Colorblindness and Congested Nose

Recently, I read an article online on a Chinese newspaper, Global Times, speculating that the great Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh's unique vision might be due to his possible colorblindness.  The theory was hypothesized by a Japanese medical scientist, Kazunori Asada.  It published several photos of Van Gogh's original painting and filtered version of them, simulating what colorblind people would see, and several scenery photos as well, both "normal" and "colorblind" versions.

Further search online yielded a more comprehensive article, Was Vincent van Gogh Colorblind?, which gives a fuller account of Asada's research:

Kazunori Asada, a Japanese medical scientist, has hypothesized that Vincent van Gogh was colorblind — a theory that would explain the artist’s use of clashing, often discordant colors.
Asada was incited to explore the theory after visiting a “Color Vision Experience Room” in Hokkaido, which provides visitors with the opportunity to experience vision as a colorblind person does.

To test his theory, Asada used a piece of software that filters light to simulate various degrees of colorblindness. Asada settled on a midrange spectrum deficiency to apply to several of van Gogh’s paintings, a process which subtly  but significantly changed the overall color effect of each work: the reds became softer, the blues less notable, and the yellows muted to the point of drab.

Kyle Chayka at BLOUIN Artinfo challenges the theory, reminding Asada that one of the commonalities among Post-Impressionist artists, including Paul Gauguin and André Derain, was an “unorthodox” pairing of colors. 

Furthermore, I found a Tumblr blog by Kazunori Asada, The Day I Saw Van Gogh’s Genius in a New Light, where the scientist pointed out that the simulated view of Van Gogh's paintings were actually closer to "normal" vision:

Left: Original / Right: Protanomal simulation (60%)
 

Left: Original / Right: Protanomal simulation (60%)
 

Below are those scenery photos from Global Times as mentioned in the beginning of this blog post.  Again, the right column images are of the simulated colorblind vision:

 

 

 

These are very interesting images.  For those scenery pictures, I actually prefer the "colorblind version" for their otherworldly poetic atmosphere.

However, I cannot deny that those pictures are only shadows of the real thing and miss a huge dimension.  This realization in turn reminded me of an intense experience I had recently regarding olfactory sense.

One day, despite struggling with a cold, I made a chicken stew, with a large array of spices.  Through my congested nose, I was satisfied with the lovely smell emitted from the stove top.  A nice stew of intense flavor and smell.  Satisfied.

Yet, not until midnight that I realized what I had smelled earlier was only a shadow of the reality.

In the middle of night, my nose suddenly got cleared up and an ever more intense smell of delicious cooking crashed into my bedroom and every cell of my body was stirred by the fortissimo olfactory symphony.  The flavors danced and clashed in the air and I was both amazed and irritated, thinking that one of my neighbors must be cooking in the ungodly hour.  Slowly, with my head got clearer, I realized that it was the remaining smell of my own chicken stew, prepared several hours earlier, from my very own kitchen.

It was a very strange experience.  Yes, while cooking, I knew my stew smelled great.  Only later that I realized I was only smelling the shadow of it.  What glory the reality was, comparing to some filtered ones!  By extension, our little understanding of the universe we live in is only the shadow of shadow of shadow, perhaps.  And that's very optimistic.

My Favorite Paintings at Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam hosted numerous paintings by the great modern Dutch master, Vincent Van Gogh, from iconic ones to the somewhat lesser known though not minor ones.  After some difficult dideliberation, I chose below two paintings as my favorites.

The first one, Wheatfield with Crow, was a well known one, if not universally loves as his Irises or Starry Night. This painting, painted near the end of Van Gogh's life, was a pictorial cry of unmitigatable despair and looming doom, albeit an astonishingly beautiful one.  This visionary work reflected a tortured mind at the brink of collapse, and cracked open a door toward a dark world most of us could only project but not able to imagine and endure.  It was startling and one could practically hear the wailing of the crows filling up the dense blue sky.

