, and his wife published Vincent's paintings. Recently, scientists Stephen Neifi and Gregory White Smith made a statement that rejects the established version of the artist's death. They claim that, contrary to popular belief, it is more likely that Vincent van Gogh's death was an accident. He was accidentally shot by two boys with a faulty pistol.
Artist's legacy
Van Gogh, not recognized by his contemporaries, gained unprecedented popularity among his descendants. The canvases of his brush, a hundred years after his birth, became not only one of the most expensive works contemporary art, they were finally appreciated by experts and connoisseurs of true masterpieces. Now his works adorn the collections of the most famous galleries and museums around the world.
Quotes from Vincent Van Gogh (from letters to his brother Theo)
● There is nothing more artistic than loving people.
● When something in you says: “You are not an artist,” immediately begin to write, my boy, - only in this way will you silence this inner voice. The one who, having heard it, runs to his friends and complains about his misfortune, loses part of his courage, part of the best that is in him.
● And you shouldn’t take your shortcomings too seriously, because those who don’t have them still suffer from one thing - the absence of shortcomings; the one who believes that he has achieved perfect wisdom will do well if he grows stupid again.
● A man carries a bright flame in his soul, but no one wants to bask near him; passersby notice only the smoke escaping through the chimney and go on their way.
● When reading books, as well as looking at paintings, one must neither doubt nor hesitate: one must be confident in oneself and find beautiful what is beautiful.
● What is drawing? How is it mastered? This is the ability to break through the iron wall that stands between what you feel and what you can do. How can one penetrate such a wall? In my opinion, banging your head against it is useless; you need to slowly and patiently dig it up and drill it out.
● Blessed is he who has found his business.
● I prefer not to say anything at all than to express myself indistinctly.
● I admit, I also need beauty and sublimity, but even more something else, for example: kindness, responsiveness, tenderness.
● You are a realist yourself, so bear with my realism.
● A person only needs to consistently love what is worthy of love, and not waste his feelings on insignificant, unworthy and insignificant objects.
● We must not allow melancholy to stagnate in our souls, like water in a swamp.
● When I see the weak trampled underfoot, I begin to doubt the value of what is called progress and civilization.
A paradoxical discovery was recently made by Russian and European mathematicians. They're in literally have identified the unique gift of the great Dutch painter. It turns out that he saw something that mere mortals cannot see - turbulent air flows. Van Gogh, without knowing it, can save humanity from plane crashes, scientists believe. After all, previously scientists could not describe the phenomenon of turbulence, invisible to the naked eye.Like many geniuses, the great Van Gogh was, to put it mildly, strange. It is a known fact that in a moment of mental crisis he cut off his ear. However, all this was not the usual mind-blowing.
- Study of the mathematical model of the paintings of the great Dutch artist showed that some of his paintings depict turbulent vortex flows invisible to the eye that arise during the rapid flow of liquid or gas, for example, when gas flows out of a jet engine nozzle,” Victor Kozlov, a professor at the Moscow Aviation Institute, told us. - The artist’s peculiar, seemingly chaotically looped style of painting, as it turned out, is nothing more than a distribution of brightness corresponding mathematical description turbulent flow.
The foundations of the modern theory of turbulence were laid by the great mathematician Andrei Kolmogorov in the 1940s of the 20th century. However, there is still no exact description of it. Now the situation may change.
According to the researchers, many of Vincent van Gogh's paintings (such as Starry Night, painted in 1889) contain characteristic "statistical fingerprints" of turbulence. As scientists note, “turbulent” works were created by the artist in those moments when his psyche was unstable. At this time, the painter experienced hallucinations and was tormented by depression. The visions that haunted Van Gogh resulted in uneven, as if nervously twisted spirals on his canvases. He more than once admitted to friends that after making another sketch, he calmed down for a while, as if he had completed some important mission.
“Apparently, Van Gogh had a unique ability to see and capture turbulence, and this happened to him precisely during periods of mental disorder,” says Professor Kozlov. - At the same time, the artist has paintings where “traces of turbulence” are invisible. Among them is the famous “Self-Portrait with a Pipe and a Bandaged Ear” (1888). Van Gogh, having injured himself, was under the influence of sedatives, in particular bromine, and, in his own words, was in a state of “complete rest.”
“Van Gogh’s gift is unique,” says our interlocutor. - Researchers have digitized his works and calculated them mathematically. Apparently, he is the only artist who knew how to paint turbulence. Paintings by other painters, even similar in painting style, do not contain a correspondence to Kolmogorov’s theory. For this reason, it is Van Gogh’s work that can become a turning point for modern science. With its help, scientists are going to develop a theory of turbulence and finally explain this phenomenon. Solving it will help, for example, solve this problem in aviation: after all, today the cause of many air disasters is turbulence.
