
The Day I Saw Van Gogh’s Genius in a New Light - dicemoose
http://asada0.tumblr.com/post/11517603099/the-day-i-saw-van-goghs-genius-in-a-new-light
======
mechanical_fish
I suspect that this whole exercise is moot. However one adjusts their color
spectrum, I'm still staring at tiny digital reproductions of paintings on a
fairly cheap LCD monitor.

One of the things I've learned by reading a book on art, and then wandering
around various art museums looking at the very art that was pictured in the
book, is that _paint is different from ink or pixels_. You can look at a
poster print of a famous painting all you want, but you still haven't seen the
painting. Paint has color and texture and light-catching qualities that defy
easy reproduction.

For example, I wrote an essay on Vermeer when I was in high school. Then I
went to see some Vermeers. And, frankly, "View of Delft" is not very
interesting in print, even if you see it reproduced in the correct size, but
in person "View of Delft" is _amazing_. It has atmosphere. And across the room
from "View of Delft" in the Mauritshuis is "Girl With A Pearl Earring", an
absolutely ubiquitous work, reproduced on book covers and posters everywhere,
but I can't look at those posters anymore, they are hopelessly flat and dull.
The actual "Girl With A Pearl Earring" is far more beautiful.

~~~
jpdoctor
> _I'm still staring at tiny digital reproductions of paintings on a fairly
> cheap LCD monitor._

If you've seen the originals, there is a 3D quality that is also lost. He had
a way of sculpting the paint on the canvas, which I've never seen in any
reproduction.

~~~
gruseom
Yes! I noticed that too when looking at a Van Gogh in person. He had built it
up using a _lot_ of paint - almost like what you see when a small child uses
way too much finger-paint. The physical texture of it was striking.

~~~
hammock
Not to mention the paints have translucent and reflective qualities, all of
which are lost on a 2d print or monitor.

------
gomphus
van Gogh chose paints for their immediacy of color, sometimes without
understanding the problems of hue shifting and degradation displayed by
certain pigments. This causes a huge headache for curators and in many cases
the changes are irreversible. For example his chrome yellows contain sulphides
which have significantly darkened and browned through exposure to UV. He also
used various red lakes that are prone to fading and discoloration.

van Gogh famously wrote in a letter to his brother Theo: "Paintings fade like
flowers... All the colors that impressionism has brought into fashion are
unstable, so there is all the more reason to simply use them too brightly -
time will tone them down only too much".

Any theory of color vision deficiency that attempts to reconstruct the color
balances that van Gogh actually saw should take into account the
hue/value/chroma of his paints such as they possessed when originally applied,
and also consider that van Gogh intentionally adjusted his aesthetic to render
color schemes in expectation of future pigment degradation, and that these
adjustments cannot have been an exact science.

------
kevinalexbrown
What I noticed: In each version, my focus is drawn to completely different
locations.

\- In The Harvest, I immediately look to the farmer in the newer version.

\- In Starry Night, I immediately look to the church in the new version,
instead of the moon.

\- Likewise, in The Road Menders and The Sower I look at the people more, and
the trees and sun less.

\- In the Cafe Terrace at Night, I immediately look to the server in the new
version, instead of the yellow lighted wall in the original.

I noticed I measure the person and their posture much more readily. I can now,
in my mind, recall the posture of most of these people: the server is erect,
the sower is slightly bent and tired, the farmer in the harvest is steadily
working, if slightly hurriedly, and in The Road Menders the two nun-looking
characters in the back are somewhat tired as if on a weekend.

What I learned from this isn't "van Gogh had a color deficiency," but the way
in which color can affect the mood of a painting in really subtle ways I
hadn't considered.

Cool.

