From the beginning to the end
In this Essay, I mainly write this paper based on my degree show work, to describe the original inspiration source of this work, some scenes rom the Bible, and some interpretation of the icon painting. First of all, I write about what are ICONS? Secondly, briefly describe the painting styles of the four painters' religious paintings El Greco and William Black，Piero della Francesca ，Fra Angelico, and the reason why I find those paintings unique. Thirdly, I described my own ideas and process of the painting for my degree show.
Icon painting is a unique religious art produced in the middle ages of Europe. It is the product of mutual infiltration and integration of religion and art. It is different from the traditional European painting that reproduces the objective world realistically and presents a decorative and symbolic feature. The aesthetic emotion of icon painting was attached to a strong religious emotion. Its function lies in the education and enlightenment of believers. Icon painting and Christianity are closely related, it is a special carrier to spread the doctrine. Religious icon paintings were images made for the purpose of education and indoctrination. For a long time in Medieval Europe, only a small number of people could read and write. For the understanding and inheritance of religious doctrines,Sometimes the transmission of doctrine can only be achieved in the form of painting， it as a tool to help people remember and educate. Because the stories told by Christian ICONS are often the same or very similar, and they need to be in the most concise way and maintain the religious and sacred nature of the paintings ，therefore there are some fixed pattern and methods in the ICONS.
In ancient Egypt, religion and even witchcraft fully integrated into their daily life, after the death of aristocracy, in order to get the eternal blessing of God, so they put all the products they owned record in detail in their own tomb murals, they believed that you can still have the property in the afterlife. ‘Symbols in a largely illiterate society serve the vital purpose of relaying the most important values of the culture to the people generation after generation, and so it was in ancient Egypt. The peasant farmer would not have been able to read the literature, poetry, or hymns which told the stories of his gods, kings, and history but could look at an obelisk or a relief on a temple wall and read them there through the symbols used.’ （https://www.ancient.eu/article/1011/ancient-egyptian-symbols/）Here I write about some contrast between the ancient Egyptian tomb paintings with the ICONS. The similar part is，ancient Egyptian tomb paintings and ICONS were intended for the illiterate, for the cultural continuity. The difference is that icon paintings mainly depict stories from the Bible, for the purpose of spreading doctrine and Gospel to people who did not know God, many were painted for God and people's soul, and Egyptian tomb paintings were painted for the purpose of recording all the possessions of the aristocracy, for the needs of the nobles. Because tomb murals were for detailed records, they do not seek for much sense of sacred, and the atmosphere of paintings. We can see that many tomb murals are painted with groups of orderly servants, cattle, sheep and horses, and many repeated contents. The tomb murals are very stylized, and they not change much in centuries , just for the real reproduction of the record.
Then，I begin to introduce some religious paintings and styles of four artists. The first of whom was the famous Italian icon painter Fra Angelico , Fra Angelico was a Renaissance Italian painter of the Florentine school of painting, formerly known as Guido Dipietro. Angelico is the name given to him by later generations, which means angel, just as there are many angels in his paintings. He made the contrast between light and dark in his paintings were not very strong, the movement of the figures was also modest，While other painters were keen to discover new ways adding something in their paintings, Angelico was doing simplifying, subtracting. Maybe that is one of the reasons why his paintings are very special. The colors are peaceful, restrained, quiet and pure, which can even make the audience calm down in front of his paintings. This happens to coincide with the eastern Chinese culture, "overflow, overflow led to deficit." In the eastern concept, the most beautiful state is "WeiYang", Yang means "full, whole, complete", WeiYang means "not enough, dissatisfaction, not complete". Sometimes there was a large piece of white space in Chinese paintings, is not to fill up the whole painting, do not finish everything. In the traditional Chinese concept, there is more powerful when it is touched on passing. Similarly, in Angelico's paintings, we see the power and effect of WeiYang. Chinese artist Chen Danqing said ："If you are lucky enough can be in Florence for only one day, I suggest you go nowhere but Convent of San Marco." "Go and see these frescoes of Angelico. It was like meeting paintings for the first time."
