Art brings faith to life. This blog is devoted to seeing the spiritual meanings behind art and learning the faith stories of artists.
This blog should be especially useful for preachers who want to bring the best visuals to the sanctuary screen.
"Preach Always and when necessary use words." (attributed to St. Francis) Some people don't need words; they have art.
Each section begins with Biblical insight into the Christ-like quality of the artist.
Each section begins with Biblical insight into the Christ-like quality of the artist.
SACRIFICIAL LOVE
THE CHRIST
"And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of
grace and truth." (Jn 1:14)
Many Christmas cards
with soft-tinted images of gentle Madonna and child quote these words of John.
They show the incarnation as more ethereal than real. But the real
miracle of Christmas is that God would want to enter the tough life of this
world as a broken, suffering,
exulting, grieving, tempted and tired man. Instead of remaining above it
all in heaven's safety he was born in a barn and died on Golgotha beside
Gehenna, the garbage heap of Jerusalem. In the incarnation Christ
took upon himself not only the sins of the world but the suffering of the
world, too.
For God to join in the
suffering of others not only affirms people, but heals them, also. When
we enter the suffering of others we offer the same affirmation and healing.
And we become Christ-like.
In Galatians
4:19 Paul
says, “My little children, I have birth pains until Christ be transformed in
you." The Greek word for transform is morphē and literally means
Christ be morphed or formed into us. In Philippians 3:10 he uses the
word morphē again, saying, "That I may gain Christ and
become conformed unto his death."
As we enter into
Christ's sufferings we participate with him in the redemption of the world.
And in the pain we glimpse the glory that is beyond us.
THE ARTIST
“And we, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the spirit.”
II Cor. 3:18
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| Starry Night Over Rhone |
As a young man he was inspired by the anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin and by the writings of Charles Dickens, especially Dickens’ description of the plight of the poor.
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| The Good Samaritan 1880 |
Once he read Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables in which Hugo said of the saintly bishop “He was there alone with himself, collected, tranquil, adoring, comparing the serenity of his own heart with the serenity of the skies, moved in the darkness by the visible splendours of the constellations, and the invisible splendour of God, opening his soul to the thoughts that fall from the Unknown. In such moments offering up his heart at the hour when the flowers of night inhale their perfume, lighted like a lamp in the centre of The Starry Night…” (Les Misérables, Victor Hugo, Chapter III)
This minister wanted to bring light to the dark world of these impoverished miners who spent most of their time underground. He couldn’t preach but he could paint so he painted The Starry Night.
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| Starry Night 1889 |
The swirls invite us to look inward. The gentle town dominated by a church steeple speaks of peace. And those eleven stars? Some art critics find a biblical meaning in the number of stars painted in Starry Night. They may allude to a specific Bible verse in Genesis. It’s the story of Joseph, disrespected by his brothers and thrown into a prison.
Then he dreamed still another dream and told it to his brothers, saying, “Look, I have dreamed another dream. And this time, the sun, the moon and the eleven stars bowed down to me.”
Genesis 37:9
Where does the artist place himself in this painting? Perhaps he is the dark cypress tree looming like a black flame on the left. The artist wrote of this painting: "a great starlit vault of heaven...one can only call God." (Personal letter of van Gogh written in 1888)
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| Self-Portrait |
Vincent Van Gogh as a young man had a religious calling. His father was a minister who made sermons come alive with visual descriptions of Christ’s world. The son wanted to minister to working people. In 1876 he was assigned a post in Isleworth, England, to teach Bible classes and occasionally preach in the Methodist church.
When he returned to the Netherlands he studied for the ministry but failed the university entrance exam to advance these studies. With support from his father, Van Gogh went to Borinage in southern Belgium where he nursed and ministered to coal miners. There he obtained a six-month trial position for a small salary where he preached in an old dance hall and established and taught Bible school. But his self-imposed zeal and asceticism, as well as his shabby clothing, puzzled and shocked people and cost him the position.