~~~
hammock
Maybe I am a little color blind and never knew it- because while I can see a
difference between the two, it's not all that striking- the only difference I
see is that oranges become yellows and deep blues become a little lighter. Am
I the only one?

~~~
hapless
Something to keep in mind: the gamut of your LCD is a pretty crude mapping of
the actual paint colors.

In the best case, on a wide gamut panel, these are very rude approximations of
what you might see under the unnatural lighting experienced by the author. It
should not be taken as any kind of diagnostic.

If you have e.g. a 6 bit TN panel, all of these are going to look very
similar, before anomalous vision is even involved.

------
ertdfgcb
This is really interesting. I wish the pictures he provided were a little
bigger though. I still don't know that this really improves on the originals.
To me, part of the genius of Van Gogh is his unusual use of color. The
"improved" versions look nice, but they also look sort of boring compared to
the old versions- they are more realistic, but they also loose a lot of the
whimsicality and surreally of the originals (two of my favorite traits of Van
Gogh). I guess my problem with this article isn't as much the new versions of
the paintings, as the authors assertion that they are superior to the
originals.

~~~
danko
Concur wholeheartedly. Van Gogh's unusual color choices are a feature, not a
bug. The author asserts that the muted color pallet for 'The Harvest' imbues
the painting with an autumnal glow. For me, it removes the element of the
painting that I find most interesting. The other comparisons fall along
similar lines.

Of course, this is art, and it's not truly possible for either of us to be
'wrong'. Taking a new perspective on Van Gogh's art is itself interesting, so
this is a great read, even if I disagree with some of his conclusions.

~~~
ertdfgcb
Yes, I think it would be quite interesting to have a museum exhibition where a
high quality print of a original Van Gogh is displayed next a high quality
print of the filtered version. I would defiantly pay to see that

I wonder if any other famous artists saw their work differently than the rest
of us?

~~~
kahawe
> _I wonder if any other famous artists saw their work differently than the
> rest of us?_

Ludwig van Beethoven's hearing started to deteriorate early on and eventually
he became completely deaf though he continued to compose.

Of course there has to be a substantial difference between losing a sense or
never to have had it but we don't know whether Van Gogh's altered vision was
there from birth or the alteration happened later in his life.

I agree with both of you, most of the pictures lose a lot of character and
uniqueness in the "corrected" versions; though one or two of them gain an
incredibly realistic feeling of ambiance.

Better or not? Shouldn't even be the question - but it is an interesting
theory and result!

~~~
isleyaardvark
There are some who argue that Beethoven's metronome was broken, and his
deafness was part of the reason he didn't realize it. Here's an article about
it: [http://www.nytimes.com/1987/02/19/arts/critic-s-notebook-
pon...](http://www.nytimes.com/1987/02/19/arts/critic-s-notebook-pondering-
beethoven-s-metronome.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm)

Along those lines, John Eliot Gardiner conducted Beethoven's 9 Symphonies with
Beethoven's metronome markings and with instruments that would have been used
at that time period. It's a very different sound that I'm a huge fan of,
though I think it wasn't particularly embraced by traditionalists.

------
infinity
I don't think that most of the paintings look better or more interesting in
the protanomal simulation, some of them actually have lost their magic and
look dull. I find this most visible in the self-portrait, of which the author
writes: _the man whom one cannot approach easily_.

The tinge of green in the original portrait makes this man much harder to
approach, because it adds the psychotic, unusual aura to the picture. This man
has left the world of commonly shared human experience.

The author remarks that in the picture _The Road Menders_ the trees have a
strange color and after conversion look more solid, giving some depth to the
road. So the picture looks more like what we would expect, in other words: we
see the usual.

But this is contrary to the kind of psychotic perception of the world, which I
associate with van Gogh's paintings, at least with those paintings that we
would call typical van Gogh (there are paintings from the earlier _dutch
period_ , which have a different character): Reality is distorted, colors
deviate from the ordinary, everything is flowing together and swirling, the
wheat, the sky, the world. Proportions are deranged, look at the painting of
his bedroom for example:

[http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Datei:Vincent_Will...](http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Datei:Vincent_Willem_van_Gogh_137.jpg&filetimestamp=20050519135921)

Theo van Gogh, his brother, wrote 1889 in a letter to his future wife a
characterization of Vincent van Gogh: _"As you know, he has broken since a
long time with everything what we call convention. The style of his clothes
and his behaviour show that this is a special human, and since many years
people who see him will say: This is a madman."_

------
rjd
Whether it adds any thing to the article but Van Gogh was on drugs with the
known side effect of mucking with your yellow and green perception.

He is specifically mentioned in this article on adverse wise effects of
digoxin: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digoxin#Adverse_effects>

~~~
rooshdi
Interesting, as there does seem to be a consistently stronger vibrance of
yellow monochromatic hues in the protanomal paintings.