The next painter I want to talk about was Piero della Francesca, because I thought Piero della Francesca’style has a lot in common with Angelico's ,he was belonged to The Umbrian School, which was less rational than the Florentine School, which was more ornate, more lyrical. Decorative, poetic rendering to nature. In Florence, he came into contact with the works of many famous sculptors, painters and architects, and deeply studied the principle, modeling method, light combination and color collocation of masters such as masaccio, angelico and his teacher veneziano, which greatly influenced his later works. The first time I saw his painting, it impressed me the most was he made drama of the fact that he can dramatize the scene and maintain the quality of calm, composed, poetic at the same time. His paintings always remind me of the ancient Egyptian sculptures, utterly natural，straight and massive figure, very solid, his expression of color was also so pure. Francesca was an inquisitive painter who took perspective very seriously and regarded it as the basis of painting. He was famous for his religious paintings, in which geometric figures sit quietly in buildings and natural environments strictly in accordance with the rules of perspective, and bright colors create an atmosphere of light with a sense of solemn silence. Most of his works take landscape as the background of people.The clear and powerful outline makes his works with decorative meaning. Also Francesco had gift on mathematical , he stopped painting in his later years and turned to other work, including writing collections of essays on painting color and light, geometry and applied mathematics. He was convinced that the most beautiful things could be found only in the extremely clear and pure geometry，starting from a mathematical point of view, he combined his sensitivity to light with the reproduction of three-dimensional space modeling on the painting plane to form his own unique painting style. My personal opinion is that he found a balance between rationality and sensibility to construct his paintings，as a result, his paintings were attractive, sympathetic in the one hand ，and can stand up to scrutiny and analysis on the other hand.
The reason why I found the two painters' works are very attractive maybe because my undergraduate major is frescoes, although since Giotto frescoes' style has started the development of diversification, Angelico and Francesca have had the kind of style, make I feel even after five thousand six hundred years, also can make the audience as if across the boundaries of time saw their sincere feelings and the paintings have the temperament that can let a person be quiet and listen to, can make the audience into the memoria directly talk to the author, I think it would always be my own pursuit of creation.
The third painter was a very special religious painter，today, El Greco was best known as the great painter of medieval Spain. El Greco was a portrait painter who specialized in religious painting and created many altar paintings for churches in Toledo and elsewhere. But many critics said Greco's painting was unsuitable as an altar painting because it lacked: "encouragement of faith." After entering the 19th century, his unique and charming painting style was finally widely recognized in art history. His peculiar composition, the layout was more fantasy structure, bold colors, novel. what I found strange is he painted many figures in his paintings ，but barely have someone is looked straight ahead，as if he wanted to make audiences immersed in the scene, but not think of yourself as the audience. As for Greco's criticism, in addition to the dispute over the remuneration of the works, Greco was sometimes criticized by his treatment of specific themes in the works. This is because the Spanish church authorities stubbornly believed that the representation of painting must conform to orthodox theology. Because of his novel and advanced painting style, many people call him a time-traveling painter. Even when we see his works now, we cannot believe that they are from the 16th century, which are still very powerful and shocking. Look at his paintings ，there were exaggerated movements, characters' actions just like gymnastics athletes, even put dramatic conflicts in his paintings but not discordant ，empty, confused, painful expression was very vividly ，and his painting often have an apocalyptic quality in it. To me, his paintings have fatal attraction and as if telling the audience to look, there are great things happening！
《The Vision of Saint John 》The perspective of this painting is special，because he chooses a rather exaggerated perspective. El greco always places the best viewing angle at the bottom of the frame, as if looking up at the sky. The characters hover over the frame as if they are going to heaven, while the audience looks up at them from below. This view is different from that of most artists. It is as saying something from the bottom of the artist's heart : this is not where I really belong. And his colors are very strong and subjective, they are not the real colors of our lives. In the use of light, he seems to prefer the backlight effect, which gives the illusion that he was looking at the world from somewhere else，and his images seem to have multiple sources of light, a kind of divine light. He often painted everything distorted in his works，and I can saw a kind of madness in his works.
The last one was William Blake, William Blake had a small exhibition in 1809, and in the preface to the catalogue he wrote，should painting be a monotonous imitation of reality ？Dead and dying objects? He said painting should have its own creation like poetry, music, with more personal feelings and even immortal thoughts. He praises the kingdom of heaven ，even though his views on Genesis, God, Adam and Eve, do not coincide with those of the typical Christian; In his poems and paintings, innocence, freedom, care and faith are always the most important elements. He sings of the dawn and the evening star and the dawn, of love and fate and death. In the history of western art, numerous masters have painted numerous Icon paintings. But only William Blake used it as a means of expressing transcendence, from a completely unique perspective. And that is why I put him and El Greco together, and they are probably different from other ICONS painters. In addition to being inspired by Renaissance masters Michelangelo and Raphael, Blake was also influenced by several English romantic painters of his time. Including James Barry and Henry Fuseli. The immediate effect of this on Blake was that there were also large, almost exaggerated, extensions and bends in black's paintings, as if they were of great power, either joyous or peaceful, horrible or somber, which added to the visual impact，An infectious force, therefore, spring up on the page, transmitting energy and emotion to the viewer. From the movements of the characters in his paintings, many of them are floating in the air like angels. It can be seen that he indeed makes the painting jump and dance vividly like the rhythm of music, rather than just carrying them into the painting as in real life. Although his subject matter was all about the Bible, he expresses his understanding of these stories in his very dreamlike style, and looking at his paintings is like listening to a very beautiful hymn, with rhythm, with sentiment, with the atmosphere.
