Dutch Reformed. Father a pastor and his father. Theo, his brother, a most constant support. Vincent wants to be one in 1876 speaks as well as anyone well versed in biblical reformed faith does today, and in the same terms. He is made of fine wood. His canvases are his wheatfields white unto harvest. Make no doubt they are his preaching as much as his sermon of 1876 in the sunflowers of Arles of 1888. It is the difference between England and Provencal, between light and cold, for the light on the lavender fields is warm and fragrant. And do not doubt that his love of God shines there too, but now he is no longer evangelically afraid. I know the Dutch Reformed all the way from 150 years before Van Gogh in my own family as you may know, the first Reformed church in Skippack founded in their home. I sought and achieve residence half a block from a Dutch Reformed school so my children could attend, and their children. I have known the faiths, known them all. I know many of the now aging gens of poets their beginnings in faith, the altar boys, the exfundamentalists, the baptized in faith at last, Wallace Stevens, Rimbaud, all the once little darlings turned to God.
"I want to paint men and women with that something of the eternal which the halo used to symbolize, and which we seek to convey by the actual radiance and vibration of our coloring. III,25
"dear brother,...I can very well do without God both in my life and in my painting, but I cannot, ill as I am, do without something which is greater than I, which is my life...and if, frustrated in the physical power, a man tries to create thoughts instead of children, he is still part of humanity.' being translated means I am still a part of the the faith even if physically I am not. 25...I do not hanker after victory any more, and all that I seek in painting is a way to make life bearable 22 translated is that the man whose ork totals 30 billion in today's sums but could not live without the dole of Theo for a loaf of bread and a bed, who said, "you know the glow worms in Bazil that shine so that in the evening ladies stick them into their hair with pins; well fame is a fine thing, but look you, to the artist it is what the hairpin is to the insects.' 16
"but if we must make a fortune first...we shall be complete nervous wrecks when we enter upon our rest, that si, worse than our present condition, in which we are still able to stand the racket. But let's be sensible enough to realize that we are going to seed all the same. I ' 27 Soto translate, "I will take my rst, I will consider in my dwelling as a clear heat upon herbs," there the artist lives in the midst of both fortune, fame, privation, contradiction and rest, impaled not impaled upon his own longings.
So the artist is a Christian! As Blake says, he is Los! "their mingling and their opposition, the mysterious vibrations of kindred tones' 26. Does it need to say that words are paint and their sounds vibrate like a woman's breasts, that's how beautiful, 'each object is surrounded by a low of the complementary color" 20 ''painting like children'" --I would rather have than than 'painting like decadents,' 20 for he sees decades against woman in Correggio and Da Vinci 10 and their brayed colors. "I does tempt me so--not drinking--but painting tramps." 18 And now this line, so poignant for the moment, so ripe for understanding that we record it in caps: ONE OF THESE DAYS i HOPE TO MAKE A STUDY OF OLEANDERS' 15 If you walk with kindred spirits on the road of Isaiah 35, just meet them all along the way, for time is one and we all walk together in the grace of knowing and believing and seeing and doing, then we will be confirmed in friendship with our fellows, and if double blessed, with our wives!
My dear Theo, "provided thtat on the 10 meters of canvas [T paid for] I paint only masterpieces half a meter in size and sell them cash down and at exorbitant prices to distinguished connoisseurs of the Rue de la Pais, nothing will be easier than to make a fortune on this package. 8
"Behind the head, instead of painting the ordinary wlal of the mean room, I paint infinity, a plain background of the riches, intensest blue that i can contrive...the bright head against the rich blue background...like a star in the depths of an azure sky. "6 these are the values of the work and the word works and also that "whatever this sacrosanct impressionism may be, all the same I wish I could paint things that the generation Delacroix...could understand." 4 That's what reading backward will do, inform the time as one moment as at the judgment seat when it all sweeps before us and is gone. Where did it go/ They all ask. It is here now or nowhere. We carry it along~ 'Where then are the sane people? Are they the brothel bouncers who are always right? Probably. Then what to choose? fortunately there si no choice.' 3
"I always feel I am a traveler, going somewhere and to some destination. If I tell myself that the somewhere and the destination do not exist, that seems to me very reasonable and likely enough"...then I shall find that not only the Arts but everything else were only dreams, that one was nothing at all oneself. If we are as flimsy as that, so much the better for us, for then there is nothing to be said against the unlimited possibility of future existence....in short I know nothing about it, but it s just this feeling fo not knowing that makes the real life we are actually living now like a one-way journey on a train. You go fast, but cannot distinguish any object very clearly, and above all you do not see the engine."2
But it is one way and if you get out of your seat dear passenger, you may go forward and meet the engineer. the thing about Van Gogh is he started out at the front and moved to the back. Does that make him any less. You really must read that staple of faith long before his time, but still read, John Arndt, pietist, which brings us full circle, for there faith beings in the Knowing and then the Doing.
