Have a look at this picture, I'm sure you will recognise it, it's Vincent
Van Gogh's 'Starry Night' painted in 1898. I've always loved this picture. The
first time I ever remember seeing it, I must have been eight or nine years old.
We were allowed to paint and draw at school on Tuesday afternoons, something I
always looked forward to. We weren't jut allowed to draw and paint we were
allowed also on occasion, to model with cardboard boxes and be creative. I
don't think most parents see may see it in that light when their children
arrive home with their creations of recycled junk. But no matter, art is about
imagination and what cannot be denied is the power of imagination. I happen to
think that imagination is one of our greatest faculties and in children it
needs to be encouraged. In any case, where would humanity be without
imagination to fire its inspiration and to lead us on to achievements that
cynics had previously have either dismissed as pointless fantasy and time
wasting? Where would we be without artists and dreamers?
As I was saying, our teacher had put a print of Van Gogh's Starry Night on the wall and explained
to us that those dramatic Catherine wheels in the night sky of that
picture were really stars. She explained that this
painting was an example of alternative way to see, to draw and paint and
therefore depict meaning outside of the conventional ideas of what a picture
should look like. Her words made a lasting impression on me, it was too me a
small but significant moment in opening my mind to ideas in art that went
beyond the merely conventional. Looking back, it was a revelation to me since
there were no pictures on the walls inside the council house where I lived as
child, let alone a Vincent Van Gogh print!
I have to say that in spite of this early teaching experience I have lived
my life knowing little about art. It's true that I have made the occasional
visit to local and national art galleries and seen the occasional art programme on
television. But on the whole I remain largely ignorant about art and the work
of the great artists, which I have to admit, is nothing to boast about at all.
However, as a ministry student at Luther King House in Manchester, I was, as it were, called back
into the classroom. And there I had to encounter what was termed 'Art in
Theological Reflection', Art in 'Encountering and Responding to Christ', and
there was even a module titled: 'When Artists, Scientists and Theologians
Meet'. In theology it seems, I cannot escape the world of art and there amongst
all the great artists I rediscovered albeit, much later in life, my old friend
Vincent Van Gogh and his Starry Night - courtesy of a college power point
projector.
The teacher on this occasion was a Baptist minister, the Reverend Dr
Richard Kidd who is also the co-author of:
God and the Art of Seeing - Visual Resources for a Journey of Faith.
Commenting on Vincent's Starry Night He wrote these words "Let us look at
it closely, it is utterly 'Van Gogh'; all, that is but for one thing, the
darkness; But he writes in the same paragraph, "Its claim to total 'Van
Goghness' is fully justified however by the peculiar illumination of this
night; even from the darkness an unparalleled radiance beams from this
painting." I think, if you like this picture, this is indeed what draws
us, the colour in the night sky, the dynamic swirling motion of the paintwork, and the sheer energy of light that explodes
and is born out of the darkness
As a young man Van Gogh wanted to enter the church. He was initially
encouraged in this ambition whilst working in England in 1876. At this time a
Methodist minister, the Rev Slade Jones whom he was also lodging with, employed
him and also gave him the opportunity to preach at his church. The theme for
the sermon was taken from Psalm 119: 19 "I am a stranger on the earth,
hide not thy commandments from me." The writer, Albert Lubin said
"The sermon shows Vincent freely accepting the existence of grief,
loneliness, and death, but through the vehicle of religious faith he is able to glorify
them as a prerequisite for joy, acceptance and immortality."Catalysed by
suffering, sorrow leads to joy, loneliness to togetherness, death to rebirth,
darkness to light, and earth to heaven."
Vincent's sermon given at the Wesleyan Methodist Church Richmond on Sunday
29 October 1876 ended with a description of a painting: God Speed by George
Henry Broughton (1870) Inspired by Bunyan's Pilgrims Progress, Vincent recalled
the picture's distant mountains, and then spoke of the distant mountains that
pilgrims must arduously travel in faith. In a letter to his brother he describes
this first preaching experience in the pulpit as 'emerging from a dark cave
underground'. He feels as though he is emerging into the 'friendly daylight'
and so, describing his first experience as a preacher, it is images of light to
which he intuitively turned." Enthused and inspired he wrote "It is a
delightful thought that in the future wherever I go, I shall preach the Gospel." As we know, Van Gogh became the extraordinary
lightening conductor through which his own inner turmoil would lead to a
metamorphosis in which his Christian faith, and later his paintings brilliantly
dreamed out on canvas would bring fame and immortalise him in the world of art.
However, Van Gogh's attempts to enter the Church were ultimately
unsuccessful. He failed to pass the entrance exams for the Faculty of Theology in
Amsterdam. He then entered
an evangelical school in Brussels
only to be rejected after working as a
lay preacher amongst
the miners in
Belgium. In August 1879, he was rejected by the church,
which criticised him for his 'excessive
commitment' Whatever Van Gogh's'
personal short comings, his
ascetic life style as a 'lay evangelist'
and dedication to his
ministry, to the
peasant miners, his
praying with them and dressing their wounds cannot be denied. This was
Van Gogh's testament to following the life of Christ. But in the end without the
support of the Church his self-appointed missionary life could not be
sustained. Moreover his own health could not withstand his own obstinacy and
his self-induced privations.
Vincent Van Gogh was twenty-seven years old when he finally abandoned his
attempts to become a pastor and set his sights on becoming an artist instead.
But I would argue that he would never give up on his faith. For example, in
1888 he described Christ, the life of Christ by writing, "He lived
serenely, as an artist greater than all other artists, scorning marble and clay
and paint, working in the living flesh. It has been said by many commentators,
'the majority even' have argued that the end of Vincent's evangelistic career
was also the end of his Christianity and even the end of his belief in God. The
reality is more that whilst Vincent like most people who may have break with organised religion and
its attendant hypocrisies still retain their faith and there attachments to the Bible and hold on to
that concept of the Christ figure. In a letter to his brother, Theo in 1884 he
wrote, "Oh, I am no friend of present-day Christianity, though its Founder
was sublime"
There are critics who have dismissed Vincent's religion and art as a coping
mechanism for a troubled mind and we know that Vincent was a troubled man; we know about his personal circumstances his bouts
of melancholy his depressions, his self admitted insanity, the story of his cutting
off of a large part of his ear with a
razor. All of this
point to a
life of mental suffering, deep
feelings of rejection, unrequited
love, and loneliness would
(again) lead to self mutilation and death by suicide in 1890. However, the
specific details of Van Gogh's illnesses are complex. Could it not be suggested
that in large part, albeit at an extreme, his sufferings are representative of
the universal human condition? We are all familiar with existential angst.
Perhaps we should learn to recognise our own shadow side as an integral universal
component. And whilst we may long for, and worship the light, we may learn that
we simply cannot consign the darkness to irrelevance. Van Gogh seemed to know
that darkness and suffering is the soil, the potential, out of which may spring
light, life and love. Light and darkness is not a duality but a symbiotic whole
in a dialectical relationship. And I find it helpful to see the twin themes of
religion and art as the medium through which Vincent's own God-realisation
could be expressed, a working through of the Holy Spirit leading him to
artistic completeness. A prophet of light who bequeathed paintings that will be
gazed at forever in awe and wonder