Who knows, maybe Van Gogh’s “mission”, “destination”, which he told his friends about, was also the salvation of distant descendants? In this case, are doctors always right when they provide their patients with “complete rest”?
The paintings of the great artist help scientists study natural phenomena
GENETICS: GENIUS IMMORTAL MUTATION OF SUNFLOWERS
Dutch impressionist Vincent Van Gogh is like space, which can be studied by everyone: from artists and art historians to doctors and astronomers. The other day, geneticists became interested in him.
In Van Gogh's famous Sunflowers series you can see strange flowers. Typically, a sunflower flower has a dark circle in the center surrounded by large golden petals. In the artist’s work we see that the central disk of the flowers is hidden under disheveled dark orange growth. Until now it was believed that this was the fantasy of a genius. It turned out - no. Van Gogh meticulously immortalized the mutation that sometimes affects sunflowers. Scientists from the University of Georgia came to this conclusion.
What kind of mutation causes such a strange “disheveled” shape? The researchers suggested that perhaps the cause of the flower changes was mutations in the CYC genes.
The family of these genes influence not only the structure of flowers in other genera of asteraceae, related to sunflower, explained one of the authors of the study, Mark Chapman. - With this gene, “Van Hogh flowers” with an almost absent central disk can practically not reproduce. There is nothing for insects to pollinate. But we didn’t know how the genes of such mutants work. Therefore, we decided to conduct an experiment.
In order to get a sunflower “like Van Gogh’s,” geneticists crossed an ordinary sunflower with a semi-mutant one, that is, with one whose central disk was not very “shaggy.” Such plants could still produce offspring. As a result, scientists obtained the famous sunflowers.
They appeared due to mutations in the HaCYC2c gene, Chapman argued. - It penetrates into all tissues of the plant and turns it into “shaggy” and sterile.
The discovered mutation, which the genius immortalized, is not widely distributed. It appears randomly and is quickly washed out of the population.
OCEANOLOGY: THE ARTIST AS AS IF SAW OCEAN CURRENTS FROM SPACE
NASA specialists one day, while admiring Van Gogh’s painting “Starry Night,” suddenly discovered that they had seen something similar somewhere in their own homes - in their laboratories, on their computers. They checked it and it turned out for sure: there are similarities between this canvas and... NASA's model of ocean currents.
Let us recall that the painting depicts huge stars surrounded by spherical halos of flickering light. Some are pale gold, others are white-hot - they create the sensation of spinning. It's like yellow-white whirlpools are spinning. (By the way, the Greek electrical engineer and artist Petros Vrellis decided to use this effect. He created an interactive reproduction of this painting. To create it, he used a touch screen and openFrameworks tools. With the touch of a finger, you can change the animated canvas to your liking, and then return everything to its original form.) All this spiraling, bending and spinning “orgy” resembles ocean currents when viewed from space.
The NASA model was built thanks to scientific project, which studies the role of the ocean in future climate change scenarios. It's called the Ocean Climate Assessment Phase II (ECCO2). "Our specialists have done a high resolution models of the world's oceans, a NASA spokesman explained in a press release. “And they discovered vortices and currents in the ocean that carry heat and carbon dioxide throughout the world.” The interactive ECCO2 model simulates ocean currents at all depths, but only the specially created visualization uses surface currents - to compare with Van Hog currents.
In addition, it turned out that the same “Van Hogh whirlpools” form huge greenish accumulations of phytoplankton in the dark waters around the Swedish island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea. Phytoplankton are microscopic marine plants that form a vital link in the ocean food chain. When it blooms, underwater currents carry nutrients to the sun-blessed surface of the ocean. And as a result, these microscopic plants grow and reproduce.
According to some experts, Mother Nature’s “swirl” paintings turned out to be much more intricate than those of the impressionist artist. But this is understandable. Not only does nature have a giant planet as its “canvas”, and not a canvas measuring 73.7 by 92.1 cm. And the creator of the masterpiece himself was not in in better shape. Van Gogh painted The Starry Night in June 1889 while staying at the St. Paul Mausoleum mental hospital near Saint-Rémy. He suffered severe bouts of depression. And only in rare moments of relative calm did he devote himself entirely to painting. And it was to “Starry Night” that Van Gogh returned to make some adjustments on the night he committed suicide.
