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

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...

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."

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?

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.

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.

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.