Van Gogh, Monet, and Common Grace

Today I went to the Beyond Van Gogh, Beyond Monet Exhibition in Hartford, for the second time this month. I love this thing, and sat through the whole exhibit twice -- two hours of a Monet and Van Gogh visuals with music and media production.

A couple of years ago Beyond Exhibitions did an entire show of Van Gogh, and the girls and I went, at the recommendation of my sister.  It was wonderful.  So when this combined exhibition came through, it was a no-brainer.

Those of you who know me, realize that I might be a little uptight. I rarely fully relax; I take klonapin to sleep more than I like to admit; I grind my teeth in my sleep.  It’s only been in the last five-plus years that I’ve been able to go to bed if there are dirty dishes in the sink.  My daughters hate when I get into go-mode at 11 pm at night – meaning a sudden need to clean, tidy up, finish a project, start a project – whatever.  Power activity to accomplish something. My brain is rarely at rest – always planning and anticipating and what-if-ing.

I remember when we were first married, about eight months in, I laid down on the floor with a throw pillow, in front of the fire, and relaxed. I couldn’t remember the last time my body had sagged and fully relaxed. My muscles unwound and went heavy. And I remember thinking, “So this is what it feels like to relax. I can’t remember ever feeling this way.”  It was revolutionary.

When my daughter, The Artsy One, was taking piano lessons, we would sometimes go to the community piano recitals of her teacher’s husband, who was a concert pianist.  One was in an old, little church with hard pews, dark wood gothic arches and only sat about fifty people.  And I recall shutting my eyes, listening to the beautiful piano, and somehow just falling into the deepest relaxation.  It was sublime.

When we went to the Van Gogh Exhibition several years ago, I again relaxed.  And then this year with my friend the first time I went to Van Gogh and Monet, again, total relaxation. My body let go. My anxieties drained and my brain and thoughts finally stilled.  It’s like a drug to me.  A state of being I rarely experience, but completely crave.  So again, today we went.  I sank into deep relaxation and was overwhelmed by it.

Even if you know how to relax and don’t need that particular experience, I cannot recommend highly enough this Exhibition.  The beauty of it is overwhelming.  If it comes to your city, or near your city, Go!

When we first enter, there is a divided hall with static displays:  VanGogh on one side and Monet on the other.  There are panels with information and quotes about their life and art, and there are scenes from their paintings.  Then we travel down a hallway into a larger hall (this is at the Convention Center, so big, high ceilings, etc,).  The room is surrounded in huge blank white panels, all connecting and probably twenty feet high and thirty feet across.  There are seats in the center, but it’s all around us.  It grows darker and music plays.  And we are treated to the most vivid, most beautiful display of art and animated art and music that you can’t imagine until you see it.

There is a 37 minutes segment for each, Van Gogh and Monet. 

This is not a video museum.  This is truly immersive.  We aren’t just looking at projections of paintings around us, but scenes from paintings that draw themselves before our eyes.  The grass and hills come up, the flowers color themselves, the clouds come floating in.  It’s so gradual that at first we don’t notice the scenes changing and animating.  It’s flowing so gently and beautifully. It’s emotive.  I find myself lost in the beauty of the visual and the sound. Fields and flowers, haystacks and cathedrals, city scenes and water lilies, day and night. Stars and sunsets. 

I look at the clouds – in some scenes they float, in others they roil and swirl. The sky moves slowly across the screens.  There is joyous and riotous color.  Such vivid colors – so much more that we see in books or online.  The music evokes the pure joy of the artwork.  Scenes of water, of lily pads, swirl.  The oceans splash and roil and spray, as if tormented.  The calm waters shimmer. And it’s all simply their paintings but with portions animated which isn’t so much entertaining, but evocative and draws me in.  I think that Van Gogh and Monet, if they were to see it, would say, “Yes! That’s what I saw! That’s the motion and emotion I was feeling and I sought to capture!”

