Art shows us back to ourselves, and the best art doesn’t flinch or look away. It tells us our story, and what story doesn’t have some measure of sorrow? What great story doesn’t contain great sorrow?
I’ve loved Vincent van Gogh since I was a kid. In those early years, I couldn’t have told you what drew me to his work, but now three decades later I know; it’s the mix of splendor and sorrow. His paintings aren’t mere pictures of rivers, sunflowers, or night skies; they’re his attempt to capture the wonder and struggle of being alive. Everything Van Gogh saw was full of beauty and sadness—an increasingly familiar tension for him. They were present even in the way he talked about the ordinary scenes he wanted to paint, like this description of a bridge in Arles, France:
I have a view of the Rhône—the iron bridge at Trinquetaille, where the sky and the river are the colour of absinthe—the quays a lilac tone, the people leaning on the parapet almost black, the iron bridge an intense blue—with a bright orange note in the blue background and an intense Veronese green note. One more effort that’s far from finished—but I am trying to get at something utterly heartbroken and therefore utterly heartbreaking.
Much of the world’s great art comes from places of sadness, and I believe that’s often why we connect with it. It isn’t that the works themselves are of a sorrowful subject matter; it’s that the artists bring their personal experience to their work to say something meaningful about the world to the viewer.
Art Tells a Story
We want what we say to matter. We want it to connect. We want it to help people.
Much of the world’s great art comes from places of sadness.
So artists create, not just to show us a picture of a bridge but to show us something of this world where bridges are needed and used by people to get from one bank to the other without going under. Some cross alone, while others walk hand in hand as the sun dances on the water and casts those leaning on the rail as silhouettes.
But there we are, each living out our unfolding story filled with all kinds of joy and difficulty.
Sad Stories’ Appeal
Why are we so drawn to sad stories? Sorrow, grief, anger, futility, frustration, and distress are complicated yet universal realities, and to talk about them in any substantive manner is to do so by way of story. These emotions aren’t data points; they’re tales of heartache and woe, and they come for all of us. So we lean in when sad stories are told because they prepare us for what’s coming.
Sad stories teach us about pain and suffering when we’re not personally going through those trials. They allow us to feel the feelings of grief and loss without the personal anxiety that accompanies them when that sorrow is uniquely our own. It’s a sign of emotional maturity to be able to feel competing emotions—like hope and sorrow—at the same time, and sad stories give us practice. They help us develop empathy and compassion. They tell us that these sorrows we experience, which can leave us feeling so isolated, are, in fact, well-traveled roads.
Sad stories also teach us how to deal with the problem of evil in the world. G. K. Chesterton said of fairy tales,
[They] do not give the child the idea of the evil or the ugly; that is in the child already, because it is in the world already. Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of the bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of the bogey.
The same is true of sad stories. They remind us not just that this world can wound us but that wounds can heal. They remind us to hope.
Sad stories remind us to hope.
Sad stories also remind us to lament. Lament is sorrow joined to prayer; it’s directed pain about which we ask, “How long, O Lord?” We often tell our saddest stories as a form of protest, as a way of saying, “Look at what beauty came from this wreck of a life, what faith was born from this spiral of despair, what hope rose up in this darkest night, what rescue crested the hill just when it seemed all was lost.” So much beauty is born out of suffering. We make some sense of brokenness and pain by looking at the beauty they produce.
Art Connects Us
This is where much of the world’s art is born—from struggle and sorrow. An artist looks for a story to tell, a message to convey, a point of connection between him and some unknown viewer. What do we as people have in common?
Art doesn’t necessarily start a new conversation, but it picks up one already underway—the wonder and struggle of being alive in this world as we experience it. What makes these stories of wonder and struggle beautiful is how they remind us we’re not alone.