ESSAY

Gauguin

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Yellow Christ

Gauguin paints from his imagination as much as his observation of the real world to express ideas of Buddhism and Christianity within Yellow Christ. According to the Gospel of JOHN: “The kingdom of God is already here” - an immediate and continuing spiritual reality. And in comparison LUKE: “The kingdom of God is within you.” These verses suggest that his kingdom exists currently and that the path is a mystical experience. Through the use of mystical symbols and colors, Gauguin maybe suggests the idea that faith could be found in the physical world just as much as in the metaphysical world.

Through the use of mystical symbols, Gauguin can suggest the attitude of the country people and their faith in this painting. Throughout the painting, Gauguin suggests that the country people know their faith is not something they must wait for to come to fruition. Like the JOHN and LUKE verses, the country people live their lives as if they are already in the kingdom of God. This is suggested through the repetition of numbers within the painting. Three women sit together in contemplation of their faith with Christ in the foreground and in the background we see three more figures together that appear to be a man and two women. Adding all of these subjects it comes to a total of seven. Seven in mysticism represents totality. Breaking it down again, the group of four represents the cardinal direction and space, and the group of three represents the holy trinity, the father, song, and holy spirit, and the circle of life, mother, father, and child. For these people, faith comes to them without an issue, seeing as how they are in a meadow and Christ is on a cross like it's a normal afternoon event. The kingdom of God within you means that God is always with you and you make the decision to seek it out or not. These people seek it out every day to experience the ultimate truth of love and compassion as a way of life.  

Using color, Gauguin makes a statement on natural and direct faith. A majority of this piece includes warm colors such as yellow, orange, and red. Warm colors, like yellow, suggest the idea of enlightenment. Making Christ's skin tone more yellow is to suggest to the viewer the inseparability of humanity and spirituality. The three women placed below him have a more realistic-looking skin color to identify them as regular people. Having Christ in yellow suggests he is spreading the mystical experience of enlightenment with others and that enlightenment comes from the metaphysical mind, transcending the physical body. The red colors of the trees connect to nature and spirituality. Red is a non-dual symbol of creation, the flesh and blood of a person, and destruction, fire, which means the visible life and the eternal invisible. So, red is suggesting that we cannot have the metaphysical world without the physical world, and vice versa. 

Self-Portrait with Halo

In Gauguins Self-Portait with Halo, he depicts himself as a saint. The halo is a Christian symbol given to a person acknowledged as a holy and spiritual person. Even though he depicts himself as a saint, the painting uses color and symbols to share his spiritual exploration of temptation, free will, and the wholeness of being. 

The majority of the painting is filled with red color that is strategically placed. Red is a mystical non-dual symbol that suggests the paradox of creation and destruction. We see this color fill the ambiguous background, his hand, and also one of the apples. Apples are a Christian symbol of free will and desires. They come from the tree of knowledge of good and evil from which Eve eats the apples. Adam and eve ate the apples out of free will as it was their choice. Because of this choice, they became the parents of the children that are us. Based on which desire is stronger we will more inclined to choose. There are two apples. One red and one green. These colors are opposite that suggest our different totalities and our different desires. The green (this life in which we are a part of nature) apple shows how we want to live forever but eventually, we must die and eat the apple. Red signifies all of our desires that come from the source of our spiritual morals and choices/desires.  The single branch represents the pure truth (of our physical and metaphysical desires). The apples represent the balance in general. People will do whatever they want in making their choices between selfishness and selflessness. 

Green is another color that is used to emphasize the exploration of our desires and contemplation of free will. The green apple represents our materialistic desires. This life as green suggests nature. Physical desires are not inherently good or bad. For example, water is needed for human survival, but drinking too much can kill you. Within the green apple is the color brown. There is one brown element which is a leaf on the green apple that represents the mixture of each color - the enlightened mind which is aware of our spiritual and physical desires, a balance that can be hard to find. The black around the apples and leaves and branches represents ignorance. Out of ignorance, we make wrong and harmful choices. 

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Kupka 

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Soul of the Lotus

In Soul of the lotus, Kupka suggests the idea of human spirituality and sexuality. This painting is filled with more Buddhist theology than Christian theology as shown by the symbols of light, lotus, lily pads on a pond, and the figures in Indian dress. Furthermore, it suggests the idea of pre-Christian civilization as the figures appear to be oriental Gods. Through Kupka's usage of Buddist symbols, he shows the separation of sexuality, spirituality, and the connection between the two which is paradise or “pure lands”.

The first panel in the painting is a figure coming out of the lotus which suggests human spirituality. A Lotus in Buddhism stands for purity. Not a sexuality purity, but the purity of the ultimate truth. This understanding combined with the implied statement that the figure in the lotus is enlightened, the figure's body is white, and shines rays of light around them, suggests Kupka's idea of human spirituality. This left panel is the spiritual realm. There are three panels in total, which also suggest the mystic number of three, either the holy trinity, human life circle, or even the passage of time, past present, and future. The idea of the passage of time in this piece stands out more as the mystical experience is a paradox, and while humans can differentiate past, present, and future, they all happen simultaneously. Similarly, the three panels do not exist separately since the spirit cannot live without a physical body, implying human sexuality.