On these four artists, I can see a lot of for common faith, although their era and mine be far apart, as a Christian, I still want to try to use my own major painting to glorify God, so I choose this topic, and I believe most of the icon paintings there is only one aim that is for the Gospel, Angelico and Francesco , I can see their faiths were pure，the power of worship and adoration. And through William Blake and El Greco can show that the belief is diverse, it can be empowering and frightening, redeeming and punishing at the same time. I want to learn and combine their style in my painting. I hope the audience can see the sincerity and perseverance of a Christian as well as the hesitation, worry, and difficulty in the heart of a contemporary Christian.
About my MA final work，I made a long oil paintings, I hope through the canvas it can show my own Christian faith, for me, god created the universe is a very great，impayable thing, since the genesis of the bible, it says that In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And God let there be light, there is day and night , also have life and love. The first part of my painting , I want to show the creation of god, the sun the moon and stars, human being, all life are from god. So I paint the giant hands which making the sun and the moon .At first I put this pair of human ancestor Adam and Eve to draw out, but then I want to use more symbol, more ways to express, so I use a pile of dust to represent Adam, then use a rib to represent Eva, as mentioned in genesis.
The second part, I want to paint just as Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt, God has been with the pillar of cloud and pillar of fire led them, never leave. Because they don't have enough faith ，caused they wander around in the wilderness areas for forty years, then walked out of the wilderness of Egypt, into the land of Canaan which is the place where God has promised to give them. For me, may everyone in your life will feel something like this, even if we know what is your target, we still could get confused, feel the fear of the future, or for Christians, we know to live is to glorify God ，to live out the style of Christ, but when we face the daily life, we may still hesitate and be at a loss. We do not know how to choose and have no direction. Therefore, in the second part, I put many figures of people，but each of them is a single individual, with no dependence. The mountain in the picture is Mount Sinai, the mountain where God spoke to Moses and laid the decalogue, and it also symbolizes our destination, even though we know the mountain is there, we can see it but still can get lost and get tired.In this part, I have a reference to Greco's The opening of the fifth seal ，the characters in his painting some happy, some panic-stricken ，but all have very strong emotions, and the atmosphere of the whole picture is a mysterious ，strong feeling to represent the end of the world. In my painting I do not want to paint faces and expressions of people, because being lost, being lost is a very common theme, everyone may experience it, so it does not matter who they are, and I even blurred their gender to achieve this though.
In Paul Gauguin's 《WHERE DO WE COME FROM？WHAT ARE WE ？WHERE ARE WE GOING？》, we can see that he painted many different figures doing various things, and some of the images also symbolized his own dream and the themes of life, aging, illness and death. During the time he painted this painting, his beloved daughter died, he became seriously ill, and it was rumored that after the painting was finished he tried to kill himself, in such a desperate environment, the painting was born. He said it was the best painting he had ever painted, but he did not even like it. He said, "I believe that this canvas not only surpasses all my preceding ones, but that I shall never do anything better—or even like it." (Ltd, 2019)
The two upper corners are chrome yellow, with an inscription on the left and my name on the right, like a fresco whose corners are spoiled with age, and which is appliquéd upon a golden wall. Maybe because my undergraduate major was murals, I am very interested in the rough canvas with Paul Gauguin, dry brush strokes and the texture similar to murals. He wrote the name of the painting in the upper left corner, in the form of an inscription, which actually completes the whole picture to a certain extent. Paul Gauguin's paintings give people a kind of primitive vitality, natural strength and confidence. He said the painting of what we are going to go through from birth to death, even the afterlife, all of these issues are philosophical. So I think my painting will be a question of life or faith because every Christian knows the meaning of our life and strives to live in the style of Christ for the glory of God, but there are still a lot of puzzles and troubles to be solved and dealt with in our daily life. Is because Paul Gauguin's painting makes me want to paint long oil painting, because it not only shows the timeline, is also like a poem can more sensitive and complete tell the story, I want to express things, from the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth ，to the middle, because the crime and the superior person produce distance, cause we lost, but we never stop pursuing the close relationship with God, and at the end of the judgment and redemption God has given us, I thought it would be very difficult to put such a large amount of information into one painting, so I chose a long painting like a scroll painting to express it.
