Van Gogh’s Light Night
In a museum in Germany, there is a replica of Vincent Van Gogh’s severed ear. Patrons of the museum whisper into it. Sometimes, I like to imagine what I would whisper to Vincent.
The Van Gogh that I want to whisper to found his first passion in the poor. Raised in a Christian family, Vincent found solace in the Gospels. As a child, he accompanied his father to visit impoverished families and saw Christ in their faces. As an adult, he wanted to study theology but was disenchanted by the subject focus - he didn’t want to study languages, he wanted to minister to the poor. Instead, he became a missionary. As part of his training, he went to live in a mining village and rejected the comfortable housing, clothing, and food offered to him so he could live like the people he served. He went into their mines with them, ate with them, and painted them.
The Potato Eaters is known as one of his ugliest pieces - difficult to decipher through the dark colours, it depicts a peasant family at dinner. Still, it is a painting that fills me with light, that makes my heart swell. It makes you wonder how many small lives, filled with pain, hope, despair, labour, and heartbreak, come and go unwitnessed. I see Vincent, sitting at the table with them, and knowing they were worthy subjects. Vincent, who saw them and didn’t look away, who instead painted a doorway to their pain. He loved them. This is the Van Gogh who looked at the darkness and was not afraid, who looked at the lost and was not shaken.
When Vincent became too sick and weak to continue his missionary work, he turned to his art. Now he was truly detached from earthly things and could navigate the world with his knowledge of the human condition. He painted with the intention to bring light and beauty to those who live in darkness. Although his own physical and mental health deteriorated, he painted brighter and brighter. He painted golden fields, radiant spirals of sky, irises, and leafy avenues. When he was admitted to an asylum, he painted oen cherry blossoms against a blue sky in celebration of the birth of his nephew.
Vincent reminds us that if nothing else, we still have the sun; and pointed to such beacons of hope in his paintings. He loved the beauty and truth that he found in studying nature and worked tirelessly to share it with us on the canvas.
He recounts this love in one of his letters to his brother, Theodore, - during a particularly difficult time, Vincent went for a walk and saw a violent storm where trees beat against “toy-box summer houses.” This storm reconciled him to his suffering and helped him place it among the elemental beauty of life:
Then, the whole was almost finer than those windblown trees seen on their own, because the moment was such that even those absurd summer houses took on a singular character, rain-soaked and dishevelled. In it I saw an image of how even a person of absurd forms and conventions, or another full of eccentricity and caprice, can become a dramatic figure of special character if he’s gripped by true sorrow, moved by a calamity. It made me think for a moment of society today, how as it founders it now often appears like a large, sombre silhouette viewed against the light of reform.
Through the natural world around him, Vincent learned a deeper meaning to life. Pain is not unusual or abnormal - it produces a deeper character, a truer perspective. Gnarled trees produce blossoms, flowers grow amongst thorns, the sun warms and burns, the ocean thrashes and stills. We are made the same. Like trees in a storm, turmoil is a requirement for being alive. The beauty in sorrow is simply disguised until we are ready for it.
Yes, for me the drama of a storm in nature, the drama of sorrow in life, is the best… Oh, there must be a little bit of air, a little bit of happiness, but chiefly to let the form be felt, to make the lines of the silhouette speak. But let the whole be sombre.
Vincent’s ability to feel sorrow and channel it into something full of light is something I carry with me daily. Vincent taught me that when faced with suffering, we have a choice in what feelings we lean into and what we do with them. He is a real life example of carrying one’s cross, of participating in hope and joy regardless of circumstance, and in any way we can. It was Vincent who taught me to think - ‘what if, instead of regarding my sorrow with self pity and indulgence, I saw it not as a mar on life but as a part of its essential riches?’ For Vincent himself transformed his suffering into some of the most radical, radiant art ever produced, that is universally recognised as such. Like Job, he gives consolation and hope to those who suffer mysteriously and without obvious meaning. He carried his cross, I believe, to the end. Though many believe Vincent killed himself, art historians now believe that two boys accidentally shot Vincent while playing in a field, and not wanting to get them in trouble, Vincent kept the story to himself.
Over time, Vincent’s image has become that of a tortured artist who committed suicide. He is remembered as an alienated alcoholic who lived with sex workers; a man who was temperamental, deranged, and sick. And the man who painted the Sunflowers. This legacy makes sense for Vincent - a life full of shadows, products full of light. I first loved Vincent for his paintings. But the more I learn and suffer, the more I love Vincent for his inner life, for who he was and how he lived. I find in Vincent a companion for the journey - someone I can identify with because we both know that despite everything, life is worth living and people are worth loving. I hope Vincent knows what he achieved. Through embracing his own weakness and pain, he connected to millions of people and put us in touch with the scary parts of ourselves that we need to experience. If you look at one of the various self-portraits Vincent painted throughout his life, it is worth seeing his gaze in this light. He sees you. He understands the dark night you suffered, or still suffer. He loves you for it.
There are many things I would like to tell you, Vincent. But I am not in Germany, and so I whisper to you through the pages: thank you, Vincent. I love you. And you were right. “The night is much more alive and richly coloured than the day.”