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| Saint-Paul-Asylum-in-Saint-Rémy |
Several times he was institutionalized with what seems to be an inherited mental illness.
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| Corridor-of-Saint-Paul-Asylum-in-Saint-Rémy |
After a nine-month period of withdrawal from society and family he rejected the church establishment, finding his own personal vision of spirituality.
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| Man Praying |
He maintained his devotional life and often drew sketches of men in prayer.
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| Sunflowers |
He wrote "The best way to know God is to love many things. Love a friend, a wife, something - whatever you like - [and] you will be on the way to knowing more about Him; this is what I say to myself. But one must love with a lofty and serious intimate sympathy, with strength, with intelligence." (Wallace (1969). Editors of Time-Life Books, ed. The World of Van Gogh (1853-1890). Alexandria, VA: Time=Life Books. pp. 12–15.)
| Vincent's-Bedroom-in-Arles. |
Sadly, he always lived humbly for during his lifetime he sold only two paintings. Much of his life was lived in a single rented room. He once said great artists must be like Christ – unrecognized in their own lifetime, self-sacrificing, ministering to the poor.
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| Wheat-Field-Behind-Saint-Paul-Hospital-with-a-Reaper |
Drawn to Biblical parables, Van Gogh found wheat fields a metaphor for humanity's
cycles of life, as both celebration of growth and realization of our susceptibility to nature's powerful forces.
Of the Biblical symbolism of sowing and reaping Van Gogh taught in his Bible lessons: "One does not expect to get from life what one has already learned it cannot give; rather, one begins to see more clearly that life is a kind of sowing time, and the harvest is not [in this life]. " (Letter to Theo van Gogh, Feb. 8, 1883)
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| Sower |
The Sower was painted in June, 1888. The image of the sower came to Van Gogh in Biblical teachings from his childhood, such as:
Mark 4:3-8
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| The Digger |
Van Gogh used the digger and plowman as symbols of struggle to reach the kingdom of God. He often painted them in more muted colors to express hardship.
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| The Sower 1882 |
He was particularly enamored with what he called "the good God sun". He said anyone who didn't believe in the sun was an infidel. In an ideal world all life is as bright and glowing as the sun. (Lubin, A (1996) [1972]. Stranger on the Earth: A Psychological Biography of Vincent van Gogh. United States: De Capo Press. p. 221.)
The painting of the haloed sun was a characteristic style seen in many of his paintings, representing the divine. Sometimes the halo is over the simple worker’s head.
And when it is dark, as in Delacroix’s painting of Christ Asleep During the Tempest, the sun is the halo around Christ’s head.
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| Christ Asleep In The Tempest |
Van Gogh found storms important for their restorative nature, symbolizing what he called "the better times of pure air and the rejuvenation of all society." (Letter to Theo van Gogh, 1st half of February, 1886)
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| Wheat Field In Rain 1882 |
Van Gogh felt storms reveal the divine, in part because his own mental illness made his life stormy. That mental illness may have been inherited for both his brother and sister struggled with it, also. Or it may have come from lead poisoning. Van Gogh was in the habit of licking his fingers when he painted with lead paints for the lead had a sweet taste.
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| Green Wheat Fields |
If painting storms reflected a stormy life, Van Gogh saw in his paintings of wheat fields an opportunity for people to find a sense of calm and meaning, offering more to suffering people than guessing at what they may learn "on the other side of life," as he called it. (The Pursuit of Spiritual Wisdom: The Thought and Art of Vincent Van Gogh By Naomi E. Maurer, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press, Jan 1, 1998 p. 93)
In 1889 Van Gogh wrote of the way in which wheat was symbolic to him: "What can a person do when he thinks of all the things he cannot understand, but look at the fields of wheat... We, who live by bread, are we not ourselves very much like wheat... to be reaped when we are ripe." ("Wheat Field with Reapers, Auvers" Collection. Toledo Museum of Art. Retrieved April 1, 2011.)
