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Vincent Van Gogh's christian faith and how it influenced his life and art

Park, Yongnam (2017) Vincent Van Gogh's christian faith and how it influenced his life and art. Other thesis, Dublin City University.

Abstract
The genesis of this thesis was the experience of the transcendent quality of Vincent van Gogh’s oeuvre. The hypothesis is that Van Gogh pursued his vocation to be a minister of Christ through art having failed in his desire to pursue a vocation in the institutional church. The perspective is through the lens of Christian Spirituality and the concept of transformation leading to transcendence. Van Gogh’s life is viewed as a compulsive mission, a pilgrimage with both a physical and spiritual dimension. His physical journey is well documented. His spiritual journey seems almost as clear when his obsession with depicting the Sower is analysed in the light of that parable and Christ’s Gospel as expressed as much in his artworks as in his correspondence. Account is taken of the abundant critical literature including Christocentric analyses. These latter tend to focus on the trilogy of paintings which unmistakably represent religious biblical images: The Pietà (after Delacroix), The Good Samaritan (after Delacroix), and The Raising of Lazarus (after Rembrandt). However, this ignores the rich Christian symbolism that can be found in so much of his other work through his understanding of chromatics and the choice of his subject matter. Van Gogh’s early life as an art dealer exposed him to a wide variety of artistic genres and styles. He also became an advocate for and an adept in Japonisme. Van Gogh was multilingual and widely read in his native Dutch and in English and French. He was immersed in the Bible and Christ’s teaching. All of this combined in his developing mastery of a personalised art form which found expression in depictions beginning with The Potato Eaters, continuing through numerous works of sowers, harvest and reaping, culminating in the death and resurrection symbolism in his final works, Wheatfields with Crows and Roots. Christian spirituality evidenced in that mission.
Metadata
Item Type:Thesis (Other)
Date of Award:November 2017
Refereed:No
Supervisor(s):Grenham, Thomas G.
Uncontrolled Keywords:Art;
Subjects:Humanities > Religions
DCU Faculties and Centres:DCU Faculties and Schools > Institute of Education > School of Human Development
Use License:This item is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. View License
ID Code:21992
Deposited On:15 Nov 2017 12:52 by Thomas Grenham . Last Modified 11 Sep 2018 03:30
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