Here we see two paintings by the 19th century artist Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890). There is so much in print and online about this artist that is worth pursuing. He signed his paintings simply "Vincent." Some suggest that's because he was concerned people would not know how to pronounce his last name. I don't think it was that at all, but rather his desire to be simply one with us — whoever, wherever we are. No airs about him.
But he was a complex man with a turbulent mind largely due to poor diet, insomnia, working with toxic materials (paints and thinners) and consuming large amounts of absinthe, which could bring on hallucinations. Some say he was treated for epilepsy, but he didn't have seizures. More likely he was clinically depressed.
On May 8, 1889 — a year before his death, likely by suicide, Van Gogh began treatment at the asylum Sant Paul de Mausole in Saint Remy. For some time he painted only within the walls of the asylum, then after a while he was allowed to paint beyond the walls with supervision. In this first painting we are with him looking out his first floor window.
The field is still green with some flowers growing in the foreground nearest his window. He wrote: "But what a beautiful land and what beautiful blue and what a sun. And yet I've only seen the garden and what I can make out through the window." That doesn't sound depressed to me. In another letter he shared that painting nature was good for him; it calmed his mind.
I wonder if that's (at least partly) why our culture feels so sick these days — we are so distanced from nature. All this soul-deadening fighting (much of it online or before TV cameras, in interviews and from podiums), the negative and fanciful thinking, threats, yelling and splintering off into camps and tribes. We're increasingly acting like primitives, made more dangerous with the gun fetish and the politicization of everything. We need to get outside — let lost outside — where there's no blacktop or cement and without a GPS. I knew a couple who lived four houses up the street from the thingdom-come pharmacy. The wife told me she'd never even consider walking there, but would only drive. God knew best — when creating us we were placed in a garden.
Van Gogh's painting is called Post-Impressionism. But for all the conversation about what that actually means here is a paragraph from the book Van Gogh Up Close which pretty much describes how the artist viewed himself.
"...painting for Van Gogh was always deeply personal. He did not seek to represent the world strictly as it appeared and expressed distaste for portrait photographs that were made by a machine (cameras)...he purposefully exaggerated the color of flowers, gave heavy dark outlines to plant stems, and distorted the sense of space and proportion in the landscape around him...He did not wish to scientifically depict colors, light and forms but wanted to imbue them with meaning and suggest the feelings that a clump of irises, two crabs or the dense undergrowth of a wood created in him." Van Gogh and Close-up Techniques in 19th Century French Painting by Jennifer A. Thompson. Page 93.
Two years before his death in 1888 he wrote to his brother Theo, "I'm beginning more and more to look for a simple technique that perhaps isn't' Impressionist. I'd like to paint in such a way that if it comes to it, everyone who has eyes would understand it."
Even though he's looking out a first floor window, Vincent seems to be high up above the field. Is he giving us an imagined bird's eye view? And does that view or angle change as the picture moves upward? Do you get the feeling the wind is blowing through the wheat field?
Notice the enclosing wall. Does it invite interiority? It takes a sharp right turn — a new direction. It's a dynamic wall — as if Vincent doesn't see it as a barrier. To the left beyond the wall there is a small orchard of perhaps olive trees. Notice the lone Cypress tree on top of the hill. The Cypress is usually found growing in cemeteries, but Van Gogh (who frequently includes the Cypress in his paintings) might see it as candle-like. This tree seems to stitch together two realms — the earthly and the heavenly being made one.
Van Gogh grew up in a religious home, his father being a pastor to a Dutch Reformed Church. Vincent even had dreams of becoming a pastor himself, but he found the theological preparation to take the entrance exams to be overly academic. When he became a lay preacher to a poor mining town, he was dismissed for being too zealous, taking the Gospel mandate to live without possessions "too far."
Look at that sun in the upper left corner! Brilliant and over-sized suns often find their way into Van Gogh paintings. He would never depict God as an old man bursting through the clouds with an angel escort. For Vincent, divine-presence is suggested by the brightness of the sun. I suspect he also included a great sun in so many paintings as a reassurance — suffering his own inner darkness so deeply.
Van Gogh stayed in this asylum for about a year. Here we see the same view outside his window some months later, on a rainy October day. The wheat field has been mowed and a jagged furrow has been dug in the foreground, echoing the distant, diagonal wall. Notice how the pelting rain is green, blue and white. Again we see the foothills to the Alps in the distance. Vincent would have known this lovely verse, "I lift up my eyes unto the hills: from where shall come my help? My help shall come from the Lord who made heaven and earth. May he never allow you to stumble! Let him sleep not, your guard. No, he sleeps not nor slumbers, Israel's' guard. Psalm 121:1-4.
I am also thinking of St. Paul's writing to the Philippians in his letter 4:11 —
"For I have learned to be content and self-sufficient through Christ, satisfied to the point where I am not disturbed or disquieted, regardless of my circumstances."
