NDT Explains the Significance of Van Gogh's The Starry Night | Joe Rogan

You know. Oh, look at that. A little bit of Starry Night there. Yeah, you're really into that, huh? Oh, yeah, I got... That's what's on your phone as well. So you remembered, yeah. Yes. Yeah, yeah, it's on the phone. Starry Night. You know what I like about Starry Night? It's not what Van Gogh saw that night. It's what he felt. How do you know what he felt? Because this is not a representation of reality. And anything that deviates from reality is reality that has filtered through your senses. And I think art at its highest is exactly that. If this was an exact depiction of reality, it would be a photograph and I don't need the artist. Hmm, okay. So even photographs that take you to a slightly other kind of dimension as you gaze upon them, it's more than what was actually going on at the time. And that's art taken to the craft of photography. That's why you like it? Yes, that's one of the reasons why. Plus, I think it was the very first painting where its title is the background. Think about that. This could have been called, you know, in the full painting, obviously this is a snippet. A town? Yeah, yeah. So there's a town there, there's a cypress tree, there's a church steeple. It could have been called the cypress tree. It could have been called Sleepy Village. It could have been called Rolling Hills. But no, it's called Starry Night. And everything in front of it, everything in front of it is just in the way. And how often do you paint something where the title is the background? That's my point. And in this particular case, the background is the universe. And so for me, this was a pivot point in art. And it's 1889, which is recent, given the history of paintings and, you know, they go all the way back. So yeah, there it is. Is that your favorite painting ever? I have to say yes. It has to be. You have a vest and a phone call. If it's not, what are you doing? Yeah, I have four or five ties that have this painting on them in different ways. Yeah, so I'm all in. I'm all in. What's interesting is that the town is... Wait, wait, have you seen Starry Night in Bacon? Somebody did, look, dig it up on the screen. Somebody did it in Bacon. It was just crazy. Oh, God, how weird. Yeah, so... That's weird. Yeah. How weird. Go back to the original one, please. What's interesting about the original one is that the town is realistically depicted. The trees are recognizable as trees. If you ever saw a sky that looked like that, the end would be here. Yeah, exactly. Plus that swirling is not wind and it's not clouds because if it was clouds, you wouldn't see the stars. Right. It's how he felt. That's all I can tell you. By the way, that is a real evening, so that's... Sorry, it's not even the evening, it's early morning. The crescent moon, when it's that orientation, means this is before sunrise and that white object lower on the horizon, that's sort of glowy, that's very likely Venus and that enables us to trace what's... Over what set of weeks this painting was actually painted. So it's kind of like forensic astronomy, if you will. Has anyone done an analysis of where he must have been? Yeah, yeah, that's well known. Yeah, he was in a real place. And so that really... He didn't pull this out of his ass, right? I mean, it was... He painted what he saw, folded into what he felt. Heavy. Yeah. That's how art should be, I think. Yeah. Otherwise, what do you need artists for? Make cool shit. The cool stuff is something that they felt and it came out of them. Yeah. The cool stuff, artists feel the natural world in ways different from the rest of us. And that's why they're artists. Do they or do they just express it with more and more skill? Oh, sorry. Yes, they not only... Yes, we all can feel it, but to be able to express it, that's a whole other talent. Right, just a capture. You know what I think about often? Why do we all know who Paul Revere is? All right? We all... It's a household name. Yet, is there any other war ever fought in the history of the world where a household name is the name of the person who told other people the enemy was coming? We can mention his name, but we can't list the generals that all fought in that war. Why? It's because a poem was written about him. And he had this mundane job, let me tell people the enemy is coming. And so the artist, in this case, the poet, elevated the mundane to something that forces you to reckon it with your understanding of this world. What's Joyce Kilmer's most famous poem? It's about a tree. Dogs piss on trees. You drive by trees, you don't even know they're there. Yet a poem about a tree. I'll never see something as lovely as a tree. Oh my gosh. So the art forces you to pause and just reflect on things that you took for granted, things that became ordinary in your life, and they were elevated to... They get beatified by the talents of artists. That's a word? Oh, beatify? You never knew that word? No, that's a good one. Beatify... Yeah, I'm using it loosely. It's the intermediate step between being an ordinary person and being a saint. The beatification of someone in the Catholic Church. I would have thought it's making something more beautiful. Oh, okay. It could have similar roots. Be at... Be Ut... Yeah, it could come from that. But to be beatified is the first steps en route to sainthood. That's if I remember the word correctly. Here it goes. Oh, you got it. Jerry pulled it up. The definition, to make supremely happy, Christianity declared to have attained blessedness of heaven and authorized the title blessed and limited public religious honor. She was beatified six years after her death. Yeah, so I think you can't become a saint unless you've previously been beatified. I think that's the rule. But I'm looking at the number one definition there, to make supremely happy. So that's interesting. That's interesting. Yeah, that moved ahead of it. Definition of beatify. Yeah. It's a weird word. So to beatify... The verb was up there. You had on the screen Roman Catholic Church. He beatified Juan Diego, an Indian believed to have a vision of a Virgin Mary, synonyms canonize, sanctify, hollow, consecrate. So I think if you take something ordinary and you subject it to the interpretation of an artist, it can be beatified and elevated on a level where it becomes a household recognition of its importance in this world.