I am currently in a doctoral program, studying semiotics—cultural symbols—which requires a great deal of reading. Probably the greatest benefit of an education is the wise guide (teacher) who can give a curated tour of the best there is in any given subject, and such is the case with this program. Dr. Leonard Sweet has opened the door to an entire world of scholars and theologians who look beneath the surface of things and reveal mysteries. Now I would like to open that world to you.
Trigger Alert: farther down, I include a painting by a female artist of the early modern period in Europe, Artemisia Gentileschi, which depicts a scene from biblical apocrypha, that of Judith slaying an enemy general.
The preface was one of the more important parts of this book for me, as well as the appendices.
The discussion of pain, that sharing is a precondition for dignity and hope, that we mistake suffering as failure rather than a means of grace, and that our sorrows are hallowed by God, “who enters fully into the painful stories of our own lives,” is so richly realized in the lives of the artists highlighted here (x, xi, xii). Through their art, and our own, pain, suffering, and sorrow can become “agents of God’s healing grace” (xii).
It is because “a story is a way to say something that can’t be said any other way” that I want so very much to retell the stories of women in scripture, semiotically, truthfully, in ways that will bring God’s healing grace into the lives of so many who have been marginalized, silenced, dismissed, and overlooked simply by having the body they have.
So, though this book is about visual art, I read it as a word artist instead, and my first lesson came soon.
Lessons of Grace
A painting requires attention to the composition.
… good artists carefully arrange vignettes throughout the work that lead the viewer’s eye through the scene in a certain sequence in order to tell a story. That’s what a well-ordered composition does
Russ Ramsey, Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart: What Art Teaches Us About the Wonder and Struggle of Being Alive, 8
This is also true of a good story.
The second lesson came as a reminder of what it means to live by faith.
The importance of practicing our faith in the way a musician or painter practices their art is the bedrock truth in The Well-Played Life. Just as the fingers and arms ache after hours of etudes, or the eyes ache after hours of peering at tiny details, so also we suffer in the practice of our faith, but
… [t]here is an art to the Christian life, and any artist will tell you learning a craft takes practice.
Russ Ramsey, Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart: What Art Teaches Us About the Wonder and Struggle of Being Alive, 50
Suffering, whether it comes by practice or the interjections of life, can strengthen rather than shatter our faith.
Lessons from the Artists
I enjoyed reading the stories about these various artists, and how their lives (and suffering) informed their art.
The Mona Lisa, by Leonardo da Vinci, 1504
I am one of those Philistines who gazed at the Mona Lisa for as long as I was allowed (not that long), behind her bullet-proof glass, and left puzzled. I had seen so many representations of her, studied her in textbooks, and had thought for years that when I saw her for real, I would be swept away. But I was not.
The Mona Lisa (or La Joconde, La Gioconda),1504, by Leonardo da Vinci, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons
The Starry Night, by Vincent Van Gogh, 1889
David loves Van Gogh, so when we married, he wanted to hang up his prints of The Starry Night and The Siesta. “A Day in the Country” exhibit was also at the LA County Museum of Art that year, so someone had gotten us a print of Van Gogh’s Irises as a wedding gift.
I said yes to two of the Van Gogh prints, but The Starry Night never fails to fill me with such a sense of madness, melancholy, and horror, that he took that one to work. There is not a single Van Gogh I have ever seen that does not have something of that in it for me. (But I do love the Irises, and Dave kindly let me hang up my Diego Rivera print of The Flower Seller).
The Starry Night, 1889, by Vincent van Gogh, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Judith Slaying Holofernes by Artemisia Gentileschi, 1610
There was only one sour note for me: the loud protestation that Gentileschi certainly was not living vicariously through her depiction of women visiting violence upon their tormentors. After telling Rembrandt’s story and imagining one kind of young Rembrandt and another kind of old Rembrandt based on his life story, the author could not seem to imagine a woman working out her sense of being violated and finding some sort of catharsis in the violence of mythical women acted against their aggressors.
I do not know why this was such an important point to the author that he had to spend several precious pages arguing it, but it does not fly.
Gentileschi knew she had been sexually assaulted and used, she described it all in detail, and held to her testimony even when subjected to torture. She knew every single time she was being taken advantage of—by men, because she was a woman—in her art business. Gentileschi cannily catered to the male gaze because it worked, and it was one of the few levers she could pull. She also surely found herself embedded in her subjects just as Rembrandt found himself embedded in his.
Judith and Holofernes, 1610, by Artemisia Gentileschi – Web Gallery of Art, Public Domain
Lessons on Viewing Art
The best part of the book, for me, came in how to view art that does not appeal to me, and in the symbology that appears in (western, renaissance to modern) art. I will be carrying those suggestions with me when I go to the next art gallery. I can also include that symbology in my stories.
Context
Understanding art, or music, or a book, by gaining some understanding of the creator’s original context sets aside the highly subjective topic of personal taste and instead centers empathy as the lens. That’s a good life lesson.
Common Ground
To secondly seek some aspects that may appeal sounds to me like finding common ground. A conversation can begin there that might prove enriching.
Care
I might also learn something from the work I do not particularly like—I am actually taking this on faith. There are a good many modern pieces that seem, to me, slapdash, poorly executed, and meaningless. If it were not for the legends (or “tombstones,” as the author called these labels) to explain what the artist had in mind, I would be perplexed and put off.
Contemplation
Being able to understand not simply what does not appeal to me but also why it does not, helps me to become more self-aware, and brings my engagement with a piece deeper.
Lesson on Creation
Art is a big deal in our family, and we are all of us artists. Our art is hung up on the walls, arranged as installations, and used as furniture. Creators must create, even when they are blind and frail, even when they are old and ill, or they will shrivel up and die.
Suffering and transcendent joy, the sloughs as well as the sublime provide the loam that artists grow in.
