Museums are not my favorite thing to do, not because I don’t enjoy them but because I don’t like large crowds and standing stationary for any length of time makes my back ache. Esa and I have visited a number of major art museums around the world but in 2003 a tour of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam made quite an impression on us. The museum hosted a party celebrating Vincent’s 150th birthday, complete with free admission and souvenirs. Not wanting to pass up a bargain, we arrived early, walked right in, and when we left a couple hours later, the line of people waiting to get in was over two city blocks long. Not only are his paintings so striking in their brilliance and color-richness but the legend of the man himself and the mystique that surrounds his life and premature death are equally as captivating.
Three years ago, Van Gogh’s “Orchard With Cypresses” sold for $117 million, breaking the previous world record of $82.5 for his “Portrait of Dr. Gachet.” When people shell out that kind of cash for one of his paintings, they are also buying a piece of history. And there’s little doubt the story of his eccentric and solitary lifestyle helps drive up the prices at art auctions. No other artist ever on the world stage has been more popular. Movies have been made about his life (remember Kirk Douglas?). The song “Vincent” by Don McLean has sold more than a million copies since 1971. Van Gogh made over 2,000 paintings, drawings, watercolors and sketches in only tens years as an artist. In the 70 days before his death, he produced one masterpiece per day. In today’s economy, that collection alone would be worth more than a billion dollars. Yet he died a pauper.
What intrigued us most about Vincent’s life were the facts that 1) he was a Christian, and 2) he was insane. As we stood in front of “The Yellow House,” we couldn’t help but try to put ourselves in his shoes when he cut off part of his ear in those same quarters when he was 35 years old. The question that kept going through my mind was, “What can we learn from this man’s tragic life?” I think the answer lies in the fact that he was a singular man, unable to live with or relate to anyone but his brother or to conform to normal life of any kind. As he grew older he became increasingly more secluded.
You can trace his downward spiral through the 650 letters he wrote to his younger brother Theo who was an art dealer and supported Vincent all his life with 150 francs per month, which was more than double the wage of a common laborer of the day. His short life ran from 1853 to 1890. He lived in his native Holland, then Belgium, and finally France. After a number of dead-end career pursuits, he began to devote his life to painting at the age of 27. He was largely self-taught taking a number of courses when he could. But one teacher in Antwerp could detect no signs of talent and called his work “putrefied dogs.” Van Gogh failed classes because he refused to follow instructions.
The Impressionists in Paris recognized Vincent’s genius. Paul Gauguin befriended him. When Vincent moved to Arles in the south of France, he rented the yellow house immortalized by his now famous painting and tried to begin an artists’ community there. Gauguin joined Van Gogh but the relationship quickly grew turbulent and Gauguin left after only two months. It was during that time, after a fiery argument between the two, when Vincent cut off his own earlobe then gave it to a prostitute.
Vincent experienced depression as early as 24 years old and it only increased with age. He wrote to Theo, “My head is sometimes heavy, and it often burns and my thoughts are confused.” People around him took note of his self-destructive and odd behavior. Sometimes he would exist for days on bread and coffee. Painting became more important than food. Often he could not eat or sleep. He was seen once with burning candles in the brim of his hat as he painted outside at night. Some called him fada, touched by fairies (or were they demons?). He experienced emotional attacks during which he would hear strange sounds and think people were trying to poison him. “The unbearable hallucinations have ceased,” he wrote once, “and are now getting reduced to a simple nightmare.”
He committed himself to a mental hospital where he remained for twelve months. Some have thought he suffered from a form of epilepsy for which there was no known treatment back then. Perhaps his most famous work, “The Starry Night,” was painted from the view he had through the barred windows in his room in that asylum. He completed 100 masterpieces while there.
Many are not aware that Vincent, the son of a small-town minister, felt a call of God on his life as a young man. He studied for the ministry in Amsterdam, taught the Bible in England, and worked as a missionary among the poor in Belgium, giving away most of his clothes and spending his nights nursing miners burned in underground explosions. His neighbors called him either mad or a saint. His church superiors dismissed him for lack of eloquence. In his early letters to his brother, he wrote that the solution to his troubles lay in God. “There is a God Who knows what we want better than we do ourselves, and Who helps us whenever we are in need.” He also wrote, “To suffer without complaining is the one lesson that has to be learned in this life.” And, “The best way to know God is to love many things. Love a friend, a wife…But one must love with a lofty and serious sympathy.”
But Van Gogh could love or live with no one. On Christmas Day, 1881, his father threw him out of the house, in part for refusing to go to church. Yet Vincent remained a Christian his entire life. He wrote Theo, “Christ was a greater artist than all other artists.” Shortly after his longed-for artist commune failed, he went into the asylum. Within months of his release, at 37, Vincent grew so lonely and despondent, he shot himself in the chest and died two days later with his brother at his bedside. Theo, the only person close to the great painter, died six months later and the two are buried side by side.
We can’t be isolated for very long without becoming self-conscious and strange to people we encounter. Christianity is a people religion and all of Jesus’ teaching had to do with personal relationships. The Lord intended for us to live sacrificially and harmoniously with others as evidence of our love for Him. In the end, the people God brings into our lives are all that really matter. We are so glad to be members of the household of faith and that the children of God, the brothers and sisters of the Lord Jesus, welcome you with love and grace no matter how different you may look to those inside or outside the faith.
Terry Everroad
lionsheadcafe.com 