Van Gogh, despite or because of his misery, weaved a magic spell with intense and strongly contrasted, thickly applied paints, in wavy and parallel brushstrokes, and it was really the trembling of his own sense and soul we discern.


Korenveld met kraaien, Wheatfield with Crow, Vincent van Gogh (1890) 
Oil on Canvas, 50.5 x 103 cm, 
Photo courtesy by Pachango on Flickr

The second work I cite below was a very tranquil one, comparing to the one above, with a serene and translucent beauty.


Fishing Boats on the Beach at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, 1888 Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) 
Oil on Canvas, 65 x 81.5 cm, 
Photo courtesy by Pachango on Flickr

This painting was painted during his stay in Arles, France, not far from the Mediterranean, after his visiting of the fishing village of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer in June 1888.  He captured something fragile which was deeply personal.  The color scheme was less brilliant than usual, and the brush strokes more continuous and less nervous.  The pale blue sea and beige sand gave this oil painting a look of more delicate pastel painting.  Yet, it was not a weak one.  There were bold strokes, manifested by the strongly outlined boats and their saturate colors, small patches but intense.  More over, the sky was painted with little strokes which invoked some uncertainty, some fearful anticipation, perhaps, an approaching storm.



My Favorite Museum Collection Series

>> My Favorite Museum Collection Series 52: My Favorite Paintings at Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem, Netherlands  
<< My Favorite Museum Collection Series 50:  My Favorite Paintings at Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

List of My Favorite Artworks in the Museums I've Visited

Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne and Beyond: Post-Impressionist Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay at De Young Museum, San Francisco

Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne and Beyond: Post-Impressionist Masterpieces from the Musée d'Orsay at De Young Museum, San Francisco (September 25, 2010 - January 18, 2011) is astonishing in its richness and informative in its well thought-out curatorial decisions and descriptions.  According to De Young Museum:

The second of two exhibitions from the Musée d'Orsay's permanent collection, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne and Beyond: Post-Impressionist Masterpieces from the Musée d'Orsay follows on the heels of the first with a selection of the most famous late-Impressionist paintings by Claude Monet and Auguste Renoir, as well as works representing the individualist styles of the early modern masters, including Vincent van Gogh, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Paul Gauguin, and the Nabis Pierre Bonnard and Édouard Vuillard.

It is here where the Orsay's collection shines brightest with masterpieces such as Van Gogh's Starry Night over the Rhone, a haunting Portrait of the Artist, and Bedroom at Arles. The exhibition includes a superior collection of paintings from the Pont-Aven school, including Gauguin's masterpiece Self-Portrait with The Yellow Christ. The exhibition concludes with the Orsay's spectacular collection of pointillist paintings, represented by the masters Georges Seurat and Paul Signac.

The de Young is the only museum in North America to host the exhibition.

There were too many beautiful paintings and I was reluctant not to include almost all my favorites, along with a few other notables for various reasons such as linkage to other artists or movements.

The first painting we saw was the Le Carmencita by John Singer Sargent below.   It is a ravishing painting but he hardly belong to this group.  I just commented on him a few days ago on his relationship with Impressionism.  I believe its inclusion here rather served as a starting point and it contrasted well with other more forward looking pieces:


Le Carmencita, c. 1890, John Singer Sargent

Served as another traditional starting points are Madam Roger Jordain by Albert Besnard and A Dance in the City by Pierre Auguste below.  They both had sharp contours, with more restrained and less impressionistic brushwork: 


Madam Roger Jordain, 1886, Albert Besnard


A Dance in the City, 1883, Pierre Auguste Renoir

The Bathers by Renoir, 25 years after A Dance in the City, was typical of Renoir's impressionistic painting with his off-focused, fathery brushstrokes and, sickly sweet palette, evoke a nauseating feelings in me.  I really do not like his outputs in this style.  This painting however demonstrated how his style evolved well.


