Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart: What Art Teaches Us About the Wonder and Struggle of Being Alive

About the Book

Beyond a mere introduction to great art, Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart is about loving to learn what art has to teach us about the wonder and struggle of being alive.

Did you know that:

• Vincent van Gogh's attempt to start an artist's colony with Paul Gauguin lasted only nine weeks, ending in his infamous "ear episode"
• Pablo Picasso was a prime suspect in the disappearance of the Mona Lisa
• Artemisia Gentileschi was tortured with thumbscrews to verify her testimony at her own rapist's trial
• Norman Rockwell's critics said his work would never be accepted as "high art"--and he agreed

These stories--and many more--shaped the work these artists left behind. In their art are lessons common to the human experience about the wonder and struggle of being alive: dreams lost, perspectives changed, and humility derived through suffering.

In Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart, Russ Ramsey digs into these artists' stories for readers who may be new to art, as well as for lifelong students of art history, to mine the transcendent beauty and hard lessons we can take from their masterpieces and their lives. Each story from some of the history's most celebrated artists applies the beauty of the gospel in a way that speaks to the suffering and hope we all face.

About the Author :
Russ Ramsey is a pastor at Christ Presbyterian Church in Nashville, Tennessee, where he lives with his wife and four children. He grew up in the fields of Indiana and studied at Taylor University and Covenant Theological Seminary (MDiv, ThM).

Review :
I learned so much about the artists in Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart that I hadn't known before--the perseverance and long-suffering of Artemisia Gentileschi or the civil rights advocacy by Norman Rockwell--but it was the way Russ Ramsey personally opened up about the paintings that allowed me to see them better. To read this book is to hover over the shoulder of Picasso, share a drink with Gauguin, and suffer heartbreak with van Gogh. You don't want it to end. If you find yourself uncomfortable and overwhelmed when you look at fine art, you will enjoy this book as both a great read and as a mini crash course in Western art. Allow Ramsey's informal introductions to these artists to begin a lifetime of curiosity and start a new circle of friends to look for when you go museuming. In Russ Ramsey's follow-up to Rembrandt Is in the Wind, he offers more well-told stories of artists, which becomes a door flung wide to big and urgent questions about the things that matter most. Among this book's many contributions are the realizations that great creativity can sometimes emerge from great sorrow and that we who also ache can therefore take comfort in the gestures, symbols, colors, and stories of great art. Russ Ramsey is a gifted storyteller, a keen student of human nature and a genuine art connoisseur. In Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart, Ramsey makes classic artists relatable, building a bridge of empathy across time. He also helps readers discover for themselves the power of visual art as a channel for tackling big questions of meaning, injustice, and suffering in a broken world. Russ Ramsey is a master storyteller who weaves together the stories of some of the world's greatest artists, whose lives are marked by both hope and suffering. He reminds us that, although 'wonderful and terrible things happen in this world,' the beauty of the gospel is everywhere if we just keep looking. Russ Ramsey takes us beyond the canvas to the very human stories behind it. I found myself teary at some point in every chapter. He respectfully sheds light on the shadowy parts of artists' lives, as well as his own, making the reader feel less alone. The gift that Russ Ramsey's?book gives us is the rare opportunity to slow down and simply look at the images that have shaped our visual world. If you wonder what the legacy of our world's visual culture might tell us about each other and ourselves, then this book is for you. The gospel shows us God's audacious longing to bind himself to our sorrow, knowing that he is the only cure for the pain. Russ Ramsey teaches us to see this marriage of beauty and sadness through the stories of great art and artists. He tears in two the unfair veil of pain that defines the lives of so many artists, refusing to allow us to remember them by their struggles alone. Instead, he invites us, with soft eyes and hearts, to bear witness to their bravery to triumphantly create beauty in the face of it. The large questions of art are the large questions of life. Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart will help you unlock the inner secret that all great art holds--that in the end, we are all working to make peace with suffering. Russ Ramsey has presented us with a rare gift--a careful and tender book that boldly guides us to the spiritual core of some of our culture's great treasures and through them, to a better knowledge of our own ever-breaking hearts. You approach Russ Ramsey's writings expecting to learn about art and artists, only to realize he has flung open a window to your own deepest griefs, hopes, and longings. Ramsey's essays are highly entertaining and informative, yes, but in the end they reveal themselves as hospitable invitations to get to the transcendent heart of things. You might be an art expert who can see an entire history in a Rembrandt painting, an amateur who can't tell the difference between van Gogh and Van Halen, or somewhere in between. In any case, you will find in this book the best kind of education--the kind that doesn't feel like education at all. In classic Russ Ramsey fashion, the storytelling is gripping and the insights are surprising. After reading this, you will walk into your next museum, or gaze up at the night sky outside it, with very different eyes.