2023-07-25
Brooke Strong
Sermon Text...
GOD AS ARTIST: Van Gogh the Evangelist
Genesis 1:1-5 Mark 9:38-41
Oh hello I just needed to come in and get some water, It is warm outside. Forgive me, I am Vincent Willem van Gogh. That is one of my early works up there. I was born on 30 March 1853 in the southern part of the Netherlands. I was the oldest child of Theodorus, a minister of the Dutch Reformed Church, and Anna Cornelia Carbentus. I was named after my paternal grandfather, and a brother stillborn exactly a year before my birth. I wonder about that brother sometimes and how we are connected. Anyway, Vincent was a common name in my family. And theology and art were common professions. I was a serious, quiet child. And it was not easy, I spent much time at boarding school. Years later I wrote to my brother Theo saying, “My youth was gloomy and cold and sterile.” But I began learning to draw at age of 13 and this was a good thing. It changed everything. At first I pursued art At 20 I began successful work as an Art dealer, making much more than my Father. For a while I was very happy. Then I began to notice that my customers were buying art as a way to show their wealth and not out of a love of art, which caused me to become disillusioned with the work. But that was not the worst of it. I also fell in love for the first time, but was rejected. This led me to some isolation, and increased my focus on my faith.
I became a teacher in 1876, and then owned a bookshop for a while, but found I preferred reading and translating the Bible to selling books. But when I went to seminary, despite help from my Uncle who was a respected 1 Theologian, I failed the entrance exams. But I really wanted to serve in the church and begged for work, so I was given a temporary post as a Missionary in a very poor mining area of Belgium, but that did not go well either. Trying to live like those to whom I was preaching, I stayed in a small hut on a bed of straw, They were so poor you see, and how could I preach to them about God while living in relative luxury, but the Church authorities said I was "undermining the dignity of the priesthood." I struggled with my own mood a lot then too, often sobbing through the night. I returned home my Father considered putting me in an asylum. But I went back to Belgium and began to draw the scenes around.
This is one called the potato eaters. It was then that my Brother, Theo suggested I turn to art as a life's work. So I went to study in Brussels in 1880. There I aspired to become an artist in God’s service, once saying: “to try to understand the real significance of what the great artists, the serious masters, tell us in their masterpieces, that leads to God; one man wrote or told it in a book; another in a picture.” Not long after I fell in love again, this time with my widowed cousin, but when I proposed I was told, No, Nay, Never. I think my uncle had been the driving force behind her "No" because I was not really making a living as an artist. This was the uncle who had tutored me before my seminary exams. His hardness seemed so hypocritical when I remembered his lofty words of faith, and in this time of being heart broken I rejected my Uncle’s formal 2 church faith. I was very upset and refused to go to church even on Christmas, which led to a falling out with my Father. In 1882 I left home and went to the Hague where I began to paint in oils.
You may have noticed that my early works are not nearly as colorful as my later ones; let me explain that a bit. In my early life, the style of art was based on the old masters -
This is an early renaissance work by Fra Angelico. It depicts Jesus coming out of the tomb - notice the colors are more muted. And of course, the topic is religious because most work was religious or portraits of the wealthy. I am sure you know the even more popular artist; Rembrandt. Look at these two by him.
This is Rembrandt’s Moses - look how dark most of the work is. With illumination coming from Moses himself. See that. Rembrandt always showed the light coming from the Holy person. This was the nature of the art. The light was limited, focussed… It almost seems like God was withholding light from the common humans.
Look at his painting of the Holy Family in the Stable. It is Mary that is the source of light. Joseph is hardly visible and the Angel is only partially illuminated. This focus on only the saints, and the stingy amount of light started to trouble me, especially after my faith had been shaken. Anyway, at the Hague I fell in love with Clasina. Oh, my father did not approve as she had been a prostitute and was an alcoholic, but I loved her, and her two children. but my father prevailed because I was not making much money and she went back to prostitution, so we were not very happy. I began to wonder if family life was irreconcilable with becoming the artist I wanted to be, needed to be, so I left after a year. A few years later my Father died and I was again devastated. But at the same time, some were becoming interested in my earlier paintings. But Theo, my brother who was selling my work in Paris, told me to do bright works like the new "Impressionist paintings" that were becoming popular. So I began to look at some new works. It is ironic that this new style of painting came when I was reforming my beliefs about life as well. Oh I had not forgotten religion, but I searched for it in another way. I explained it in a letter to Theo,; ‘That doesn’t stop me having a tremendous need for, shall I say the word — for religion — so I go outside at night to paint the stars]’ It was in God's world that I began to see and feel God again. And not only did this change my subject matter, but it changed how I painted as well. Let me explain.
This is Starry Night on the Seine. Notice the bright blue of the night sky and the bright yellow and orange of the illuminated lights of the town, and the stars. This is very different from Rembrandt, yes? You see, all my earlier works had avoided bright and vivid colors because yellow and bright blue, any bright color was thought to be garish and ugly, but as I thought of God, the first and most amazing artist, it seemed to me that God made those colors - how could anyone consider them wrong or ugly.
