Dr. Edwards’ education has spanned East and West, studies in spirituality, world religions, literature, and the arts. His Ph.D. in the history and literature of religions was earned at Northwestern University. He studied at the University of Strasbourg in France, the University of Neuchatel in Switzerland, and the Daitokuji Zen monastery in Kyoto Japan. He has been a Visiting Fellow of Oxford University, and has lectured at museums and centers of the arts in the United States and abroad. He is currently professor of religion and the arts at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia.
Mystery of the Night Café not only seeks to solve the mystery of Van Gogh’s deepest sense of life, a sense that has attracted many around the globe, but it opens a new way of dealing with works of art. I treat art as potentially a spiritual autobiography that appeals to the deepest longings of human beings for comfort, healing, and a creative way of living.Art has been with us from the first evidences of human life on planet earth, and has offered a pathway to a richer and more meaningful existence. Might a key work by one of earth’s most recognized masters of painting provide a key to that pathway? My effort has been to demonstrate, detail by detail, that “The Night Café” seeks to do just that.There is no “magic” to the fact that I have located these clues and followed them to the painting’s solution. It is that my forty years of studying the work of Van Gogh have drawn on my Ph.D. in the world’s religions, my experiences in Asia, my biblical studies, and my own work in the arts. All have come together at the right moment in front of the right painting.
Cliff Edwards Mystery of the Night Café: Hidden Key to the Spirituality of Vincent Van Gogh SUNY Press116 pages, 9 x 7 inches ISBN 978 1438426112ISBN 978 1438426129
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