STILL LIFE WITH OPEN BIBLE

Well, the New Mexico jury deliberated less than 3 hours before returning a verdict of Guilty of Involuntary Manslaughter in the armorer trial.  The prosecuting attorney delivered a stellar final argument.  The jury's verdict was my personal verdict.  The defendant received the jury's decision with a stone face that was her demeanor throughout the trial.  That in itself is concerning, in my opinion.  She expressed not one bit of remorse for having contributed to the death of the photographer and injury to another.  

 

Still Life with Open Bible - 1885

In this painting, two books lie on a table, at a slant to one another.  One is heavy and large.  It is a family Bible, open to Isaiah 53.  These pages hold a famous passage, "He who despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief....."  The main message of Isaiah 53 is that Jesus would carry our sorrows and that HE would be wounded by those who do wrong against us.

The other is a small, well-thumbed paperback novel Joie de Vivre by Emile Zola, which translates to "your delight in simply living your life."  Van Gogh stages a drama between these two books--the physical differences between the two books and between their content.  Van Gogh saw that novel as a kind of bible for modern life.  Placed side by side, the two books symbolize the different world views of Vincent and his father.  

The Bible that Vincent painted belonged to his father, a Protestant minister.  He painted it after his father's death. Take note of how the paint breaks up into brush strokes, giving the sense of chapter and verse.  

Vincent and his father had a turbulent relationship until his father's death.  For Vincent, the Bible represented everything he saw in his father:  blind devotion to religion, forever trapped in an antiquated mindset.  

Vincent, in 1883, wrote to Theo:  "I feel what Father and Mother think of me instinctively.  (I do not say intelligently.)

They feel the same dread of taking me in the house as they would about taking in a big, rough dog.  He would run into the room with wet paws--and he is so rough.  He will be in everybody's way.  And he barks so loud.  In short, he is a foul beast.

"All right--but the beast has a human history, and though only a dog, he has a human soul, and even a very sensitive one, that makes him feel what people think of him, which an ordinary dog cannot do.

"And I, admitting that I am a kind of dog, leave them alone."

Vincent's words break my heart.  His life was tragically affected by the parental judgment of Vincent not meeting their strict ideals and expectations.  Please hold onto this thought for what is yet to come in our study.🖌