Van Gogh’s Genius
Van Gogh spent the last years of his life struggling to make his perceptions of life speak from his canvases. Unlike so many others who sought to capture the essence of truth and beauty through the complexity of detail, Van Gogh found his answers in simple triggers to our mind’s perceptions. That a short flutter of brush stokes, could bring memories of morning crows over a wheat field, sounding their regal entrance for the day, is tribute to Van Gogh’s genius in finding simple ways to powerfully inspire.
I have memories of the day and the moment, stepping up towards a museum mezzanine in Amsterdam where serendipitously that painting — privately owned, and quite infrequently on public display — loomed before me. As my eyes rose from the step ahead, the suddeness of its impressive force stunned me. If you had asked me to tell how big it was, or the colors, or composition, those measures would have escaped me altogether. What I remember quite well, brought tears and a tremble of discomposure, both marvelous and immobilizing.
Whatever it may have been, the painting, its history or my perceptions, they came together like an unlocking combination, entering and resonating the realities of life. More often than not, an ugly, complex issue is tamed by something elegantly simple.
As we make sense of a government grown to gargan- tuan proportions with ever more tragic consequences for all of us, shouldn’t we ask ourselves what are the simple truths? What makes sense at a time when very little else does? If government has the final control over the country’s commerce and economy, who is better able to serve its purpose — a rough edged, successful rancher, a proprietor of a large business, or a polished personality without experience promising to do a good job for the country and yet still planning to own several houses and live the good life? What product does a skillful politician have to sell that might be his path to wealth?
Our country’s success has unfortunately earned us a government run by people of little practical experience wishing to somehow become wealthy. It seems we have become enamored of a political class drawn for the most part from folks once seen as being all hat and no cattle. Van Gogh would not be proud of us.
Carpenter lives in Schulenburg.