Was Van Gogh colorblind?!

While researching colorblindness, I found an interesting article from Kazunori Asada, he’s an expert on topics of concerning color–I had no idea there was such a career. He was asked to speak at a conference and the conference had created a “Color Vision Experience Room”.  The room optically filtered and modified the spectrum of light. While in the experience room he had a revelation about works by Vincent Van Gogh that were in the room.

“…Each picture had changed into one of brilliance with very delicate lines and shades. This was wonderful to see and experience.”

In a nutshell, Kazunori drew the conclusion that van Gogh was most likely colorblind because his works looked better in the “experience room”. He noted that the painting looked more natural and had more depth when viewed in the “experience room”.

Which of these paintings looks better to you? I can’t tell the difference in either case, but supposedly people who are not colorblind prefer the painting that is viewed as a colorblindguy sees it. Which leads to my favorite quote in the article: “color deficient people can better understand his pictures”.

The ones on the left are the ones as seen by a colorblind van Gogh and on the right seen as non colorblindguys.

Here’s a link to Kazunori’s essay.