As I watch the scenes change – I experience peace and gladness.  And I wonder how such genius and brilliance can exist.  It’s not just a yellow and orange sunset, but it’s persimmon and tangerine and rust, with coral and buttery yellow and saturated sunlight.  And then he brings in periwinkle.  The flower stems and leaves aren’t just green, but include such profoundly deep blue, adding depth and life.  I’d never noticed it before.  The play of sunlight and color on the many many haystacks. And then it shifts to the winter haystacks and they make it snow, the gentlest most beautiful swirling snow.

Both are so courageous in the colors they use.  In the amount of paint.  How do they even get so much paint on their brushes?  Onto the canvas?  And the swirl and ridges of the paint brings forth so much depth and emotion in the pictures. The light is bold, or delicate. I never truly saw any of this until it was twenty feet high, so overwhelming.

And how do they even see, let alone mix so many colors – so many variations and shades, and so vibrant? Like the Grinch, my heart enlarges with the music and with the color.

How does he know to put green in his eyebrows?  And yellow and chartreuse skies and water?  How does he know that it will work and be beautiful?

My other daughter, The Bio Major, loves the Mantis Shrimp. They live in the deep sea and are amazing creatures.  They kill their prey by punching their claw out so fast that the water boils and kills said prey. And they have the most complex eyes in the animal kingdom; they see exponentially more colors than we do.  Is this how Monet and Van Gogh see?  Is there something in their eyes where they just see and take in so much more?  Or is in in their brains?  I would like to think it’s their eyes, because then I wouldn’t feel so inadequate knowing there’s nothing I can do about the formation of my eyes.  But it’s probably their brains that see so much, and then I know that my brain is sub-standard and doesn’t even begin to see all that they do. It’s their gift – one that I don’t have.  Because they see so much and express so much that I could never come up with, it’s almost agony. As if I’m blind before these painters who actually see.

And of course there is something so sacred and almost holy about such overwhelming beauty.  We see it in art, but also hear it in music and experience it in nature.  How is it possible that such genius exists? That the world is so beautiful? That we get to live in it and experience it?

In protestant reformed theology there are two types of grace:  saving grace and common grace.  Saving grace is what you are familiar with:  salvation. It brings us into eternity with God; it’s the grace that brings the remission of our sins through Jesus’ death and resurrection, it fulfills our need for a Savior. 

Common grace is what makes our lives here on earth not just tolerable, but beautiful, despite the sin and horrors we perpetrate.

“Common grace, is the expression of the goodness of God, is every favor short of salvation, which this undeserving and sin-cursed world enjoys at the hand of God; this includes  . . .  all gifts that human[s] use and enjoy naturally.” (The Gospel Coalition)

This includes love and kindness, and self-sacrifice.  Courage and valiance, tenderness and passion.  It’s the beauty of nature and art and music, as well as scientific advancement. It’s human curiosity and our desire to make the world a better place.  It what makes us give of our time and money and efforts to do good for another human being. All that is good in our humanity. 

Matthew 5:45 tells us, "For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust."

We all enjoy God’s common grace, so often without even realizing it.

And this is why I say that Monet and Van Gogh are sacred, almost holy.  Because they are evidence of God’s common grace, granted to us for no other reason than because God loves us.  I cannot not see the Glory of God in the sunsets and lily pads, gardens, fields and skies that they painted. I have no idea if either were religious or not, and that doesn’t matter.  Not only does the sun rise and fall on the even and the good, but artistic genius is not a function of our beliefs, but of our spirits and souls being made in God’s image, and enjoying God’s world. 

So when I went to see this today, and spent two hours immersed in this beauty, overwhelmed, at peace, and fully relaxed; when the riotous colors filled me with joy and the swirls of petals floated about me; when the music swelled and danced; when my soul was tormented with beauty -- it was a fully human experience but also, for me, full immersion in God’s common grace and his abundant provision which fills us and is the very best part of being human.  

Needless to say, I highly recommend this exhibition and strongly encourage you to go, if you are able.

https://www.beyondexhibitions.com/