------
tintin
In programs like Photoshop you can preview your design using color blindness
filters (View > Proof Setup > Color Blindness). Another trick is to grayscale
your design to check the contrast. This will help a lot to create a design
that is also accessible for colorblind people.

Contrast is the key here. Red for example is a very dark color. That's why
they use to print secret documents on red paper. When you would copy such
document with a copier it would become completely black.

------
arketyp
Vincent van Gogh is arguably the most famous example of a painter associated
with crazy; almost everyone has heard of (the rumour of?) the artist that cut
off his own ear. And certainly it is not only the colors that are outlandish,
boldly dissonant and flirting with the insane. Just look at the strokes, the
use of perspective and the general composition of the paintings. Realism is
not all there is to it! Perhaps even anything but.

Some of the altered pictures look nice in the same way that greyscaling a
photo creates a pleasingly different expression, but generally, as for myself,
I get impression that content has been stripped.

------
gregschlom
I'm color-blind and I see absolutely no differences between the original and
the modified images.

So I assume this is working.

~~~
Vivtek
Same here - I actually checked the comments to be sure this wasn't a joke,
actually. It's just a series of identical pictures to me. I guess I'm a born
Van Gogh fan.

(I did a wall mural once involving a large green sea monster; I had a friend
tell me when the shadows were getting red so I could compensate back to
"normal-brown" - they all looked fine to me.)

------
ars
In some of the converted pictures two colors that were different in the
original become identical.

If Van Gogh saw colors the way they are in the converted pictures why would he
use two different colors that would look identical to him?

~~~
phil
Oil paintings aren't painted in a single go. There's a lot of layering
involved.

So perhaps a better question is, how would you mix the same color twice, if
you couldn't tell a range of colors apart?

~~~
rvavruch
This is what makes me question the colour blind theory. Although they are very
strong in places, the colours all work together.

If he was colour blind surely there would be patches of green and patches of
non-green instead of smooth colour. How could he possibly match the same
colours over and over again each time he mixed his paints if he couldn't tell
the difference?

~~~
phil
I thought about this for a while.

I'm not an expert in oil painting technique, but I think one possibility is,
you tend to overpaint an area at a time. So: mix some paint, layer up part of
the canvas. Come back later, mix some paint, do it again.

If that's how it works it would explain a bunch of things in the comparison
images. Like: how come the bridge is yellow, but its reflection in the river
is bright green? Maybe they were painted at different times.

------
suprememoocow
I'm colour-blind (red-green) and have, since I can remember, always had a huge
affinity for the paintings of Van Gogh. I didn't realise that other people
considered his paintings to be unusually toned or that he may have been
colour-blind, so I found this article fascinating.

------
pygy_
This makes little sense to me.

A partially color-blind artist has no reason to amplify is dimmed color to
"correct" his perceptual deficit. His brain is calibrated on his usual input.
Even if his perception of (say) red is diminished, an image with the red
channel amplified will look more red to him too.

~~~
gregschlom
A color blind person does not perceive colors dimmer or lighter, but perceives
them wrong. So for example, Van Gogh would see a wheat field and pick a color
that matched the wheat to paint it, according to what he saw. Turns out that
this color would be orange, because to him orange and wheat both looked the
same.

As a color blind myself, I see absolutely no difference between the original
and the modified images. They are 100% identical to me. So I already see them
as Van Gogh did. But if you can see a difference then this proves that this
experiment works.

~~~
aiscott
Even The Harvest was the same for you? That one I could see a large
difference. The rest were more or less the same for me though.

~~~
gregschlom
Looking closely at the Harvest I see that that the field is different indeed.
Orange in the original, and "wheat" on the modified. But that wasn't
immediately apparent at first.

~~~
lywald
The Harvest is different from the others, the wheat goes from intense orange
to yellow. All others are about green being replaced with yellow.