Human sexuality is represented in the far right panel. The figure in the brightly colored Indian dress is Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess, which suggests the sexual connotations of the lotus. A lotus has these sexual connotations because it is a generator of life. From the dirty pond water, a lotus sprout grows to the top with beautiful white petals and spreads its light outwards. It suggests that as humans we come from the dark water of our mother's wombs and then experience the light.

In the middle panel, we have a budding lotus and a bright scenic sky. Kupka separates the earthly panel and the sexual panel as they exist separately, but this also unites them together. He suggests to reach paradise, or “pure lands”, a person should be in touch with their human spirituality and sexuality. An overall suggestion of creation sprouted from this painting. By using Buddist symbols of lotus, light, and sexual human figures, he paints the suggestion of creation just as much as the connection between human sexuality and spirituality.

The Beginning of Life

In Christain terms, the beginning of life started with God saying “let there be light”. This primordial light gave humans impersonal creative energy or pure consciousness. Light can be a physical light like the rays of the sun that allow us to see, but it is also a mystical term. Jesus is the light of the world as he shares his ultimate truth, love, and compassion for all humans, and he is sharing his knowledge. So, light is also associated with knowing. When humans are created we start in the dark water of our mother's womb and are pushed into the light of the world. Not only physically do we come to the light, but spiritually. For every physical birth, there is a spiritual birth. From then on, every being has the potential to come to light again. From a Christian perspective, life is a linear progression from start (life) to end (death). But, for Buddhists, life is a circle. Creation and destruction run the circle of life as creation and destruction continuously happen and cannot be stopped. Kupka suggests the idea of the circle of life in his painting by using colors and shapes that suggest this never-ending cycle of physical and spiritual life. 

One piece of the painting that emphasizes this suggestion is the embryo connected to a lotus. At first glance, you instantly notice the three circular forms next to each other, even intertwined. The embryo and the lotus flower are enclosed in a circle, and they even overlap like a Venn diagram. This can suggest the mystical experience of physical life and the spiritual mind being fully inseparable. For example, when a baby is born there is a physical body but also the spiritual mind is born with it. One cannot exist without the other. Additionally, the circle also immediately suggests the circle of life. As mentioned before, Christians think of time as linear, but Buddist sees it as a circular principle. This circle is also a mystical symbol of the cycle of creation and destruction. Yet, there is no circle around the bottom white lotus. That is because it suggests the idea of an enteral and infinite source of all life. A person will be born and die, but the whole of humanity will continue, here or in another universe, and the cycle will continue. This suggestion is also emphasized with the usage of color and how the fetus is on a dark background, which suggests the womb and the dark water within, and how the fetus is led to light - from which it originated at the creation of all life. 

Another part of this painting is the floating lotus buds throughout the painting. The light can be perceived to either be moving backward or forward in the composition. Additionally, the use of mystical light plays a part in understanding the budding lotus. They are very small in the dark background of this composition, and as they come more into the foreground they appear to be brighter. This could suggest that when reaching the ultimate truth, not only are you reaching enlightenment but the world gets brighter around you - which could mean happier, safer, or any positive life-bringing qualities. Furthermore, each budding lotus suggests the multitude of realities and universes that may exist. Vertically, a lotus grows toward the light and visually suggests the white light becomes an embryo. Without the lotus, metaphysical plane, we would not have the baby, physical plane. Horizontally, the pond recedes into the background of the painting along with the budding lotus. If the pond is filled with water that births life then the buds are a suggestion of different universes, infinite lotus in the same water from which life starts. It is a mystical repetition that suggests the eternal and infinite. Everything comes from nonexistence, into existence, back into non-existence.  

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Piano Keys: The Lake

In this painting, Kupka suggests the theosophy of involution and evolution and its relation to the body’s consciousness and spirit. In theosophy, involution and evolution are part of a complex sequence of cosmic cycles, called Round. He uses a wide range of colors in different shades and hues, and suggestions of movement, to emphasize what his interpretation of involution and evolution means.

The first part of this painting deals with the involution of spirit into matter, like shrinkage and transformation. Since the spirit can only be born through physical birth, the bottom of the painting depicts just that. It is suggested that a person is playing the piano around a pond where a person is paddling a boat towards more life and trees. Again, at the bottom of the painting, the border is black and white. This could suggest the non-duality of physical and metaphysical existence. The piano is played by three fingers that melt into the bottom of the painting as if it is connected to the bottom. This suggests the physical form is the star of life and the metaphysical comes after and moves around freely just like music from a piano. Instead of five fingers, there are three which suggest the circle of life, mother, father, child, and time, past, present, and future. This is important to set up the foundation of involution as it's a process that we take in. Once we are birthed we must go looking for the ultimate truth inside us, it is not taught or a rule that must be followed. 

The second part of this painting deals with the evolution of spirit beyond matter, like progression, shrinking back into the Source. Spirit "involves" itself in the matter, and matter “evolves” back (returns) to its point of departure in the Divine. This understanding is suggested by how the movement of the piano, which is represented in calm, perfectly vertical lines, takes the whole length of the bottom, then shrinks right in the middle of the painting, then returns to spreading as wide as it can across the canvas. But after the midpoint, the piano turns into life, color, and more dramatic movement. This suggests that after we are born, we take the time to understand our metaphysical mind and find the ultimate truth, and then in return, we get more out of life.