Quoting a Bible Verse
Go your way, eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions of them to those for whom nothing is prepared, for this day is holy to our LORD; and do not be grieved, for the joy of the LORD is your strength.
Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10; Luke 4:14-21
A holy day, a day of celebration. The Book of Nehemiah tells the story of the return of the people of Israel to their homeland. This moment depicts the reading of the law to a people who have been without it for some time, separated across a foreign empire, broken apart as a community.
The people were crying. Was it from joy for being together again? Was it in sadness for all they had lost? Was it in shame, for many had strayed from the law, the law now being read to them? Maybe is was a mix of these reasons, at least as averaged across those gathered. It would be misguided to try to simplify everything down into one reason, one emotion. Life is more complicated than that.
A sense of complexity will be handy this morning as we review another artist. Today we consider Paul Gauguin, a 19th century artist. Gauguin was ostensibly French, but he got around a lot. He grew up in Peru of all places, married a Danish woman and lived in her country for a time, and famously travelled around the French colonies, such as Tahiti and the Marquesas Islands. He painted, of course, and also worked in carved wood and pottery. His pieces rarely come on the market and when they do, they sell for astronomical prices.
But there is one thing I need to get out of the way from the very start. I consider Paul Gauguin to be an utterly loathsome human being. He abandoned his family and failed through most of his life to render any financial support to them. He travelled around the world sponging off friends and acquaintances. While abroad, he took up with multiple common law wives, all of whom were young teenage girls, all of whom bore him children, all of whom contracted syphilis from him. I think that all sums up “loathsome” for me.
Why do I tell you all this? Because as I was preparing for this morning, I wondered about the nature of art and, specifically, whether we should distinguish between the art and the artist? I did not discover the long-lost secret of Gauguin’s bad behavior. I read one account that his wife sought to separate from him because the couple had differing values. Talk about 19th century euphemism. And yet, for all his moral failings, Gauguin is widely acclaimed and widely admired. What are we to make of that?
Look at this morning’s painting. You may have seen it at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Our rather small version bears no resemblance to the true painting, and impressive 4.5 by 12 feet. The title of the painting is in the left-hand corner, which in English is “Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?” I chose the painting because of its title, which I found interesting and perhaps sermon worthy. And then I was readings articles about Gauguin and short biographical sketches. And I thought to myself: Ick. But here goes.
The painting is meant to be read from right to left. There are three groupings of figures. The first is several women around a young child. In the center, there are signs of daily life and domesticity. And then there is an old woman in the shade of a tree, perhaps anticipating the end of life. The small child becomes the large woman in the center who dwindles to the shrunken figure in the shadow of death. The large blue idol in the background suggests mysteries of life or the divinity overlooking it all.
Gauguin had travelled to Tahiti because he had imagined a land unspoiled by European influences. He was entirely incorrect. Tahiti and many of the surrounding islands had been transformed by colonialism. Their religion and traditions had been suppressed by Catholic missionaries to such a degree that he could not find reliable accounts of them – so he made a lot of things up. Those same missionaries had long since forced women to wear high colored dresses, quite unlike those depicted here or in much of Gauguin’s work from this time period.
Gauguin became an artist later in life, in his thirties. He was not entirely well-regarded as an artist during his lifetime. He had many famous contemporary acquaintances, such as Paul Cezanne and Vincent van Gogh. Gauguin and van Gogh actually lived and painted together for a time in France. One night van Gogh is said to have confronted Gauguin with a razor, only to later that evening sever his ear. You may have heard about that.
Gauguin developed an intentionally primitive style and advocated painting from memory rather than from life or nature. His colors are often bold and unnatural, his figures flat and simplified. He tried to convey symbolic images rather than realistic portrayals. It was about fantasy rather than reality.
In many ways, I think this tendency of Gauguin to focus on fantasy extended to much of his life. He wrote an account of his travels in which he likely made up much of the material. He invented an image of Tahiti and other places that suited what he was looking for more so than what he had found. He plagiarized more than a bit of it – he once apparently said art is either plagiarism or revolution.