God made them for our joy. And so I began to make brightly colored paints in order to experiment with them.- yes, you heard me right, a painter couldn’t even buy bright paints then. And Do you see, I still have people in the painting, but they are not at the center of this one, the whole thing, the beauty of the water and the sky and the lights and the people are what is celebrated here.
I also found beauty in flowers in fields and in vases. I particularly loved sunflowers. Do you see my signature there? I wanted to learn from others experimenting with impressionism so I moved to Paris and met Toulouse-LaTrec, Monet and many others. there I also met my good friend Paul Gauguin who inspired me. I continued to work, but entered into a time of ill health, sometimes not eating well and smoking too much and drinking Absinthe which is a 100 proof alcohol. I over worked myself. Sometimes I was just grasped with a vision and had to work for hours… But even in bad health I learned much and even graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Amsterdam. Then I moved to the South of France. A lovely town called Arles. In 1988, 113-year-old Jeanne Calment of Arles — who was 13-year-old, when I went to her uncle’s fabric shop to buy some canvas — described me as “dirty, badly dressed and disagreeable”, and “very ugly, ungracious, impolite, sick”. My personal life was still on a downward spiral mess, but my work was thrilling to me. I found the light, the countryside, the colors amazing here. I used a lot of yellow, ultramarine, and mauve in my paintings.
Speaking of yellow, this is a little cafe in Arles. It is bright yellow, yes? In fact, the cafe was white, I painted it that color because the setting sun was shining only on it… see the stars are coming out around the rest of Arles. But now I guess it is actually painted bright yellow in some kind of tribute to the work, I have never understood the ways of business. Anyway, this is what I wrote about this painting in a letter, “I have tried to express the idea that the café is a place where one can ruin oneself, go mad, or commit a crime.” It was illuminated with the light of life. Life is risky; bordering on the insane at times.. yet inspiring and wonderful
Oh, the ear… you have heard I cut off my ear. I cannot tell you why. The Local newspaper reported “a painter named Vincent Vangogh, appeared at the maison de tolérance No 1, asked for a girl called Rachel, and handed her … his ear with these words: ‘Keep this object like a treasure.’ There you have it. Why did I do it.. who knows. They took me to the hospital and I was there a long time Gauguin visited me many times before and after the “ear event” In fact he once said he cut it off in a fight we were having, We did fight a lot. But I remember nothing. I was having another mental collapse, which had happened to me a number of times in my life. I was committed to the asylum and when I was out of my mind I often washed myself with coal to try to atone for my sins. You wonder why I gave the ear to Rachel… Rachel, who some think was my love interest. Well, I think you would call her a prostitute - a legal profession in France then - anyway, Rachel was a sweet girl known by both Gauguin and I. Who knows why her in particular.. But I always found comfort in human touch. Even when things were difficult .
Perhaps that’s why I like this painting so much. The two workers resting in the field together. Can you smell the hay? Can you see the gentle way the two people fold into each other even in their exhaustion. At the age of 36 I left Arles and committed myself to another institution, In the last year of my life, I could not write. I had fits of despair and hallucination during which I could not work - do not let anyone tell you suffering or mental illness is what makes an artist. An artist cannot work when they are suffering in despair. No-one can, but fortunately, when the despair left me, I had some months when I was filled with extreme joy and painted in a feeling of rapture. This last year is when I painted perhaps my best known work. I remember that night so well. It was like the stars and the sky and the earth and the village were all dancing together, just for me.
No one knows, even me, why I shot myself that July. But I failed at that like I did so many other things. The bullet passed through my chest without hitting any internal organs. In fact, I walked back to town, where two doctors tended me, but there was no surgeon, so the bullet could not be removed. The doctors left me to rest in my room where I smoked my pipe. My brother Theo heard what happened and rushed to be with me in the morning. At first he found me in surprisingly good shape, but within hours I began to fail due to infection. He was there when I said my last words: “The sadness will last forever.” I was in despair realizing what I had done, how I had taken away my chance to see the stars dance again with human eyes. Life was hard for me, true but punctuated by moments of seeing God’s amazing world and it’s wondrous colors. I hope some of my work found its way to help others see some of that wonder. I was a financial and personal failure, it is true, but God also made me able to see the truth and also to draw and paint it. God allowed me to work with all my heart and soul and strength. That is the one thing, you see, the one thing that made it all worthwhile. When I painted I was not a failure, I was a child of God. Art set me free, it allowed me to see the world. In fact, I think I will head back out now there is so much beauty out there.
Genesis 1: 1-5 When God began to create[a] the heavens and the earth, the earth was complete chaos, and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God[b] swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. And God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.
Mark 9:38-41 John said to him, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.” But Jesus said, “Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. Whoever is not against us is for us. For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward.