File 2125 - Reading notes on Vincent van Gogh: Miscellaneous

4.0 cm of textual records

Nouwen most likely had these four volumes of reading notes bound at one of three possible times: either during his retreat from February to September in 1979 at the Abbey of the Genesee or during his July - September 1981 or his March - June 1982 retreat to the Abbey following his resignation from Yale.

File consists of a bound volume of handwritten reading notes, typescripts and photocopies by Nouwen on Vincent van Gogh. This is volume IV of IV. Nouwen has designated this volume as "Miscellaneous". The first section of the bound volume contains:
-a 13 page film script on blue paper about Vincent van Gogh and Nouwen. This film may have been titled "Vincent the Comforter". Annotated by Nouwen.

• a 14 page typescript titled "Vincent the Comforter" which have notes for a slide show.
  -a 3 page list for a Vincent van Gogh Presentation listing the order of projector slides for above presentation [including time delays, blanks, and technical notes)
• a 12 page typed lecture or script by Nouwen
• a 28 page typed article or script by Nouwen with annotations. This may be a script for the film on van Gogh by Nouwen. It contains a number of quotations by van Gogh and are organised under numerical headings (i.e. 9.1, B19/III 518, 14.3 etc.).
  -an 8 page handwritten script for a short play about van Gogh titled "In the Museum."
  There are a number of annotated photocopies of van Gogh's translated letters as well as critical articles by van Gogh scholars. One section of reading notes and lecture notes has been titled "Lecture Notes: Abbey of the Genesee Spring 1979", showing that Nouwen gave a lecture series on Van Gogh when he was in retreat in 1979. This section includes typed lecture notes from Nouwen's Yale course on Van Gogh from the fall semester of 1979.
  A second section is titled "Book Excerpts" which contains handwritten reading notes including excerpts from W.M. Visser t'Hooft's "Rembrandt and the Gospel", H.R. Graetz's "The Symbolic Language of Vincent Van Gogh", and Ann Murray's "The Religious Background of Vincent Van Gogh". At the end of the bound volume there is a section of photocopies of index cards listing quotations by van Gogh as well as the subject of the quotation, the reference, the date and the location.

See Photographs - Van Gogh Slides, file 185 (boxes 400 - 402), for possible slides that were used in the van Gogh presentation.
See Teaching materials for the actual card index from which the copies in this file were made, box 268, file 2106.

Title based on contents of the file.
A number of loose pages and paper clippings have been removed from the bound volume and placed in the file folder.
There is a library spine label on this bound volume: ND 1230 .G6N68, and bound volume contains a "Genesee Abbey Library" stamp on the title page.

Nouwen did a considerable amount of personal research into the life and religious development of the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh, it seems particularly during his holidays, sabbaticals and spiritual retreats at the Abbey of the Genesee , The Institute for Ecumenical and Cultural Research in Collegeville, Minnesota, and other monastic centres throughout the 1970s.

Revised by L Joson, 13 November 2018