MANY readers will have seen the picture put out by the European Space Agency last week of a cloud of dust swirling round a distant star known as V838 Mon. ESA’s press release told us breathlessly that the image, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, bore “remarkable similarities” to Vincent Van Gogh’s famous painting Starry Night, and newspapers around Europe obligingly printed the two pictures side by side with headlines like “Cosmic life imitates art”.
We have looked long and hard at these two images, and see no similarities between them whatsoever. What kind of postmodern art appreciation course have…
