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The Day I Saw Van Gogh’s Genius in a New Light

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Re: The Day I Saw Van Gogh’s Genius in a New Light

#11

Post by 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.

Re: The Day I Saw Van Gogh’s Genius in a New Light

#12

Post by phil »

ars wrote: post #4

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?

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?

Re: The Day I Saw Van Gogh’s Genius in a New Light

#13

Post by daeken »

ars wrote: post #10
imeikas wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me ask this in another way, why would you not use two different colors as one, if they look identical to you?

Why would you separately put two "different" colors of paint on your pad, when as far as you can tell they are identical? I can understand mixing them, or using first one then the other (after you run out of one) - but shading the image partly with one color and parts with another? The only conclusion is that they were not identical to him, and this software is not correctly showing us what he saw.

Simple: You mix the colors one way, paint for a while, go off to some other part, mix the first color again, and paint again. If you can't tell the differences between two colors, it's easy to come up with two similar/'identical' colors that are really quite different to someone with a different color perception.

While this article doesn't remotely prove that this is what's happened, it seems like a possibility to me.

Re: The Day I Saw Van Gogh’s Genius in a New Light

#14

Post by 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.

Re: The Day I Saw Van Gogh’s Genius in a New Light

#15

Post by rayiner »

ars wrote: post #4

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?

The colors don't necessarily look identical to him. If you have trouble see in green, and two colors differ by how much green is in them, you might perceive the two colors to be closer together than someone with normal color vision perceives the two colors.

I think that's what you see in a lot of the pictures. Look at the green in the coat in the self-portrait. What appears as distinct lines of green in the normal color version becomes muted in the modified color version and blends in much more with the other colors, but with just enough difference to lend a rich texture to the coat.

Re: The Day I Saw Van Gogh’s Genius in a New Light

#16

Post by gregschlom »

pygy_ wrote: post #14

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.

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.

Re: The Day I Saw Van Gogh’s Genius in a New Light

#18

Post by aiscott »

gregschlom wrote: post #17

I'm color-blind and I see absolutely no differences between the original and the modified images. So I assume this is working.

As am I, although I saw significant difference on the Harvest. The rest I couldn't really tell, but they were much busier color wise.

Re: The Day I Saw Van Gogh’s Genius in a New Light

#19

Post by wolfhumble »

daeken wrote: post #13
ars wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you separately put two "different" colors of paint on your pad, when as far as you can tell they are identical? I can understand mixing them, or using first one then the other (after you run out of one) - but shading the image partly with one color and parts with another? The only conclusion is that they were not identical to him, and this software is not correctly showing us what he saw.

Simple: You mix the colors one way, paint for a while, go off to some other part, mix the first color again, and paint again. If you can't tell the differences between two colors, it's easy to come up with two similar/'identical' colors that are really quite different to someone with a different color perception. While this article doesn't remotely prove that this is what's happened, it seems like a possibility to me…

The effect where colors with different spectral power distributions matches under certain conditions due to the observer or the light source, is called metamerism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamerism_%28color%29

Re: The Day I Saw Van Gogh’s Genius in a New Light

#20

Post by aiscott »

gregschlom wrote: post #16
pygy_ wrote: post #14

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.

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. Th…

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.
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