------
cicero
I am partially color deficient, although I don't know the classifications
given in the article. I was told it was "medium red-green" several years ago.
The modified images look the same to me, except for the last two. In the Cafe
Terrace, the sky looks more purple to me in the original, and in the self-
portrait, the background swirls look more purple to me in the modified
version.

~~~
afterburner
I have normal colour vision and I experienced the same thing with those two
pictures, a purple to blue shift. (I also saw differences in the others.)

------
llambda
I'm struck by how bland some of the altered images are! Sure, still impressive
but there is a certain quality of the spontaneity of the abrupt introduction
of new or contrasting color that is lost is some of the transformations. As my
personal preference I had to admit I much prefer the original although that's
not to say they aren't magnificent works of art regardless.

~~~
miahi
A (professional) photographer friend of mine showed me one of his autumn
landscapes. When I was not really impressed (I only saw some bland, kindof
greenish kindof yellowish trees), he remembered: "Oh, I forgot you have that
sad color filter on"

------
ajuc
If I don't see the difference between these images (ok, some parts are
slightly brighter), does that mean I have color deficiency too ?

~~~
miahi
Yes. Or you have a really really bad computer display. Welcome to the crowd.

------
danielson
_When you see a Gauguin, you think, This man is living in a dream world. When
you see a van Gogh, you think, This dream world is living in a man._

—Adam Gopnik

[http://m.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/01/04/100104fa_fact_go...](http://m.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/01/04/100104fa_fact_gopnik)

A beautiful, inspiring critique if you have the time for it.

------
kellishaver
With the exception of the last example, the two versions of each painting look
identical to me. Of course, I am looking at them through a 4+NS cataract, in
an eye (the only one I have) that also has a damaged macula and other
significant retina damage - but I suspect the cataract plays a bigger role.

I'm having said cataract removed this Friday, so I'll have to check this again
next week and see how things have changed. I'm very curious to see what the
difference will be. The progressive worsening of my vision over the past year
has been so gradual that it's sometimes hard to quantify just how much things
like my ability to see color and contrast has changed.

------
glimcat
"The Harvest" and "The Starry Night" both look under-illuminated. The rest
look more or less the same.

Not sure whether that's my deuteranomaly talking or if it's his small
pictures.

------
anjc
This is such a bizarre exercise, albeit interesting in terms of trivia, i
guess.

"""Finally I feel that van Gogh’s astounding qualities are available to me."""

I've often felt that nerds (including myself here) shouldn't be allowed near
artistically expressive mediums and equipment, such as cameras, because we
nerd them up way too much and miss the whole point. And this quote just sums
up what i mean. :S A minuscule colour shift reveals Van Gogh's genius? NOPE.

------
slevcom
Someone who isn't me once ate some funny mushrooms and Van Gogh's paintings
appeared to him as though they were made with magic pixie paint that actively
ebbed and flowed right before his eyes. That was the day he saw Van Gogh's
genius in a new light. Does that mean Van Gogh only painted after eating
similar funny mushrooms?

------
drx
He mentions this color vision deficiency simulator app:
<http://asada.tukusi.ne.jp/cvsimulator/e/index.html>

It's interesting to look at real life through color deficient eyes.

------
ck2
"protanomal simulation" sure looks like an unsharp mask (with some contrast
added) to me

OT but I really like that blog theme, very clean and easy to read

------
RyanMcGreal
I have normal colour vision, but the Van Gogh self portrait in the Musee
D'Orsay is one of the most beautiful paintings I've ever seen.

------
ebbv
I think the modified versions look worse in every case, and I question the
author's sanity.

You can only appreciate Van Gogh if you can make his color choices more
"normal"? So you'd only appreciate Picasso if you could use photoshop to
reconstruct his paintings?

Take the work as it is. Attempt to understand it on its own terms. That is how
you grow as a person.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Hm. But to folks with different color vision, they 'are' different paintings.
Neither view is 'normal'. An attempt to reconcile views on the same painting
is entirely rational.

------
ricardobeat
All the examples look mostly the same to me. I am mildly color-blind.

------
periferral
Anyone else think this article is a plug for his app?

------
gcb
So you argues he painted wheat the color you see wheat, even though he does
not see it in real life the same color as you see?

Now I'm confused.