ASTRONOMY: AN IMPRESSIONIST ACCURATELY CAPTURED THE PHENOMENON OF THE LARGE MOON
And not so long ago, an American astronomer from the University of Texas, Donald Olson, became interested in Van Gogh. He noticed a painting called “Moon Rising.” In it, the crimson Moon peeks over the top of a mountain and illuminates everything with an ominous red-orange light. Maybe it's a sunrise and the artist just got it wrong? - art critics wondered. It's very big and bright. But we didn’t have the opportunity to check: exact date The painting was unknown.
After conducting his own investigation, Olson found out that the painting was painted on July 12, 1889. On this day, Vincent was lying in the same mental hospital in San Remy. And he painted the picture looking out the window of his room.
This was the so-called “lunar illusion,” the astronomer convinced. - That is optical illusion, in which the perceived size of the Moon is approximately one and a half times larger when it is low above the horizon compared to how it is perceived when it is high in the sky, although its projections on the retina are equal in both cases.
The astronomer also explained the appearance of strange shadows under the mountain. It turned out that Van Gogh painted this picture in two stages - he started in the evening and finished in the morning. Therefore, the Moon was depicted rising in the evening. And the shadows appeared under the mountain because they were cast by the rising Sun in the morning.
All experts are convinced of one thing: despite the fact that Van Gogh often allowed himself all sorts of impressionistic things like unnaturally bright colors and distortion of perspective, he never distorted reality. For example, astronomers studied several paintings of the artist’s night sky and made sure that each of them was painted with astronomical accuracy. On one of them - “ The White house at night" - a huge star is depicted above the house. It turned out that it was Venus. On the day the masterpiece was written - June 16, 1890 - it shone especially brightly.
QUOTE
“Whenever I see stars, I begin to dream - just as involuntarily as I dream when looking at the black dots that are on geographical map cities are indicated. Why, I ask myself, should the bright points on the sky be less accessible to us than the black points on the map of France?
Just as we are carried by a train when we go to Rouen or Tarascon, death carries us to the stars. However, in this reasoning, only one thing is indisputable: while we live, we cannot go to a star, just as, having died, we cannot board a train. It is likely that cholera, syphilis, consumption, cancer are nothing more than heavenly means of transportation, playing the same role as steamships, omnibuses and trains on earth. And natural death from old age is equivalent to traveling on foot.”.
1. Van Gogh's air flows
Mathematicians who studied Van Gogh's paintings came to the conclusion that the turbulence in some of his paintings quite accurately describes turbulent air flows invisible to the eye. This is expressed in the fact that the greater or lesser brightness of the points in the pictures is proportional to the velocities of the flow points in the corresponding coordinates during mathematical modeling of turbulence. Scientists also note that such paintings, including the famous “ Starlight Night", written by Van Gogh during periods of mental instability.
2. Da Vinci's Melody
The melody is encrypted in Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper. It was discovered by computer technician Giovanni Maria Pala: if you draw along the picture stave, then the loaves of bread on the table and the hands of the apostles can be read as notes. Even skeptics admitted that the harmony of this melody is impeccable and it could not have appeared in the picture by chance.
3. Nude Mona Lisa
The famous “La Gioconda” exists in two versions: the nude version is called “Monna Vanna”, it was written by little-known artist Salai, who was a student and model of the great Leonardo da Vinci. Many art historians are sure that it was he who was the model for Leonardo’s paintings “John the Baptist” and “Bacchus”. There are also versions that Salai, dressed in a woman’s dress, served as the image of the Mona Lisa herself.
4. The secret of the old fisherman
In 1902, the Hungarian artist Tivadar Kostka Csontvary painted the painting “The Old Fisherman”. It would seem that there is nothing unusual in the picture, but Tivadar put into it a subtext that was never revealed during the artist’s lifetime. 
Few people thought of placing a mirror in the middle of the picture. In each person there can be both God (the Old Man's right shoulder is duplicated) and the Devil (the Old Man's left shoulder is duplicated). 
5. Salvador Dali's Revenge
The painting “Figure at a Window” was painted in 1925, when Dali was 21 years old. At that time, Gala had not yet entered the artist’s life, and his muse was his sister Ana Maria. The relationship between brother and sister deteriorated when he wrote in one of the paintings “sometimes I spit on the portrait of my own mother, and this gives me pleasure.” Ana Maria could not forgive such shocking behavior.
In her 1949 book, Salvador Dali Through the Eyes of a Sister, she writes about her brother without any praise. The book infuriated Salvador. For another ten years after that, he angrily remembered her at every opportunity. And so, in 1954, the painting “A Young Virgin Indulging in the Sin of Sodomy with the Help of the Horns of Her Own Chastity” appeared. The woman’s pose, her curls, the landscape outside the window and the color scheme of the painting clearly echo “Figure at the Window.” There is a version that Dali took revenge on his sister for her book.
