Much and van Gogh: Personal and Religious views of Death in the Sick Room and the Sower.
To the unaware and the obtuse, Edvard Munch and Vincent van Gogh simply made paintings. Much like a hot political speech or a fiery church sermon, there is evidence of passion for much more than what is simply on the surface of each artist's works. What becomes clear, in looking deeply into not only the works themselves, but the mindset of each painter and the and the issues of import during the time in which they worked, is that van Gogh, Munch, and artists like them could not contain their fears about the world and about their mortality in check and used their painting as a self-therapy. What we see are not images that were intended for universal appeal, they are deeply personal works that demonstrate elements at the core of each man. Van Gogh's The Sower, for instance, is a metaphor of not only the questioning of Christ in the Gospel of Mark (through the story of the Sower), but of the internal metaphor of sowing one's own life. Munch's, Death in the Sick Room, also demonstrates a religious parable and a personal one, that of his family surrounding his dying sister, Sofie, and of the crucifixion of Christ and the mourners of different shades who surrounded him. It is the purpose of this paper to examine the elements of personal and theological perspective employed in these two works and to explore their greater application and generalization to the viewer.
