He went through intensely religious periods in his life, and tried to study for the ministry, to be like his father, but just couldn't make it. At the point where I am in the book, 200 pages in, he has been increasingly envisioning It: the divine essence, which he could see in everything, including the starry night. And shoes. Below is one of many pictures he painted of shoes, which are discussed in this article in Harper's, if you're interested. There you can also see this picture large enough to enjoy the brush strokes.
His father, a Protestant minister, didn't prize him either, but I gather there is evidence that it was his mother's love he so craved. She represented Home, the insular parsonage, in which he never felt at home, so he carried a great nostalgia for it. I am now reading about his early twenties; he is abusing himself with fasting, not bathing because soap is a sinful luxury, and going barefoot in winter. He is drawing more. And painting pictures in words, in his copious letters to his brother, Theo.
Here's the interesting thing I keep thinking about: Vincent suffered greatly from this rejection, and his temperamental inability to fit in anywhere. Wanting to be like his father he descended into fierce religious studies. He washed out of school, and began to experience the divine, to see and paint it - which he called It - in everything in an absolutely unique (insane) style.
And he would not have been that person if his mother had loved him. (There's a whole backstory about her sad life, by the way, and the important influence of Dutch culture and politics.) It seems to be his suffering from that profound wound that motivated his art. People love and live with prints of his paintings who know nothing about art. I think we feel or intuit that visionary mind, that saw the divine in a sunflower and a star, and a pair of shoes.
So was that good or bad, that miserable childhood? Were those descents into hellish depression and mania and psychosis necessary to produce this art that brings a drop of spiritual insight into many lives?
Thinking about all this I was quite struck recently when a friend posted a bit of psych nurse humor that said, "You can't fix stupidity - but you can sedate it." Of course, madness has nothing to do with stupidity. But it spoke to me, as a bipolar who had long hospitalizions in the hands of psych nurses. Scrolling through Facebook I sometimes hit on a land mine like that. I didn't comment, but I thought, Just make sure you're not sedating Van Gogh.
It was interesting to me to see, right after I posted this, someone in Holland reading it.
ReplyDeleteDear Dalai Grandma,
DeleteHow karma works! Your last line is exactly what I needed to hear after yesterday's crew meeting. You're amazing.
Love,
AJ
I'm so happy to hear this, because I still get anxious talking openly about my bipolar-ordered mind. I spent decades hiding behind normalcy. I do this now so it might help someone else. And it does have a lot to do with my fascination with Van Gogh. His life, my life. There's a way it goes with bipolar. Thank God, someone put a paintbrush in his hand, though I haven't got to that part yet. Someone put a typewriter in mine.
DeleteI think that the people who like Van Gogh, who don't really know or appreciate art, typically just have a copy of Sunflowers up on the wall. I think he's brilliant. I didn't like his art when I was in highschool, I was all MONET, but there is so much genius in Van Gogh's work. I don't know if I came to appreciate him more on my own, or because my son is so fascinated by his art.
ReplyDeleteOr they have Irises, very pretty. I like the shoes more, and the night scenes. He was brilliant, in touch with the inner sacredness of life. I like to imagine that even people who buy tennis shoes with reproductions of his paintings are touched just a little by that essence. Maybe not. But the originals - when I walked around a corner in MOMA and there was Starry Night three feet in front of me, I gasped. His energy flowed out of those layers and layers of paint, those brushstrokes.
DeleteI've read some of the letters online from Vincent to Theo ...as an artist it was interesting to see how someone I view as "great" ...did struggle. I had never consciously thought he did, even though I know parts of his biography. Seeing his work...it looked like effortless beauty. In his letters though I heard his questions and that perhaps art is a talent that is acheived and that we're not just born with - though some people may be, not all the people we view as great have it as inborn. This gives me hope...
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing!
Desiree - the biography also shows how he studied painters and knew deeply the Western tradition that he refused to follow at last. He was drawn to art and deeply learned. And it seems that vision was his strongest sense. His life showed tremendous diligence at whatever he undertook, including, at last, painting.
ReplyDeleteI grew up with a depressed alcoholic artist father who painted, drew, etched the demons in his soul. Sadly, the best pieces are the ones that show the loneliness that he created for himself. He could barely love his four children, since he never loved himself. He loved Van Gogh, yet could never paint the beauty in life, until he was close to death.
ReplyDeleteSadly, my father - also a chronically depressed alcoholic - had no artistic bent. If he had, he would have written poetry. After he died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage, I found a poetry book on his desk with "Crossing the Bar" bookmarked. It was so sad to me that he felt death coming, but went out quite alone. He hadn't talked to any of us kids about it, and my mother was in some dementia with stroke, but he hadn't talked to her. He should have majored in literature and become a professor and written poetry, but he went into engineering and ended up in defense research. Sigh. What he thought a man did.
DeleteSomething else I want to say - I am much more likely to write poetry when I am depressed, and it is usually better than what I write when happy. When happy, you just want to live.
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