Art and spirituality meet at the "Observatory of the Invisible".In the surprising novel by Markus Zusak, The book thief (2005), little Liesel tries to describe to young Max, imprisoned in a cellar, what the sky looks like that day: "Today the sky is blue, Max, and there is a huge elongated cloud, uncoiled like a rope. At the end of the cloud, the sun looks like a yellow hole." After listening to the story, the young man sighs with emotion. He has been able to picture heaven in Liesel's words.
Perhaps this is what moves and excites us when we contemplate the paintings of Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890), who knew how to capture the soul of the simple and everyday things in order to be able to express them in his work: "Art is sublime when it is simple."she writes to her brother Théo. When we read her letters - which are the best self-portrait of her soul - we discover the history of a passion, the inescapable call to the place where beauty allows no distractions: "How many times in London, coming home in the evening from Southampton Street."writes to him on October 12, 1883, "I stopped to sketch on the docks of the Thames."or the wheat fields under the sky of Arles, which were taking away his heart: "...".They are vast expanses of wheat under overcast skies, and I was not hard pressed to try to express the sadness, the extreme loneliness." (10-VII-1890).
If we were to try to decipher the story of Vincent van Gogh's life, his material limitations and miseries would undoubtedly overwhelm us with their marked sadness: "It was too long and too great a misery that had disheartened me to such an extent that I could no longer do anything." (SEPTEMBER 24, 1880). However, his soul was nourished by a happiness incomprehensible to most, a privilege of exquisite and lucid spirits; in the same letter he will add: "I couldn't tell you how happy I am to have taken up drawing again." (24-IX-1880). The passion for his art allows him to continue producing beauty, even from the abyss of a devastating illness: "I got sick." -he wrote on April 29, 1890. "at the time I was making almond blossoms. If I could have kept working, I would have made other flowering trees, as you can guess. Now the flowering trees are almost over.". The privilege that the present enjoys over the past allows us to know that the trees he painted, those almond blossoms, had already entered the history of works full of beauty; but despondency had also reached his heart, the academic world had turned its back on him and loneliness had unhinged him.
Van Gogh had a deep desire to know himself, to make clear what things troubled his soul, what uncontrollable passions cornered him: "I am a passionate man, capable and subject to do more or less foolish things that I sometimes regret." (VII-1880); this would explain why he wrote to his brother Théo some 650 letters and why he painted 27 self-portraits: "It is said, and I willingly believe it, that it is difficult to know oneself; but it is not easy to paint oneself either. That's why I'm working on two self-portraits at the moment, also for lack of another model." (October 5 or 6, 1889). In his letters he sketched a self-portrait as eloquent in his descriptions as are his paintings: "I want to say that even if I encounter relatively great difficulties, even if for me there are gloomy days, I would not want, it would not seem fair to me that someone should count me among the unfortunate.".
Van Gogh was a great reader, in love with books and knowledge."I have an irresistible passion for books. Need to instruct myself as to eat my bread." (VII-1880)-, with a desire for self-improvement that never left him: "I spent more on colors and fabrics than on me." (5-IV-1888). The work gives him an overflowing joy: "I feel in me a force that I would like to develop, a fire that I cannot let extinguish, that I must stoke." (DECEMBER 10, 1882). And the eagerness to perfect his art even made it possible for him to reflect on his work: "Life goes by like this, time doesn't come back, but I work hard at my job, precisely because I know that the opportunities to work don't come back". (10-IX-1889). As if to support his conviction, he quotes a phrase from the American painter Whistler: "Yes, I did it in two hours, but to do it in two hours I had to work for years." (2-III-1883).
Reminiscing a Goethe's poem of 1810: "If sight were not like a sun, I could never look upon it; if in us were not found the power of God Himself, how could the divine enrapture us?"It is shocking to recall the candor of Van Gogh's soul in his early years, when the love of God was his protection and his refuge. In 1875, from Paris, Vincent told Théo that he had rented a room and had put paintings on the wall, among them Bible Reading by Rembrandt. In the letter he describes and interprets the scene of the painting: "It is a scene that brings to mind the words, 'Truly I tell you, when two or three beings are gathered in my name, I am in the midst of them'" (JULY 6, 1975). It is a moment in which dreams squeeze his soul and in which love for Christ rejoices his heart in search of that light that will shine later in his work: "You know that one of the fundamental truths of the Gospel is. let the light shine in the darkness. Through the darkness into the light." (NOVEMBER 15, 1975). Vincent's heart was steeped in love for God. He had wanted to be a pastor and missionary in his youth and only devoted himself fervently to painting in the last ten years of his life.
From the diaphanousness of a mind and heart that had not yet suffered the ravages of illness, Vincent, the artist who loved books, the one who preferred to buy brushes and colors rather than food, could assure with moving conviction, the presence of God in all that is beautiful and good: "In the same way it happens that everything that is truly beautiful and good, of inner, moral, spiritual and sublime beauty in men and in their works, I think that this comes from God and that everything that is evil and wicked in the works of men and in men themselves, is not from God and neither does it seem good to God." (VII-1880). Half a century later, Simone Weil in Waiting for God will write in the same vein: "In everything that arouses in us the pure and authentic feeling of beauty there is really the presence of God.".
The Argentine writer Roberto Espinosa recently visited the church of Auvers-Sur-Oise, "that gothic church where his religious heart has been moved". and where the remains of the artist rest: "After wandering aimlessly in search of the 'monument', on a wall and between two mausoleums, two tombstones stare unblinkingly at the midday sun: Ici repose Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) and at his side, Théodore van Gogh (1857-1891). A tapestry of ivy shelters the pain of fraternal graves".. Neither of them had reached the age of forty. Their souls united, between missives and brushes, in search of eternity, of the colors and the light of God.
