A Turbulent Mind

I just read an interesting little blurb(this is copied from the article in Discover magazine- Oct. 2006). Apparently, the paintings that Vincent van Gogh produced when he was at his most psychotic depicted natural phenomena brilliantly. Two men from the National Autonomous University in Mexico plotted the swirls in van Gogh's most turbulent paintings, which coincidentally or not, were made during his most serious dips in mental health. Van Gogh's spiral brushstrokes are near-perfect renderings of turbulence. From the largest visible swaths of paint to the tiniest strokes , his brushwork seems to simulate river eddies and cloud rotations.
Starry Night was painted during a stay in a French insane asylum. Road With Cypress and Star was made after a prolonged bout of disturbing hallucinations and Wheat Field With Crows was finished just before van Gogh committed suicide.
They found that van Gogh's eddies matched the famous (although never heard of by me) Kolmogorov statistical model of turbulence. For a laymen like van Gogh, that's qite a coup, since the problem of turbulence is generally considered the last unsolved mystery of classical physics. It could be possible that van Gogh's mind, warped by disease , was prepared to grasp phenomena that have baffled physicists for centuries.
Van Gogh's talent with natural forms has made an impact in science before. Last year a study found that bumblebees thay had never encountered real flowers favored his Sunflowers over the floral works of other well-known artists.
I went to the van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam when I was in Holland. It was absolutely fascinating. The exhibit was presented chronologically, and the first works were the black and white sketches made of the Potato Eaters, and as I moved through the museum, I could see his art change as his mental illness took grip. Towards the end, the paint is very thick and aggressively applied. He was very aware of his mental problems, and he wrote letters to his brother Theo describing his pain. He also committed himself voluntarily off and on into mental hospitals. If you ever have the chance to see van Gogh's work, go see it!!!