Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear
Or
Portrait of Jesus with Bandaged Ear.
Van Gogh's ‘Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear’ seems aptly described by its title, the artist has painted a portrait of himself with his head turned to show the bandage over his ear, what more is there to say? His expression is quite calm, perhaps a little melancholy, perhaps stoical? As his lodgings, where this painting is set, were in Arles in the sunny South of France one may wonder why Van Gogh is wearing such a thick coat and big hat?
What may not be immediately obvious is that there is a lot of religious imagery in this painting, imagery taken from the long tradition of religious paintings in Western art. I first learned of this in an Art History programme presented by the art critic Waldemar Januszczak, and much of what I write about the religious imagery of this picture in the following paragraphs I have gathered from him.
I will take you through the imagery present in the painting, then explain some of its meaning for Van Gogh, and finally as a Christian consider what meaning there may be for us in the painting.
Behind Van Gogh’s right shoulder is an easel supporting a blank canvas, but the cramped space of the picture makes the top of the stand look like a cross.
Crucifixion paintings usually contain representations of three women who were present at the crucifixion, the Gospel accounts suggest several women were actually present, but three in particular, as Mark writes, “among whom were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome.” In his painting Van Gogh has three women present, they are in the Japanese print on the wall above his left shoulder. This is Van Gogh’s version of a print by Sato Torakiyo, a print that Van Gogh owned, only he has altered it to fit into the composition.
The bandage on Van Gogh’s face resembles the loin cloth often placed on Jesus in crucifixion paintings, and Van Gogh has painted his face thin like the face of Christ in late medieval paintings.
These references to crucifixion paintings are not obvious unless you are familiar with the great tradition of crucifixion paintings in Western art, or unless someone who is familiar with that tradition points them out. Including references to previous paintings helps an artist suggest to a viewer the meaning of his work, or at least makes them ask questions as to the meaning and begin a discussion.
Van Gogh understood art as communicating more than just images, he wrote to his brother,
“Try to understand the last word of what the great artists, the serious masters, say in their masterpieces; there will be God in it. Someone has written or said it in a book, someone in a painting.”
Van Gogh grew up in the Dutch Reformed Church, his grandfather and father were ministers, and before determining to become an artist Van Gogh had been a missionary, so we can see that religious ideas and stories would have been deeply embedded in his heart and mind. We have the Church to thank for van Gogh’s pursuit of art, as a missionary to the miners in the Belgian Borinage region he was so moved by their poverty, and by the example of Jesus, that he gave his lodgings and all of his possessions and most of his clothing to the poor, but when the church authorities found out they dismissed him for ‘undermining the dignity of the priesthood’, and so Van Gogh turned to art to communicate his ideas by means of pictures instead of preaching.
If the church authorities had been unimpressed with Van Gogh’s lifestyle in the Borinage they would have been absolutely appaulled by his way of life in Arles where he had gone in the hope of setting up an artist’s colony in the South of France. In the period leading up to ‘Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear’ Van Gogh had become obsessed with a prostitute, who unfortunately for him preferred the company of the only other artist who had joined his colony, Paul Gauguin.
As a protest, or a sign of love, or of anger, Van Gogh cut off part of his ear and sent it to the young lady, hence the bandage on his head in the painting.
Waldemar Januszczak argues that Van Gogh’s cutting off of his ear was a reference to the practice of bull fighters in Arles cutting off the ear of a slaughtered bull and giving it to a pretty woman in the stadium as a trophy, thus Van Gogh was presenting himself as “the sacrificial victim in the battle of love.”
One of the three women usually included in crucifixion paintings is Mary Magdalene, described erroneously as a prostitute by church tradition, so there in Van Gogh’s crucifixion painting are three women who are Japanese geishas, often misunderstood by Western culture to be prostitutes. The more you look at the religious imagery in the painting, the more it seems van Gogh has painted a picture of himself as the crucified Christ. That’s certainly what Waldemar Januszczak argues, that Van Gogh feeling persecuted, rejected and wronged was identifying himself with Christ, and that this is delusional even if it produces great art. One can imagine how the church authorities would have reacted to the idea of Van Gogh as a Christ-like figure, this man whose enterprise of setting up an artistic colony had failed miserably, Gauguin left the day after the ear chopping incident, this man who visited prostitutes and even fell in love with one, this man who painted pictures in a crazy style that no one was interested in, this artist who may well be crazy himself, how in heaven or earth was he Christ like?
It is perhaps worth recalling that the religious authorities condemned Jesus for spending time with prostitutes, that both his family and the authorities called him mad, and that his great enterprise apparently ended in crucifixion and failure as his disciples deserted him – apart from the women who bravely stayed to the bitter end. However, Jesus lived a holy life and was the Son of God, so is Van Gogh’s self-identification with Christ perhaps even blasphemous?
Well, to put it the other way round, Jesus is like Van Gogh, he was as human as Van Gogh, as human as us all, and he suffered like Van Gogh, he suffered as we all do. Jesus is the infinite God in finite human form, God the Son became God our brother. His suffering was the sum of all our suffering because He knows our suffering completely, Jesus knows our pain as God knows all things, and knows our pain in the same way all human beings experience suffering. For God the Son to confine Himself in human frame was to embrace suffering and humility beyond our limited comprehension, and then he lived as one despised and rejected, and accepted crucifixion for our sake.
As the Apostle Paul writes in Philippians 2, Jesus…
“who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God
something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death –
even death on a cross!”
At the crucifixion Jesus suffered with us and for us, and it is through His crucifixion and resurrection that our sin and suffering is redeemed. The cross shows the infinite depths of God’s forgiveness and willingness to suffer for the sake of love, and the empty tomb shows that God can bring us through suffering and even death into new life. God offers to us healing and forgiveness through Jesus Christ.
Our lives may be characterised by sin and suffering, and by struggle and failure, like Van Gogh’s own painful and seemingly sordid life, but in Christ both sin and suffering can be redeemed. To become Christ-like one does not have to be good, one has to be forgiven; we cannot be infinitely good, but we can receive infinite forgiveness. Once we have accepted God’s forgiveness He regards us as Christ-like because His forgiveness is complete. He then asks us to try and live up to that identity, knowing we will need to turn to His forgiveness again and again. We all can paint a self-portrait of ourselves containing the story of our pain, and sin, and self-inflicted wounds, and yet identify ourselves with Christ, because that is what God does. All of us, that includes Van Gogh, Waldemar Januszczak, you and me.
The scandal of Christianity is that the guilty are not condemned, they are forgiven. The scandal of religion is that so often the guilty are condemned not forgiven. That is why it seems Van Gogh’s ‘Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear’ is blasphemous, or deluded, or scandalous, because to the judgemental the gospel is blasphemous, deluded, and scandalous, but even though the religious may have abandoned Van Gogh - Jesus did not.
By Vincent van Gogh - The Courtauld Institute of Art, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29334036
Comments