In Van Gogh’s Broken Heart: What Art Can Teach Us About the Wonders and Troubles of Being Living (Zondervan, p. 256), Russ Ramsey writes about our “understanding of the human experience.” He seeks to deepen our faith and make us “fearless when it comes to loving.” art. He shares stories of sadness, danger, and heartbreak about artists and their work, and hopes these stories “remind us that not only does this world hurt us, but that wounds can heal.” Masu.
Ramsey, pastor of Christ Presbyterian Church in Nashville, is particularly interested in the proximity of beauty and suffering. Great sadness and struggle can produce great art, which should give us hope in the midst of our own grief. Ramsay illustrates this by telling anecdotes from the lives of some of Europe and America’s most beloved artists, as well as a few unknown figures. Ramsay limited his canvases to Western paintings from the Renaissance onwards, and worked exclusively on figurative art. This decision left out many important works of art (I can’t say I missed the summary), but one of the reasons this book is so powerful is that it’s about art that resonated with him. It means that it is something.
Readers of Ramsey’s previous book Rembrandt in the Wind (2022) and his Art Wednesday column on the Fathom Magazine website are familiar with his conversational and insightful tone. There will be. Like an avid gallery guide, Ramsey deftly combines personal anecdotes, biographical snippets, biblical exegesis, and artistic interpretation. Highlights include an interpretation of Rembrandt’s late work Simeon in the Temple, an illuminating account of the relatively unknown Italian Renaissance painter Artemisia Gentileschi, and how macular degeneration affects Edgar Degas and more obscure contemporary musicians and artists. Includes an insightful discussion of the influences on the painter’s style. Jimmy Abegg. The book includes a 16-page insert with more than 30 color images of the paintings he discusses, inviting readers to participate in Ramsey’s analysis.
Most of the names in this book will be familiar to art lovers, but Ramsey delights in exploring lesser-known works and angles. For example, the chapter on the Mona Lisa has little to do with Leonardo da Vinci and instead focuses on the theft of the painting in 1911. His take on Norman Rockwell focuses on the artist’s work related to the civil rights movement.
Van Gogh’s Broken Heart shows the benefits of making art part of our personal and spiritual lives.
Each chapter ends with different lessons that can be gleaned from the paintings under discussion. For example, his chapter on Albert Bierstadt and the Hudson River School connects theories of the sublime to the book of Exodus and explains how the sublime in art and nature reminds us of the infinite, eternal, and divine. It ends with an excellent discussion of what to do. . Unfortunately, he only got there by lamenting that European American settlers were not the romantic version of Native Americans. The lesson from Van Gogh’s self-mutilation is, “Be kind. It’s a tough world.”
Ramsey’s points are sometimes unreliable. He analyzes the dramatic change in J.M.W. Turner’s artistic style late in his career and concludes that it “was somehow related to his pain.” He was looking for something, pursuing a vision of a new world. ” However, he has no evidence to support this speculation and does not know what kind of pain it is. Isn’t it possible for artists to try new styles without having a personal crisis or mental breakdown?
Nevertheless, Van Gogh’s Wounded Heart shows the benefits of making art part of our personal and spiritual lives. Ramsay demonstrates how fulfilling this is by recounting a surprising encounter with one of the paintings in his “private collection” that brought him to tears. Moreover, this book is commendable for detailing the blending of two seemingly disparate phenomena that helps us to understand humanity more fully and Christ more fully. And suffering reminds us of Christ’s sacrifice and the salvation that resulted from it.
— Christopher J. Scalia is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and co-editor of On Faith: Lessons from America’s Believers.
