Book Reviews: Rembrandt Is in the Wind; Imagining Our Neighbors as Ourselves
Rembrandt Is in the Wind: Learning to Love Art through the Eyes of Faith by Russ Ramsey (Zondervan, 2022)
Russ Ramsey is a pastor with a passion for art and a fervent belief in its power to change lives. “Genesis describes our origin as a union of goodness, truth, and beauty intended to aid in the work of building community,” he writes in his new book, Rembrandt Is in the Wind: Learning to Love Art through the Eyes of Faith. “But we struggle to give goodness, truth, and beauty equal weight. … Yet when we neglect beauty, we neglect one of the primary qualities of God.”
Ramsey’s response to the problem is this striking book, which takes us through more than four centuries of art history, focusing on the works of nine different artists and including a plethora of beautiful images, in both color and black and white. From Michelangelo’s David through Edward Hopper’s New York Movie, Ramsey gives us background on everything from the artists to the materials they used in their paintings or sculptures. He tells the captivating stories surrounding these works, such as the theft of Rembrandt’s The Storm on the Sea of Galilee, and shares the travails of the artists, including Lilias Trotter’s difficulties in balancing missionary work with art, Henry O. Tanner’s struggle to define himself as an African American artist, and Caravaggio’s incessant brawling. He brings to these stories a deep compassion for the brokenness of these human beings, as well as a great admiration for what they were able to accomplish. And in the process, he opens up whole worlds for us.
Rembrandt Is in the Wind is the work of a man who has spent many years studying and thinking about the art he loves, and it shows. Whether you’re an expert or a novice in the world of art, you’ll find much to enjoy and to ponder here.
Imagining Our Neighbors as Ourselves: How Art Shapes Empathy by Mary W. McCampbell (Fortress Press, 2022)
What Russ Ramsey does with sculpture and painting is similar in many ways to what my friend Mary McCampbell does with novels, shows, films, and songs in her new book, Imagining Our Neighbors as Ourselves: How Art Shapes Empathy. Mary’s focus, as her book’s title indicates, is specifically on how stories can show us how to love our neighbor. She examines an incredibly wide range of works in this book, from the heavily profane Magnolia to the Mr. Rogers biopic A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, from crime drama “Better Call Saul” to “The Chosen,” the current series about the life of Christ, and finds a common thread that runs through them all. As she writes, “The arts provide diverse opportunities to become more attentive: to open our eyes and unblock our ears.”
But to learn what these stories have to teach us, she explains, takes active engagement, not just passive watching:
Although we have these rich opportunities to grow emotionally and spiritually for the sake of expanding our empathy, we have been culturally trained as consumers to treat our practices of reading, watching, and listening as mere acts of consumption in order to get a quick fix of enjoyment. … At the beginning of each of the college courses that I teach, I emphasize that the authors of the books we are reading—whether the books were written in 1603 or 1994—are human beings created in God’s image. These image bearers have something important to say to us, and if we submit ourselves to their voices, we will have the privilege of seeing life through their eyes.
Throughout the book, as she guides us through so many different kinds of stories, Mary demonstrates how looking at them in this way can increase our understanding of, and our sympathy with, people who may be nothing like us. In a polarized culture, it’s a powerful way of learning to engage not just stories, but also our fellow human beings.
(Cover images copyright Zondervan and Fortress Press, respectively. Thanks to Fortress Press for the review copy of Imagining Our Neighbors as Ourselves.)
Book Links:
Rembrandt Is in the Wind on Amazon
Rembrandt Is in the Wind on Bookshop
Imagining Our Neighbors as Ourselves on Amazon
Imagining Our Neighbors as Ourselves on Bookshop
Other Links:
I did an interview about Dorothy L. Sayers’s first novel, Whose Body?, with Emily Whitten of WORLD. Click here to listen! (The audio link is right underneath the title on the page.)
Note:
Congratulations to Katharine Taylor, Paola Barrera, and Melanie Weeks, winners of our book giveaway! I’ll e-mail the three of you to get your addresses so I can send you your books.