The Bathers, 1918-1919, Pierre Auguste Renoir

Edgar Degas' ballerinas are always popular and he often presented them from most unusual angles, like the piece below, which was full of dynamics:


Dancers Climbing the stairs, 1886-1890, Edgar Degas

When we encountered Paul Gauguin, Paul Cézanne and their circles, we are decidedly in the territory of Post-Impressionism, characterized by bold palettes and outlines, often coupled with mythical and symbolical figures and gestures.  One can also see the flattening of the plane and drastic abstraction.  From Paul Sérucier's works, one could see where Richard Diebenkorn could have come from, or the correspondence with works by Henri Matisse and Paul Cézanne ushered in cubism.


Still Life with Fan, c. 1889, Paul Gauguin - top was obviously influenced by Japanese prints, while the bottom looked like Cézanne's still life


Arearea (Pleasantness), 1892, Paul Gauguin


Yellow Haystacks (The Golden Harvest), 1889, Paul Gauguin


Seascape with Cow (At the Edge of the Cliff), 1888, Paul Gauguin - striking colors, reminded me or Franz Marc


Tahitian Women, 1891, Paul Gauguin


Portrait of the Artist, 1890-91, Paul Gauguin


Bathers with Real Cow, 1887, Emile Bernard


The Harvest (Brefory Landscape), 1888, E'mile Bernard


The Flowery Fence, La barrière, 1889, Paul Sérucier


Still Life, The Artist's Studio, 1891, Paul Sérusier


Still Life with Onions, 1896-98, Paul Cézanne


Kitchen Table (Still Life with Basket), 1888-90, Paul Cézanne

The three Cézanne pieces below worth special mentioning.  His Bathers had a strange or striking composition, filled with masculine and almost religious figures either blessing or baptizing.  Gustave Geffroy, though still representative, clearly pointed a way towards Cubism with its diagonal parallel brushstrokes and Portrait of Madame Cézanne looked back at flat and iconic painting for inspiration and the ancient became new avant-garde:


Bathers, c. 1890, Paul Cézanne,


Gustave Geffroy, 1895-96, Paul Cézanne


Portrait of Madame Cézanne, 1885-90, Paul Cézanne

Pointillists are represented by Georges Seurat and surprisingly Camille Pissarro.  I have never warmed up to Pointillism and the pieces I liked in this group actually are only borderline Pointillism works - less dotty, more formed, less about science, like the Pissaro and Seurat below and Seurat's studies which demonstrated that he had great facility as a painter.


Hoarfrost, Peasant Girl Making a Fire, 1888, Camille Pissarro - pointelistic,


The Little Peasant in Blues, c. 1882, Georges Seurat 

Vincent Van Gogh represented the boldest stylistic works in this exhibition (of course others would develop further in other artistic movements).  I was really startled by the vivid colors of his 1887 Portrait of the Artist.  The image included below looked very dull comparing to the real painting, so did Renoir's Bathers.  All the Van Gogh works included here were amazing and I also particularly love his Starry Night and Van Gogh' Bedroom in Arles.  The pictures I included below were taken in Musée d’Orsay so my readers can have a sense what they looked like in Paris.  The galleries there actually didn't flatter the paintings and hopefully the renovation would make them worthy of the masterpieces they hold.


Portrait of the Artist, 1887, Vincent Van Gogh


Starry Night, 1888, Vincent Van Gogh


Van Gogh' Bedroom in Arles, 1889, Vincent Van Gogh

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was an artist I grew fonder.  His caricatures didn't deprive the psychological depths and his Women Pulling Up Her Stockings reminded me more obviously darker works by Egon Schiele.


Women Pulling Up Her Stockings, 1894, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec


Redhead (Bathing), 1889, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec


Woman with a Black Boad, 1892, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec


The Clown Cha-U-Kao, 1895, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Next, I was enraptured by another favorite artist of mine - Odilon Redon.  I have always loved his mythic subjects and his brilliant color schemes.  Even his seemingly dull Eyes Closed is actually ravishingly beautiful, which used the language of symbolism with elements of sleep, death and renaissance bust.  His Sleep of Caliban was typical of his style and just breathtakingly lovely.


