"Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart" by Russ Ramsey

Every so often I read a book about which I can only say good things. Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart by Russ Ramsey is such a book. 

And this is after his previous book, Rembrandt Is in the Wind, which I thought might be difficult to top. Ramsey proved me wrong. That book looked at how to love and appreciate art through the eyes of faith. His latest does the next step – what art teaches us about being alive, with all the sorrow, tragedy, change, and upheaval we experience. 

 

Every chapter is gem, filled with insights about the featured artist and artworks.

 

Rough Sea with Wreckage by N.M.W. Turner

He starts with Gustave Dore and da Vinci’s Mona Lisa (which only achieved its worldwide renown because it was stolen and hidden for two years), Rembrandt can teach us about the power of suffering. J.M.W. Turner speaks to abrupt change in one’s life; his art changed dramatically after a trip to Italy and both revolutionized British painting and anticipated Impressionism. Albert Bierstadt of the Hudson River School spoke to the beautiful and the sublime in his art. Van Gogh stewarded both his pain and that of others (and it’s not just about his ear). Edgar Degas suffered with macular degeneration throughout his painting career (and he knew it). Norman Rockwell not only chronicled traditional American values; he also demonstrated how racism and violence were part of those values. 

 

The chapter on Van Gogh mentions the room the artist prepared at the Yellow House for his friend Gauguin and the two paintings of sunflowers on the wall. I saw those two paintings hung together as Gauguin would have seen them this past September at the Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers exhibition at the National Gallery in London.

 

Each chapter offers wisdom and understanding. Two in particular spoke to the general subject of art and art criticism.

 

First, Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1656) was a woman working in the virtually all-man’s world of painting. In the last 30 years, she’s become a feminist icon, with lots of books and exhibitions about the artist herself and what she painted. But as Ramsey points out, interpreting Gentileschi by the standards and needs of our own time diminishes her as both a woman and an artist. In effect, she becomes something of a one-dimensional political cartoon. Ramsey explores what she achieved in her own time, despite setbacks, betrayals, and disparagement – and that’s far more important than what she’s reduced to today.

 

Russ Ramsey

Second, the book’s concluding chapter is the most personal, a moving tribute to the place of art in Ramsey’s own life. He and his daughter too a trip to Amsterdam in 2023 to see the Rijksmuseum, the Van Gogh Museum, and the Rembrandt House. At the Rijksmuseum, he heads straight to the Hall of Honor, which contains some of the museum’s highlights, including The Night Watch by Rembrandt (I saw it in 1999; it’s an astonishing painting). But his daughter finds the painting that was so influential in Ramsey’s becoming a minister (and he tells the story of how). And he didn’t know the painting was there. 

 

Ramsey is a pastor, author, and speaker. He’s previously published Struck: One Christian’s Reflections on Encountering Death, The Advent of the Lamb of God, The Passion of the King of Glory, The Mission of the Body of Christ, and Rembrandt Is in the Wind.  A native of Indiana, he is a graduate of Taylor University and received his M.Div. and Th.M. degrees from Covenant Theological Seminary in St. Louis. He lives in Nashville with his family.

 

I loved Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart. It’s written by someone with a lifelong love affair with art (except for Donatello; you have to read the first appendix to find out why). He sees art through the eyes of his Christian faith, and he understands how art can illuminate his faith. It’s a wonderful book.

 

Related:

 

Rembrandt Is in the Wind by Russ Ramsey.

 

Some Monday Readings

 

Silence of the labs: How a censorship campaign failed to kill a COVID origin story – Jonathan Turley at The Hill. 

 

London Films – Capturing 100 Years of Change – A London Inheritance.

 

Basic Principles of Pitching – Terry Whalin at The Writing Life.

 

From the Top of the Hill – Brian Miller at Notes from an East Tennessee Farmer.

“East End Vernacular” by The Gentle Author

On a beautiful Sunday afternoon during our most recent trip to London, we traveled the tube from our hotel in Westminster to the Liverpool Street Station in London’s East End. We walked up Bishopsgate from the station to Brushfield Street, and then to the Spitalfields Market, filled with booths of art, clothes, food, and more. After lunch, we walked down Commercial Street to Christ Church and then over to Brick Lane, following the street south to Whitechapel and the Whitechapel Gallery. It was a beautiful day to see a part of London we had never previously visited.

The inspiration for this visit was a blog, one I’d been visiting for some time called Spitalfields Life. Who actually writes the blog posts is something of an online mystery – the writer is known as “The Gentle Author” and lives somewhere on Brick Lane, writing wonderful blog posts about London’s East End – its people, its history, its streets, and its contribution to life in London. And the writer publishes books.

The latest is East End Vernacular: Artists Who Painted London’s East End Streets in the 20^th Century, and what a beautiful book it is.

“Vernacular” refers to the commercial, work-a-day, working class associations of the East End. This is a region of London that included factories, warehouses, working class residences, and the slums of Whitechapel. The people who lived here worked in the factories and on the docks, markets and small commercial establishments. And while artists before the 20^th century had drawn and painted scenes there (including James McNeill Whistler), it was the indigenous artists of the 20^th century who found the region’s spirit and soul.

