The Relationship Between Kandinsky And St. Mary’s Church

Abstract

Kandinsky is one of the most famous expressionism artists in the art history, he used to stay at Murnau for a few years and influenced by many local folk arts and religious artworks at the moment. Throughout the plague of world war one, Kandinsky used different ways to keep his artworks during that period including gifting them to other artists in Der Blaue Reiter. As art and religion have a chequered history; inextricably linked but often seen to be representing opposing thought-worlds. This essay is focusing on the period of 1898-1911 how Kandinsky being influenced by religious and finding links between The Village Church 1908, also Wong Tai Sin Temple and St. Mary’s church which are located in Hong Kong, starting from religion perspective and develop linking to different areas.

Religious background of Kandinsky

Kandinsky is a loyal Catholic, he was influenced by Russian Orthodox Church since his childhood. The holy portraits of Jesus, Hail Mary, angels and saints are mostly painted flat in Orthodox Church. As Orthodox Church is a religion that interpret the world with exceed rationality, therefore its holy portraits possess mystique and decorative. Being influenced by these mysticism holy portraits, Kandinsky’s early paintings are full filled with mysticism’s colors and natural composition including regular shapes and curve lines. Let’s take Panel as an example, it background used many geometric shapes such as circle, rectangle, etc. Also, the composition of it is very geometrical, the holy portrait of god is in the centre of the picture, holding a cross staff by his left hand which cut the whole image from middle-right to the middle-bottom. Last but not least, the holy portraits of Jesus, hail Mary and angels are on the top of god inside a circle, probably the circles represented as angle halos. Which the above elements have appeared on Kandinsky’s artworks during the period of 1898-191.

Besides, Kandinsky used to study theosophy intensively which is a religion focusing on spiritual and unphysical. These maybe one of the reasons why Kandinsky changed his style from concrete to abstract, using point, line and surface to create compositions instead of imitating what he sees.

History background of Kandinsky’s The Village Church 1908

In the summer of 1908, Kandinsky and Gabriele Münter, Alexej von Jawlensky and Marianne von Werefkin, these two artist couples stayed at Murnau to paint. In the following weeks, these four artists were greeting their most important transition in their career path. A new form of expressionism, “Der Blaue Reiter” was born.

In Murnau, these four artists using bright colors to create a huge amount of paintings, which subject matter is local scenery. In these artworks, the compositions and shapes are simplified, which are nearly become abstract art. Kandinsky and Münter also bought a yellow house at Murnau to settle down for a few years, they also become neighbor with Paul Klee. As the rural scenery for Kandinsky seems to be too dull, therefore he changed his way to depict objective world to express subjective topic. These topics are come from his heart deep inside, which helps him to develop his imagination.

In the next few years, Kandinsky keeps creating artworks at Murnau, and started to use techniques from local residents, which is glass painting. Through bright and shining colors with simple black outline, the whole picture was filled with “primitive” temperament. This type of glass paintings was affecting Kandinsky then. At the same time, Kandinsky and Münter started to collect these folk arts, they use them to decorate their residence at Murnau, while applying these folk arts techniques on artworks became their focus on the next few years. Linking between “The Village Church” and Orthodox Church 1908.

The Village Church, was created at the time Kandinsky staying at Murnau and getting influenced by folk arts. As I mentioned before, the folk art in Murnau is glass paintings. Combining the ideas of glass paintings of folk arts and holly portraits of Orthodox Church together. You can see that the colors are pure and unmodified, probably squeezing out of tubes and apply it directly to the canvas. The way he separates the whole picture is, using many thick curve lines with black colors. Since then, the symbolic and spiritual elements in religious painting becomes part of Kandinsky’s abstract art theories and also for the Der Blaue Reiter.

History background of St. Mary’s Church

St. Mary's Church, it is an Anglican style church, located at Causeway Bay, Hong Kong. It was born in 1911 during the time of the late Bishop Lander. The Church began as a Chapel mainly to offer a place for worship for the prisoners of the Shelter. It is a traditional Anglican church arranged in the shape of a Christian cross. When viewed from plan view the longest part of a cross is exemplified by the corridor and the joint of the cross is located at the platform area for worship. The characteristic of Anglicanism, it is a hybrid between the Catholic and Protestant faiths. In shorts, it considered both spiritual and psychological elements.

History background of Wong Tai Sin Temple

The Wong Tai Sin temple contains many traditional Chinese architecture elements including red leaders, gold roof with blue decorations, yellow latticework and multi-colored statues. It is an interesting temple since it contains Confucian, Taoist, and Buddhist elements at the same time. There is a Nine-Dragon Wall modelled after one in Beijing. Part of the halls include the Great Hall and the Three-Saint Hall. The Three-Saint Hall is dedicated to Lü Dongbin, Guan Yin, and Lord Guan.

Comparing in religion perspective of Wong Tai Sing (Taoism) and Christianity

As Christianity had its faiths, systems of belief, doctrinal arguments, churches, and organizations. Christians believes that their own religion is better than the others. However, that statement was incorrect. Since, Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, Taoism and the like are completely different from Christianity. They establish a much looser principle, less organization, and a different view of deliverance than do religions based on the Judeo-Christian Bible.

As most artworks created for Anglican style church are relatively realistic, they still contain the elements of mystique and decorative. These ideas, that religion art’s has intrinsic, and independent value, that it is in some sense ‘inviolable’ or ‘sacred’.

On the other hand, let’s take the influence of traditional religions on arts in Hong Kong as an example. In China, the appearance of traditional patriarchal tradition can be traced back to the earliest Shang Dynasty. Since the Han Dynasty, Confucianism revered by the ruling class as the dominant thinking had become the consistent orthodox ideology in ancient China. Taoism was developed from the wizard-natured religions in the East Han Dynasty when Buddhism was introduced into China and later spread very rapidly. The consistence and compromise of the three biggest religions - Buddhism, Christianity and Islam - in terms of doctrines and concepts, influenced deeply the social life and cultural themes in China. In art field, the influence of Buddhism and Taoism are especially obvious. Religious worship not only aroused fanaticism and passion among followers, but also arouses the magnificent imagination of artists, who created various arts relevant to religion. Scholars on Chinese history of arts value the profound influence of Buddhism and Taoism on arts development Ge Zhaoguang illustrates in his well-known masterpiece Taoism and Chinese Culture how the spirit, concept and rites a Taoism had influenced and incited the aesthetic consciousness.