The following post was written in April of 2016 after our visit to the Carnegie Museum Of Art on The University of Pittsburgh campus.
Let There Be Light
It was the spring of 1981 as my wife and I were in Paris and walking through the Louvre Museum. We stopped in the middle of a large group to look at the Mona Lisa. It was quiet as one might expect. I remember this as I stood gazing at the oil painting trying to figure out what was so great about it. I have three or four paintings in my home that are better....one with LED lights throughout it! The hush was suddenly broken as my wife blurted out "Special Dog! It's Natalie Wood!" She had turned to try to exit the group and bumped into the actress. Natalie Wood smiled as Robert Wagner continued to look towards the painting.
Today was another day at the museum for us, the Carnegie Museum of Art in the Oakland section of Pittsburgh, where there was a special showing of three of Vincent van Gogh's works and one of Paul Signac's. It was a wonderful day for us. The museum also has one of the 25 or so replicas of Augustus St. Gauden's bronze sculpture The Puritan, my favorite sculpture! OK, I only know one or two others but I gravitated to this one day in an art book and have admired it ever since.
Actually I do have a little bit of knowledge of art as my mother painted in oils. Impressionist painting was talked about often in our home. Occasionally by request, she painted reproductions of great paintings and one of her best was Van Gogh's The Potato Eaters. If you are familiar with this you know that it is a very dark painting.....wonderful but dark. This was Van Gogh in 1885. Shortly after painting this he travelled to Paris, saw for himself the new wave of colors in Impressionist painting, and his own work would never be the same.
The topic of this post came to me while standing before Van Gogh's Wheat Fields After The Rain. Vincent van Gogh had seminary training, was Calvinist in his theology and once preached the Gospel of Jesus Christ. His painting moved from darkness towards light but his life moved from the light to the darkness. Now, I know very little about Mr. Van Gogh's reasons for leaving the ministry to paint but I do know about the condition of the church at that time and it was generally a dark period in Europe. The light may or.may not have been in the gospel he was familiar with just as it wasn't in his early paintings.
The Reformation of the 16th century is sometimes described in the Latin phrase post tenebrus lux, or after darkness... light. My own life was darkness invaded by the light of Jesus Christ in 1982. The same descriptive can be said by all Christians! If you are Christian and cannot say this, if there has not been a moment in time or a period in your life when God's Word came alive to you, when you saw Jesus Christ as if for the very first time, when you saw yourself as guilty with no defense and heard the promise of salvation from a risen Savior.......then you must find out right now why that is the case!
I'm Reformed in my theology. I'm not liturgical in my beliefs and therefore the word Easter brings a cringe, for every Lord's Day throughout the year is Resurrection Day. But many are liturgical and look to one day in the year as that day when Christ rose triumphantly from the grave. If the brightness of the very thought of Jesus has not caused you to cover your eyes temporarily as if looking towards the sun, if the prism of the Word of God has not refracted the brightness of grace and mercy and forgiveness and love and power and glory and majesty of Jesus Christ towards you, then you must plead to God for this for He will take the filters off of your eyes as He has done ours!
I enjoyed the works of Vincent van Gogh today as I have always done. I enjoy music and dance (watching it that is!), literature and theatre too but it is the giver of these gifts that is the true master who brings light to His people
Let There Be Light
It was the spring of 1981 as my wife and I were in Paris and walking through the Louvre Museum. We stopped in the middle of a large group to look at the Mona Lisa. It was quiet as one might expect. I remember this as I stood gazing at the oil painting trying to figure out what was so great about it. I have three or four paintings in my home that are better....one with LED lights throughout it! The hush was suddenly broken as my wife blurted out "Special Dog! It's Natalie Wood!" She had turned to try to exit the group and bumped into the actress. Natalie Wood smiled as Robert Wagner continued to look towards the painting.
Today was another day at the museum for us, the Carnegie Museum of Art in the Oakland section of Pittsburgh, where there was a special showing of three of Vincent van Gogh's works and one of Paul Signac's. It was a wonderful day for us. The museum also has one of the 25 or so replicas of Augustus St. Gauden's bronze sculpture The Puritan, my favorite sculpture! OK, I only know one or two others but I gravitated to this one day in an art book and have admired it ever since.
Actually I do have a little bit of knowledge of art as my mother painted in oils. Impressionist painting was talked about often in our home. Occasionally by request, she painted reproductions of great paintings and one of her best was Van Gogh's The Potato Eaters. If you are familiar with this you know that it is a very dark painting.....wonderful but dark. This was Van Gogh in 1885. Shortly after painting this he travelled to Paris, saw for himself the new wave of colors in Impressionist painting, and his own work would never be the same.
The topic of this post came to me while standing before Van Gogh's Wheat Fields After The Rain. Vincent van Gogh had seminary training, was Calvinist in his theology and once preached the Gospel of Jesus Christ. His painting moved from darkness towards light but his life moved from the light to the darkness. Now, I know very little about Mr. Van Gogh's reasons for leaving the ministry to paint but I do know about the condition of the church at that time and it was generally a dark period in Europe. The light may or.may not have been in the gospel he was familiar with just as it wasn't in his early paintings.
The Reformation of the 16th century is sometimes described in the Latin phrase post tenebrus lux, or after darkness... light. My own life was darkness invaded by the light of Jesus Christ in 1982. The same descriptive can be said by all Christians! If you are Christian and cannot say this, if there has not been a moment in time or a period in your life when God's Word came alive to you, when you saw Jesus Christ as if for the very first time, when you saw yourself as guilty with no defense and heard the promise of salvation from a risen Savior.......then you must find out right now why that is the case!
I'm Reformed in my theology. I'm not liturgical in my beliefs and therefore the word Easter brings a cringe, for every Lord's Day throughout the year is Resurrection Day. But many are liturgical and look to one day in the year as that day when Christ rose triumphantly from the grave. If the brightness of the very thought of Jesus has not caused you to cover your eyes temporarily as if looking towards the sun, if the prism of the Word of God has not refracted the brightness of grace and mercy and forgiveness and love and power and glory and majesty of Jesus Christ towards you, then you must plead to God for this for He will take the filters off of your eyes as He has done ours!
I enjoyed the works of Vincent van Gogh today as I have always done. I enjoy music and dance (watching it that is!), literature and theatre too but it is the giver of these gifts that is the true master who brings light to His people