The names won’t necessarily be familiar to American or even British ears. Nathaniel Kornbluth. Pearl Binder. Brothers Harold and Walter Steggles. Grace Oscroft. Cyril Mann. Roland Collins. Dorothy Bishop. Geoffrey Fletcher. Peri Parkes. Leon Kosoff. And quite a few more. Most if not all of them were born and grew up in the East End. Some worked in their fathers’ shops. Many held full-time jobs, squeezing in what they could paint from a bedroom window.

The artists were often self-taught or came under the guidance of local arts organizations. Often the “big boys” in London art would take notice, and many of the works would find their way to the Tate, the Royal Academy, and various exhibitions. The Whitechapel Gallery often played a critical role in bringing these artists to wider public attention.

Like any good curator, The Gentle Author has been selective, choosing some outstanding works. What the included paintings share is simplicity in form and color (some are reminiscent of the works of Edward Hopper) and common themes of streets, buildings, and scenes that are often still familiar (I recognized a few from my brief afternoon journey) even though the artists often knew that the area was changing and wanted to capture it before it disappeared.

The Gentle Author has published of numerous books by others about London’s East End, including A Hoxton Childhood, Brick Lane, Travellers’ Children in London Fields, East End, and The Boss of Bethnal Green, among others. Others include Spitalfields Life, The Gentle Author’s London Album, and Cries of London (links to all of the books can be found on the Spitalfields Life web site).

You can scroll through posts at Spitalfields Life and see examples of many of these artists. But to see them together as a published collection like East End Vernacular is something rather marvelous.

Top painting: Old Houses in Bow by Grace Oscroft (1934).

The Art of World War I

We were at an art exhibition entitled “Out of Chaos,” sponsored by the Jewish Museum of Art in London at the Courtauld Gallery. It wasn’t a huge show, some six smallish rooms, but if it lacked in quantity it more than made up for it in depth and quality. The idea behind the exhibition was to show 100 years of Jewish art in London.

A number of works in the exhibit caught my eye; one was a self-portrait by Isaac Rosenberg (1890-1918). I was familiar with his work as a poet; he’s one of the so-called “World War I poets” who produced some wonderful poetry during the war. I wasn’t as familiar with his art. Eventually, I was able to get my hands on Whitechapel at War: Isaac Rosenberg and His Circle, an exhibition book for a show of the same name held in London and Leeds in 2008. And I learned that Rosenberg was not only one of the World War I poets, but also a member of a group of artists known as the “Whitechapel Boys.” (Another was artist David Bomberg, who was represented in the “Our of Chaos” exhibition with several paintings.)

At that point, several exhibitions began to converge – the First World War Galleries at the Imperial War Museum in London; this “Out of Chaos” exhibit at the Courtauld, and then one we saw just recently, at the Mildred Lane Kemper Museum in St. Louis: “Images of War, War of Images.”

It’s no surprise that there are a number of exhibitions, artistic and historical, about World War I; we are about right in the middle of the war’s centenary. What’s fascinating is that there were essentially three kinds of art that developed through and because of the war: “official art,” like that commissioned by the British military of artists like Paul Nash; paintings and drawings that artists who served in the war did, often to help them make sense of what happened; and the art used for what we can only call wartime propaganda.

Like the poets telling their stories in theor poetry, the World War I artists told their stories. Both poets and artists tried to make sense of a war that began with cavalry riding horses and quickly became a murderous assault by weapons technology in the stalemated trenches.

An excellent introduction to the “official art” and the “artists’ art” is Art from the First World War by Richard Slocombe and published by the Imperial War Museum in London. A small paperback (costing $20 in the U.S. but less than that if you happen to visit the museum in London), it includes some of the major works which resulted from the war, including some of the desolate battlefield scnes by Paul Nash, horrific landscapes by john Nash, and works by C.R.W. Nevinson, Wyndham Lewis, David Bomberg, and several other artists.

Whitechapel at War, noted above, focuses on a relatively small group of artists. It includes three essays on Isaac Rosenberg, the Whitechapel group collectively, one on how their works began to become known through print, and a final chapter a “Whitechapel Girl,” Clare Binberg, who was associated with the group but did not share their military experience.

A third good resource is Nothing but the Clouds Unchanged: Artists in World War I, edited by Gordon Hughes and Philipp Blom, which is the exhibition book for “Images of War, War of Images” show at the Kemper Museum. While the first two books focus on British artists, this one is more expansive, encompassing artists and art from all of the primary nations at war during the conflict – British, French, German, Russian, Italian, American and others. Like the exhibition itself, it goes beyond paintings and includes recruiting and war bind posters, magazine illustrations, photographs, and even how soldiers decorated their helmets. The essays (and illustrations) are packed with information on how the war was visually “told,” both during and after the conflict.

The “Images of War, War of Images” exhibition is in its final days at the Kemper – it closes Jan. 4. If you’re in or visiting the St. Louis area, it is well worth your time. 

Related:

“Some Corner of a Foreign Field” by James Bentley

Paul Cornish’s “The First World War Galleries”

Good Poems Can Come in Small Packages

Jane Potter’s “Wilfred Owen: An Illustrated Life”

The World War I Poets in the War

The Most Famous Poem of World War I

The Poetry of World War I

Brian Gardner’s “Up to the Line of Death: The War Poets 1914-1918”

The Poems the Soldiers Read in World War I

Top painting: “Gassed” by John Singer Sargent, oil on canvas (1919); Imperial War Museum, London.