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| Rest From Work |
Van Gogh wrote his brother Theo, that he hoped that his family could bring to him "what nature, clods of earth, the grass, yellow wheat, the peasant, are for me, in other words, that you find in your love for people something not only to work for, but to comfort and restore you when there is a need." (Van Gogh, V and Leeuw, R (1997) [1996]. van Crimpen, H, Berends-Albert, M., ed. The Letters of Vincent van Gogh. London and other locations: Penguin Books. p. F605.)
Further exploring the connection between humans and nature, Van Gogh wrote his sister Wil, "What the germinating force is in a grain of wheat, love is in us." (Van Gogh and God: A Creative Spiritual Quest By Cliff Edward Loyola Press, 1989 p. 78)
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| Self-Portrait 1887 |
At times Van Gogh was so enamored with nature that his sense of self seemed lost in the intensity of his work: "I have a terrible lucidity at moments, these days when nature is so beautiful, I am not conscious of myself any more, and the picture comes to me as in a dream." (Mauer The Pursuit of Spiritual Wisdom: p. 20)
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| The Olive Trees |
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| Boots |
In The Sower With Setting Sun Van Gogh uses complementary colors to bring intensity to the picture. Blue and orange flecks in the plowed field and violet and gold are in the spring wheat behind the sower. Vivid colors made reality bolder and more beautiful than reality really is. Van Gogh used colors symbolically and for effect. When speaking of the colors in this work he said: “I couldn't care less what the colours are in reality.” What represents God in the painting of the Sower? It is the Sun. Van Gogh always made the sun a focal point. He depicts the cycle of life in the sowing of wheat against the field of mature wheat. (Van Gogh: The Life By Steven Naifeh, Gregory White Smith Random House Publishing Group, 211 p. 612)
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| Sower With Setting Sun |
There is death, like the setting sun, but also rebirth. The sun will rise again. Wheat has been cut, but the sower plants seeds for a new crop. Leaves have fallen from trees, but leaves will grow again.
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| Wheat Stacks With Reaper |
Wheat Stacks with Reaper was made in June, 1888. Of the figure "the reaper" Van Gogh expressed his symbolic, spiritual view of those who worked close to nature, tied to the land. In a letter to his sister in 1889 he wrote: "aren’t we, who live on bread, to a considerable extent like wheat, at least aren't we forced to submit to growing like a plant without the power to move, by which I mean in whatever way our imagination impels us, and to being reaped when we are ripe, like the same wheat?" (Mauer, The Pursuit of Spiritual Wisdom: p. 67)
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| Potato Eaters |
Such vulnerability of simple people is again found in The Potato Eaters, of which Van Gogh writes, “I have tried to emphasize that those people, eating their potatoes in the lamp-light, have dug the earth with those very hands they put in the dish…” (Mauer: Pursuit of Spiritual Wisdom: p. 61) Even the colors are earthy.
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| Wheat Fields With Crows |
Wheat Fields With Crows may be Van Gogh’s last painting. He knew his life was ending. In the wind-swept field the crows, which see all, are ready to pick at his cadaver.
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| Wheat Fields With Crows Close-up |
The road, in contrasting colors of reddish-brown and green, is thought to be a metaphor for a sermon he gave based on John Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress" where the pilgrim is sorrowful that the road is so long, yet rejoices because the Eternal City waits at the journey's end.
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| Wheat-Field 1888 |
Van Gogh died in 1890 while painting a wheat field. He died from a gunshot wound to the stomach. He lingered in agony for four days before death.
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| Self-Portrait With Bandaged Ear |
No gun was found near him and no powder marks as from a suicide were found on his body. Some people say the mentally-ill man took his own life. Others point to some teenage boys who were quickly found with his gun. On his deathbed he said no one else had shot him. Was this the open-hearted pastor’s way of not destroying the lives of those boys?