Gauguin has been accused of exoticism, playing up the wild elements of his travels at the expense of the truth. He sought out a simple, primitive life that had been mostly destroyed by French colonialism and so he wrote and painted it all back into existence. And he cultivated such a life at the expense of the people around him, particularly those young women on the islands.
How should we reconcile art with artist? How can we? And yet, people obviously value Gauguin’s art, both monetarily and as an artistic inspiration. With his movement away from realism and into symbols, he notably influenced van Gogh and Picasso. Gauguin is quoted as saying, “Don’t copy nature too literally. Art is an abstraction. Derive it from nature as you dream in nature’s presence, and think more about the act of creation than the outcome.” Abstraction would of course become a dominant influence in 20th century art.
Abstraction also allows you to convey an image or an idea without looking too closely, or too deeply, at the hard contours of reality. Gauguin’s grand canvass in front of us, said to be his masterpiece, suggests the passage of a life from beginning to end marked by existential questions: “Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?”
Think back to our reading about the people crying as they hear the laws being read to them, the laws set forth in the Bible. Are they happy or sad, overjoyed or overwhelmed? Filled with pride or wracked with guilt? A blend of all these things?
In the same way, as we scan the life cycle in this painting, we are offered quick glimpses rather than gritty details. You are born, you live, and you die. The shorthand of life without any of the longhand realities of living. In my research, I did not get the impression that Gauguin was terribly interested in those realities any more than his life suggests deep self-reflection about the moral choices he made.
One art critic cautioned that the distaste with which some regard Gauguin as a person is a reflection of resentment. Resentment for the great freedom that he embraced in his life, resentment of his unbounded lifestyle in comparison to our circumscribed ways of being. Put another way, aren’t you all being just a wee bit bourgeoise?
Actually, no. Gauguin was a creep.
He abandoned his family to become an artist and to pursue a freewheeling amoral existence without regard for anyone other than himself. He sought fame and embraced hedonistic activities. He died basically alone and in poverty, his meagre possessions auctioned off and sent back to his estranged wife – yes, they had never divorced. Only after his death, probably as a result of an overdose of laudanum, did Gauguin become well-known and well-regarded. One painting, which had sold in 1903 for a charitably high 150 francs was purchased in 2004 for just shy of 40 million dollars. His family saw nothing like those sums.
Again, how do we reconcile art with artist?
There is a psychological term known as cognitive dissonance. It arises when a person experiences stress from holding two or more contradictory beliefs or values. I like Mary, but I do not like her best friend Joe. That imbalance of liking one person but not the other potentially makes for an unstable relationship. So if I like Gauguin’s art but consider him to be a terrible person, how might that instability of feeling play out in my head?
This situation is not unique to Gauguin. Picasso was famously an abusive womanizer. The German composer Wagner wrote anti-Semitic materials. Russian writers like Dostoyevsky and Chekhov offered numerous unflattering portrayals of Jews.
Then again, Albert Einstein who fled from Nazi Germany had remarkably unkind things to say about the Chinese for some reason. Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood and pioneer of birth control also endorsed eugenics. And even Eleanor Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt, preferred not to attend parties that were too Jewish (she fortunately shifted gears later in life).
Art and music, science and politics: what are we to do when the actions or beliefs of people do not live up to the measure of their accomplishments? How do we love the art of Gauguin while disliking the person of Gauguin?
One more example. Years ago, when I was in seminary, I was researching a 20th century theologian named Henry Nelson Weiman. Exciting, I know. As a part of my research I came across two doctoral dissertations, written years apart, examining Weiman’s work. One of those dissertations drew heavily upon the work of the other, and “by drew” heavily I mean copied large sections of it, word for word. That second dissertation was written by a famous person, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. This is not a new discovery – Boston University reached the same conclusion in 1991. [See, e.g. https://www.nytimes.com/1991/10/11/us/boston-u-panel-finds-plagiarism-by-dr-king.html]
It may appear unseemly to bring up this factoid the Sunday after MLK Day, but I do so for a reason. How do I reconcile my positive feelings for Martin Luther King and his civil rights work with the knowledge that he committed blatant plagiarism? How do I balance the dissonance of feelings, positive and negative? Can there be balance?