I deliberately remove and blur the identities of the characters in this painting , which I also used to do in my previous works. I painted some people without specific features, without eyeballs, without identities, insignificant or so-called invisible. It might be related to my own personality, because I am the kind of person who wants to be invisible in a group, not to attract attention, not to express opinions, therefore maybe everyone in my painting can represent myself, or anybody who existed in the society. I placed a people who holding a candle and walking in the rain，the inspiration comes from the film of Andrei Tarkovsky, Nostalgia, he told us a story of an old Soviet man in Italy wanted to go home but can not go back, so he asks another Soviet carried a candle in water, walks from one side to the other, the director repeated three times this action, again and again, this part is touched me. Therefore, I also placed a person with a candle in his hand and protect the candle in my painting, because Nostalgia expressed a person who wants to go home. For Christians, only heaven is our real home, and we are strangers on the earth. However, it is not easy to hold on faith, just like protecting the candle from being extinguished in the rain. But just like this character in Nostalgia, he finally succeeded. The candle is light and hope. This is what I look forward to myself, try to protect and hold on to my faith even in difficult times.
At the beginning and the end of the painting, I painted some symbolic things. Such as dust, rib, river of blood, stars falling on the ground, because I want to centralize the part of the character in the middle area, firstly in order to show the visual center, and secondly for the purpose of expressing some actions that human beings make to restore the relationship with God, trying to move towards the direction of God. All the characters in my painting are looking into the distance or staring at the ground, none of them are looking directly at the audience or looking at the front. In order to create a sense that I am not here, the place I want to be is not here, my mind is in the distance. Which may be similar to existentialism. Existentialism holds that the existence experienced by people is the cause of the formation of human essence, which is formed in specific historical circumstances. One of the essential purposes of existentialism is to pay attention to the importance of the individual. However, it should be noted that existentialism is not an individualist. Existentialism stresses explaining society from the perspective of individuals. Existentialism attaches importance to human experience and feelings, which are the evidence of our existence.
In conclusion, I would like to use a relatively natural and simple style to tell the relationship between human beings and God. This is my own story, my own path, but also everyone's. So I want to let the audience, whether or not you believe in God when saw my painting can be thought of their own experiences, can evoke a memory or empathy, because we exist in this world, everyone's pain and confusion may also happen to other people, and we will use the whole life to finding the meaning of living. We may feel lost in the wilderness, we may struggle through the rain, we may be completely disoriented and helpless, but there is always hope, light. And for me personally, God's salvation is all I can hope for. Just because my faith is an important part of my life, so I choose this ancient and eternal theme as the theme of my graduation creation，but I do not want any person feel very distant or very unfamiliar, because God is the God of everyone, our each person's life is not that different, so I did not choose to paint the very famous crucified Christ, how Jesus was born, but also focus on how I keep faith in my daily life, make my heart activity, Christians struggle, difficulty visualization, and hope it can help the audience to understand my idea.
References
Gayford, Martin. (2006) The Yellow House: Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Nine Turbulent Weeks in Arles, London: Penguin Books.
Thomson, Belinda (1987). Gauguin. London: Thames and Hudson.
Greco, E. (1989). El Greco. Edinburgh: National Gallery of Scotland in collaboration with the Edinburgh International Festival.
Piero and De Vecchi, P. (1970). The complete paintings of Piero della Francesca. New York: N.H. Abrams.
Evseeva, L. and Cook, K. (2007). A history of icon painting. Moscow: Grand-Holding Publishers.
Gauguin, P. (2009). The intimate journals of Paul Gauguin. London: Routledge.
Ltd, W. (2019). Where do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? | An Introduction to 19th Century Art. [online] 19thcenturyart-facos.com.
Jean-Paul Sartre, Macomber, C. and Elkaïm-Sartre, A. (2007). Existentialism is a humanism : including, A commentary on the stranger. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Pope-Hennessy, J. and Huxley, A. (2002). The Piero della Francesca trail. New York, NY: Little Bookroom.
Wismer, B. and Scholz-Hänsel, M. (2012). El Greco and Modernism. Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz Verlag.
The National Gallery, L. (2019). Piero della Francesca | The Baptism of Christ | NG665 | National Gallery, London. [online] Nationalgallery.org.uk. Available at: https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/piero-della-francesca-the-baptism-of-christ [Accessed 29 Jul. 2019].