Perceiving the Invisible: The Frozen Light in Van Gogh and Aivazovsky

We go to the seashore and peer insatiably into the shifting shades of aquamarine.

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Van Gogh’s famous 1888 painting of a chair is worth 25 million dollars. The actual old chair that the artist depicted is worth no more than a few bucks. Why?

What we value in a painting is not so much how well it represents the outward shape of a thing. We value what the artist saw behind the visible shape. Van Gogh must have glimpsed some…