A GABA Interneuron Deficit Model of the Art of Vincent van Gogh

Abstract

Vincent van Gogh was one of the most influential artists of the Western world, having shaped the post-impressionist art movement by shifting its boundaries forward into abstract expressionism. His distinctive style, which was not valued by the art-buying public during his lifetime, is nowadays one of the most sought after. However, despite the great deal of attention from academic and artistic circles, one important question remains open: was van Gogh's original style a visual manifestation distinct from his troubled mind, or was it in fact a by-product of an impairment that resulted from the psychiatric illness that marred his entire life? In this paper, we use a previously published multi-scale model of brain function to piece together a number of disparate observations about van Gogh's life and art. In particular, we first quantitatively analyze the brushwork of his large production of self-portraits using the image autocorrelation and demonstrate a strong association between the contrasts in the paintings, the occurrence of psychiatric symptoms, and his simultaneous use of absinthe-a strong liquor known to affect gamma aminobutyric acid (GABA) alpha receptors. Secondly, we propose that van Gogh suffered from a defective function of parvalbumin interneurons, which seems likely given his family history of schizophrenia and his addiction to substances associated with GABA action. This could explain the need for the artist to increasingly amplify the contrasts in his brushwork as his disease progressed, as well as his tendency to merge esthetic and personal experiences into a new form of abstraction.

The Art of Pain: A Quantitative Colour Analysis of the Self-Portraits of Frida Kahlo

“…Creating visual art is one of the defining characteristics of the human species [18] and is layered by both conscious and unconscious activities [24], so that canvases may contain elements stemming from the physical and mental ailments of the artist. We now have the tools to extract and resolve these by use of quantitative tools [27].…”

“…Computational methods that extract quantitative features from canvases are commonly used by art collectors, art dealers and museums for the detection of forgeries but also in art history to identify styles and artists, determine cross-influences, and, more experimentally, have been applied to predict aesthetic ratings (please see review of these methods in [2]). Recently, we have been able to integrate all three steps above in a longitudinal, quantitative study of the self-portraits of Vincent van Gogh to demonstrate his mental illness as likely due to interneuron deficits due the significant association of colour contrast and expressionist style with his consumption of absinthe, a strong liquor with potent activity on gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) receptors [27].…”

SSAR-GNN: Self-Supervised Artist Recommendation with Graph Neural Networks

“…Art history is an epic of human aesthetic development, which illustrates how different categories of art originated and developed in different regions of the world, for instance, when and where the artistic style of Renaissance originated [1,2]. Artists and artistic works are principal parts of art history.…”

“…Artist-related problems have been extensively investigated by existing studies [1][2][3][4][6][7][8][9]. A host of studies focus on the factors that influence formation and transformation of artist's style.…”

“…A host of studies focus on the factors that influence formation and transformation of artist's style. In the early stage, some studies find that revealing diseases may promote artists to create famous masterpieces [2,3]. Sociological factors may also influence the proceeding throughout artists' whole life [4].…”