Eyes Closed, 1890, Odilon Redon,


The Sleep of Caliban, 1895-1900, Odilon Redon

The Symbolism "school" included works of varied styles, such as The Poor Fisherman by Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, which employed a Christ-like suffering figure, simplistic and monumental; Orpheus by Gustave Moreau - rich, ornate, pensive and retrospective; and The Snake Charmer, by Henri Rousseau - mysterious, otherworldly and dangerous:


The Poor Fisherman, 1881, Pierre Puvis de Chavannes


Orpheus, 1865, Gustave Moreau


The Snake Charmer, 1907, Henri Rousseau

The sensualist Pierre Bonnard was well represented as well.  I love his The Man and the Woman with two  lovely contrasted nudes, separated by vertical objects, with the woman small and balled up, and the man stretched full height and confident.  The lovely impasto of low value and harmonious paints were a wonder.  That can be said of his Woman Dosing on a Bed (Indolent Woman) as well, which boasted beautiful colors, though monochromatic, and looked like the inside of an oyster, lustrous and shining.


The Man and the Woman, 1900, Pierre Bonnard


Woman Dosing on a Bed (Indolent Woman), 1899, Pierre Bonnard

I also like his whimsical The White Cat, which somewhat looked like a work by Toulouse-Lautrec:


The White Cat, 1896, Pierre Bonnard

What I don't like were his two decorative panels: Water Games (The Voygage) and Pleasure (not pictured) - with their ghastly orange decorative borders, they looked rather like representations of easy-going hell:


Decorative Panel: Water Games (The Voygage), 1906-10, Pierre Bonnard

Other works could be described as somewhat decorative are quite lovely, though The Talisman, the Aven at the Boss d'Amour by Paul Sérusier was rather semi-abstract but it did have design quality to it so I mention it in this group.


The Talisman, the Aven at the Boss d'Amour, 1888, Paul Sérusier

Other such "decorative" works included those by Maurice Denis and Ker-Xavier Roussel.  They were also lovely and not without deeper meanings.  Calling them decorative did not mean they were shallow, especially Landscape with Green Trees (Green Trees) (Procession Under the Trees) by Maurice Denis, which could be called symbolism work as well:


The Muses, 1893, Maurice Denis


Landscape with Green Trees (Green Trees) (Procession Under the Trees), 1893, Maurice Denis


The Terrace, c. 1892, Ker-Xavier Roussel

It was a most exulted exhibit and I would go back again in two weeks' time.

During this wonderful run, De Young Museum was hit by a little controversy regarding sketching in the museum.  Apparently someone tried to make sketches in this crowded show and was told not to.  In order to clarify the matter, De Young Museum published its sketching policy online:

We'd like to take a moment to clarify the museum's sketching policy, in light of the recent and rather controversial article in the San Francisco Chronicle. We welcome and encourage artists to be inspired by and learn from our collections—sketching is permitted for all visitors in the permanent collection galleries at both the de Young and Legion of Honor. With prior notice and approval, artists can also use easels and paints in the permanent collection galleries.

Rules about sketching in traveling exhibitions are determined by two factors—the agreement with the lending institution or collector, and the volume of visitors to an exhibition. Lenders often prohibit sketching in proximity to their works of art when on view at another museum instead of in their own galleries. Sketchers have a tendency to limit crowd flow by blocking access to popular paintings for a long period of time. Because we are the only museum in North America to host Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cezanne and Beyond our daily attendance is very high. With the galleries so crowded, it is virtually impossible to allow sketching.
Come sketch in the museum's permanent collection galleries this weekend, December 18 and 19. The first 20 visitors to check in at the de Young's information desk on Saturday and Sunday will receive a complimentary sketch pad, pencil, and one general admission pass to the permanent collection galleries.

This was a sensible policy therefore I felt no need to call for a sketching-in.

Thank you, De Young Museum.