고갱의 십자가에 달린 "황색의 그리스도" (1889)

Paul Gauguin, "Yellow Christ," 1889. 

서양과 동양, 문명과 야만, 세속과 영성, 성공에 대한 야망과 자신의 세계를 추구하는 예술가의 혼이 혼합되어 있는 고갱의 수작이다. 이 그림은 그 다음해에 그려진 그의 자화상과 함께 보아야 한다. 

Construced of flat planes, intense colors, and bold circumscribing outlines, the yellow Christ is in many ways the apogee of Gauguin's early "synthetist" style. The plane of the canvas the surface which must be respected is held by the foreground figure, the strong upright of the crucifix, and the terminating horizontal bar. Against the repeated bands of field and sky and cross, the swinging curves of the women and the trees (closed forms that contrast with the movement of the straight lines) play a graceful counterpoint, the whole drawn together by a bright and simple pattern. The colors are gay, but the starkness of the Breton landscape is conveyed; the women are gentle but their peasant force is still evident.

Even today this is a striking canvas. How much more so it must have appeared at the time it was painted, when the subtle delicacies of the Impressionists' divided brush stroke were still considered revolutionary! The uniform color surfaces, the lines that ring the figures are deliberately crude and simplified, at the opposite pole from imoressionism . Yet Gauguin has observed with care: the costumes are accurate, the light is the cold light of Brittany, the field contains harmonies of green, rust, and yellow. And we know besides that the figure on the cross is closely derived from a Crucifixion in the church of Tremalo not far from Pont-Aven. But the artist has gone beyond naturalistic observation to emotional expression. "The Impressionists," he wrote later in his Intimate Journals, "study color exclusively, but without freedom, always shackled by the need of probability. For them the ideal landscape, created from many entities does not exist. . . . They heed only the eye, and neglect the mysterious centers of thought, so falling into merely scientific reasoning." It is this ideal expression that is Gauguin's goal. Sophisticated painter, traveler, and man from the capital though he may be, and no peasant (indeed because he is all these) he wants his canvas to convey, because it contains, the "great rustic and superstitious simplicity" he found among the Breton people. And so be has simplified the construction of his picture, flattened its space, coarsened its outlines, and heightened its colors, to make it no longer merely an objective record set down by an external observer, but the direct, visual symbol of a naive and trusting religious faith. "A child's tears," Gauguin wrote from Brittany at this time, "are also something and yet they haven't much worldly wisdom." (https://www.gauguin.org/the-yellow-christ.jsp)

이듬해 고갱은 이 그림을 배경으로 자화상을 그린다. 그만큼 이 그림이 그에게는 중요했다. 사실 고갱은 예수회신학교를 다녔고, 여러 기독교 관련 그림도 그렸다. 서양 자화상 전통에서 르네상스 이후에는 주변에 소장품을 놓고 자기 정체성을 표현하는 제스처나 얼굴 표정을 넣게 된다. 화가라면 자신의 작품을 배경에 넣기도 했다. 고갱은 약간 혁신적으로 자신이 중요하게 여기는 두 작품 바로 앞에 자신을 놓고 그렸다. 

Gauguin considered the ceramic to be ‘one of my best things’, and intended it as a gift to Madeleine Bernard (Emile Bernard’s sister), with whom he was infatuated. The distorted self-portrait was in keeping with its medium of stoneware—according to Gauguin, taking on the appearance of being ‘scorched in the ovens of hell’, as if ‘glimpsed by Dante on his tour of the Inferno’.2

The other reference work Gauguin includes in his self-portrait is a cropped mirror image of his painting The yellow Christ 1889, painted not long before.The yellow Christ was one of Gauguin’s most important paintings of this period, interpreting a religious subject in a radical style combining traditional Christian imagery with a fantastic coloured palette. The motif of the Christ was derived from a polychrome wooden sculpture of a crucifixion from the eighteenth century, in the Chapel of Trémalo near Pont-Aven. Gauguin’s Christ, however, is painted in brilliant yellows, oranges and browns, blues and greens. The almost abstract forms, outlined in blue, add further to his radical interpretation of the subject and are a perfect summation of Gauguin’s mature Pont-Aven style.

The incorporation of these two important works in his self-portrait reveals much about the artist’s self-perception—Gauguin considers himself both martyr and savage. His letters in late 1889 make reference to his keen sense of martyrdom in his fight against artistic mediocrity, as he writes to Bernard advising that in comparison to his own predicament, Bernard was too young "to carry the cross." When arranging the gift of his ceramic self-portrait to Madeleine Bernard, he described the work as "the head of Gauguin, the savage."

For the self-portrait, Gauguin has set himself between these two objects which express the duality of his existence. His face seems burdened by the path he has chosen. Yet he portrays himself as a determined character, dressed simply, with a steely gaze; as a man who despite the loss of his family and his failure to sell his art continues to pursue his dream. (Jane Kinsman, Text © National Gallery of Australia, Canberra 2009. From Masterpieces from Paris: Van Gogh, Cézanne, Gauguin and beyond Post-Impressionism from the Musée d'Orsay exhibition book, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra 2009.)

1960년 화가 이연호 목사는 <크리스챤> 신문에 "지상 종교 미술전"을 연재하면서 이 "황색 그리스도"를 세 번째로 소개했다.  

이연호, "지상 종교 미술전: 3. 황색의 그리스도," <크리스챤>, 1960년 10월 26일.