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| Monday, 4 November 2002 |
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One of the headlines that struck me this morning was that 'Dr Gachet,' a painting by Vincent Van Gogh sold at an auction for 82.5 million dollars. The highest ever paid for a painting..! Yet poor Van Gogh sold only one of his works during his life time. Most art critics of his time, looked at his paintings and turned away with not even a second glance..! What was it that the critics missed? C. S Lewis once explained the right way to look at a work of art when he said: 'We sit down before a picture in order to have something done to us, not that we may do things to it. The first demand any work of art makes upon us is to surrender. Look, Listen. Receive.' 'For many of us, though, that is not what we do. We look and listen, but instead of receiving, we react; instead of surrendering, we resist, instead of coming away changed, we come away critical. And that is true whether we come away from a movie on Saturday night, a musical or a lecture we hear.' Look, Listen, Receive. How many of us can claim to do this? There is art all around us. In the colour sketches of our children, in the culinary skills of our mothers, the sitting room decor of our wives, thoughtful gifts by loving husbands. Art, waiting to be received, yet with critical eyes do we glance at them. 'There may be a great fire in our soul,' wrote Van Gogh, 'yet no one ever comes to warm himself at it, and the passers-by, see only a wisp of smoke coming through the chimney, and go along their way.' How sad life must have been for him. To feel so deeply, to want to communicate those feelings so passionately, and yet to have people stand off at a distance, shake their heads and walk away. Eventually his physical, spiritual, mental, and emotional states all deteriorated. Darkness was everywhere. One day, unable to bear it anymore, he killed himself. There was nobody to look, listen and receive. I wonder what he would feel now where he know that the painting nobody looked at was bought for such an astronomical amount. Most times we appreciate someone's. art in whatever form when it is too late. I hope the prayer below by Ken Gire will help us to start looking, listening and receiving: Help me God, To have the humility to sit at the feet of great art, Whether it is a painting or a person on the street, A scene from a movie or a score from a musical, A sunset or a psalm. To look and to listen and to receive What is being offered me there. Give me the grace to submit to its scrutiny, Seeking not to do something to it, that it might do something to me; Seeking not in some way to judge it, But that it might in some way judge me.. Help me God, to Look, to Listen and to Receive. |
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