Human beings can be rather messy psychologically. We can hold seemingly contradictory beliefs. The strength of those beliefs often factor into the balancing. For example, I do not personally hold a very strong feeling about the artwork of Paul Gauguin. Conversely, having read about his lacking moral outlook, I have a general distaste for the man. This is not a big psychic dilemma for me.
Compare that with Martin Luther King. I strongly believe in his life’s work: his dedication to nonviolence and his consistent condemnation of racial and economic inequality in the United States. And yet, I know he plagiarized portions of his dissertation. You would not know this about me, but I am an unyielding stickler when it comes to plagiarism. I would never, ever, use the work of someone else without making it clear that I was not the original author. And I would not use large sections of someone else’s work because, frankly, that is lazy writing.
And, by the way, that famous line about the arc of history bending toward justice? It was first written by the Rev. Theodore Parker, a 19th century Unitarian minister.
It was hard for me to reconcile these two divergent images. And yet the work of Dr. King is more than these words, regardless of how well known or how meaningful. I quote the Bible every Sunday. The authors of those sacred texts repeatedly borrowed from earlier works, sometimes as quotations but often without any attribution.
We can get tied up with liking or disliking the messenger at the expense of the message. Again, a sense of cognitive dissonance can get in the way. If I dislike someone but they have something important to say, I can convince myself not to listen. If I like someone but they are spouting nonsense, I might still listen to them regardless of my better judgement.
Complex thinking requires balancing complex factors. And yet, human beings do not always make that effort. We fall back on old habits, old traditions, and old stereotypes. We save time by pre-judging, the root of the word prejudice.
Paul Gauguin was not in my estimation a good person. He violated numerous values that I hold dear. He did not take care of his family. He abused young women. He cared far more about himself than others. All bad in my book. Yet within that sketchy string of life choices, he created works that have greatly influenced the trajectory of American and European art. His paintings are by no means a repository of his life’s better angels. Holding those opposing feelings in tension would take work, work which I am not overly inclined to undertake.
However, with MLK I have struggled to make it work. My sense of academic honor retreats in deference to my heartfelt belief that racism must be challenged and economic inequity must be addressed. The hard work of the Civil Rights Movement did not come about because everyone involved was perfect. It came into being because together those imperfect people brought about something truly revolutionary, a shift away from segregation to integration, a change in the way that a generation of Americans thought. Not all Americans, obviously. Not every municipality or institution, sadly. But as the engineers say, let not the perfect stand in the way of the good.
When I think about where we are as a country now, I wonder about our ability to engage in complex thinking. Are we listening for easy answers to hard questions? The shorthand of life without any of the longhand realities of living. And I do not mean anyone one person, you or me or the folks across the street. Like the people of Israel listening to the law being read, the feelings evoked by our current circumstances could be for many reasons.
Why might one be upset? Because there is so much anger in public discourse. Because petty bickering is far more common that meaningful debate. Because no one seems ready to work hard to address the real problems facing our nation, depending on how I might define those.
No one person in public life embodies all the problems facing our society. No one group of people can fix them. And no one group of people should shoulder the blame for them.
And yet those are often the simplistic conclusions offered up. Offered up to divide people into opposing camps unwilling to navigate a complex world filled with complex people. Let me put it simply: nothing is simple. And so the answers we seek and the approaches we take should be open to those complexities even though it would require us to step back from the existing attitudes, beliefs, and stereotypes that we sometimes hold a bit too tightly.
The people of Israel wept when the law was read out to them. Whether from joy or sorrow, relief or regret, those tears brought them together as one people. And we may have to listen to that which we prefer not to hear and to seek where we might not choose to look. But if we are to be thoughtful, reasonable people dedicated to that which is good for all, rather than perfect for some of us, it will take the hard work of listening closely, looking carefully, and waiting patiently as we strive to figure out where we are going, together. Amen.
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