The Unexpected Math Behind Van Gogh’s “Starry Night”

If you’ve tak­en a good art his­to­ry course on the Impres­sion­ists and Post-Impres­sion­ists, you’ve inevitably encoun­tered Vin­cent van Gogh’s 1889 mas­ter­piece “Star­ry Night,” which now hangs in the MoMA in New York City. The paint­ing, the muse­um writes on its web­site, “is a sym­bol­ic land­scape full of move­ment, ener­gy, and light. The quiet­ness of the vil­lage con­trasts with the swirling ener­gy of the sky.… Van Gogh’s impas­to tech­nique, or thick­ly applied col­ors, cre­ates a rhyth­mic effect—the pic­ture seems to con­stant­ly move in its frame.” Artis­ti­cal­ly, van Gogh man­aged to cap­ture move­ment in a way that no artist had ever quite done it before. Sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly, it turns out, he was on to some­thing too. Just watch the new TED-ED les­son above, The Unex­pect­ed Math Behind Van Gogh’s “Star­ry Night.”

Cre­at­ed by math artist/teacher Natalya St. Clair and ani­ma­tor Avi Ofer, the video explores how “Van Gogh cap­tured [the] deep mys­tery of move­ment, flu­id and light in his work,” and par­tic­u­lar­ly man­aged to depict the elu­sive phe­nom­e­non known as tur­bu­lence. In Star­ry Night, the video observes, van Gogh depict­ed tur­bu­lence with a degree of sophis­ti­ca­tion and accu­ra­cy that rivals the way physi­cists and math­e­mati­cians have best explained tur­bu­lence in their own sci­en­tif­ic papers. And, it all hap­pened, per­haps by coin­ci­dence (?), dur­ing the tur­bu­lent last years of van Gogh’s life.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2014.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

1,000+ Art­works by Vin­cent Van Gogh Dig­i­tized & Put Online by Dutch Muse­ums

Vin­cent Van Gogh’s “The Star­ry Night”: Why It’s a Great Paint­ing in 15 Min­utes

Dis­cov­er the Only Paint­ing Van Gogh Ever Sold Dur­ing His Life­time

The Met Releas­es High-Def­i­n­i­tion 3D Scans of 140 Famous Art Objects: Sar­copha­gi, Van Gogh Paint­ings, Mar­ble Sculp­tures & More