Happy Easter!! Ok, ok I know Easter was a number of weeks ago now, but life is busy and good, and it is sometimes hard to find the time to write. And by the way, it’s totally fine to still say “Happy Easter,” since the liturgical calendar has the Easter season lasting right up until the celebration of Pentecost, which is still 2 weeks away. After my Holy Saturday post on despair, I feel like I cannot go forward now to any other topic before I praise life and resurrection! Anything less would be unbalanced and I do believe there is always ultimately a resurrection that resolves everything.

This past Tuesday, Andy and I took a day off work, in order to go to the Museum of Fine Arts Houston to see the Van Gogh exhibit. We arrived at the museum shortly after they opened at 10am and it was kind of crowded, even though it was a week day. Somehow I got stuck in the middle of a big guided tour, but managed to skip ahead and then went back to finish seeing all the paintings. I kept looking for paintings that might illuminate Easter, but could not quite find it in the Van Gogh exhibit. Yes, there is this lovely image of the almond tree blossoms that he painted in the last year of his life that in a sense symbolizes resurrection. But as much as I love Van Gogh, his life was filled with pain and much of his artwork is tinged with a sadness that is so bittersweet. You can find more information about the almond blossom painting here.

Still looking for what would feel like unadulterated resurrection, we left the kind of tight Van Gogh exhibit rooms and walked straight into a huge open gallery that had this amazing painting. It was painted by Hans Hoffman in 1963 and is titled Fiat Lux, which translates to Let there be Light.

Right, so it’s not exactly Easter art, since the title references the story of Creation, but it still felt exactly like Easter to me – an outrageously joyful celebration of being alive. What you can’t see from this image is how enormous this painting is – it takes up an entire wall! And look at those bright and beautiful, dramatic colors! What a glorious and wildly spectacular piece of art that represents to me perfectly the creativity of God who ordered both the creation of the world and the exuberance of the resurrection of Jesus. Happy Easter!

 

Reference 1: Vincent Van Gogh Paintings, Drawing, Quotes and Biography, www.vincentvangogh.org.

Reference 2: Harris, Nathaniel, “The Art of Van Gogh,” copyright The Hamlyn Publishing Group Limited, Excalibur Books, New York, NY, 1982.

Image 1: “Branch of an Almond Tree in Blossom,” by Vincent Van Gogh, 1890, Vincent Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, object number s0176V1962, https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en.

Image 2: “Fiat Lux” by Hans Hoffman, 1963, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, accession number 81.30, https//www.mfah.org.

Photo Credit: Julie Henkener.