Georges Rouault
Georges Rouault (1871-1958), an expressionist painter and sculptor in France, was a pious Catholic believer. His works were filled with a strong sense of religious mythology, and most of his figure paintings used intense colors and distorted lines in depiction, pursuing realism.
Dostoyevsky
Dostoyevsky, who was also averse to mediocrity was also well known due to the strong religious and philosophical complex contained in his works. The figures depicted by him would be plump and rich to the maximum degree, pursuing a sense of beauty that was unbalanced, contradictory and intense.
"Someone was lying in bed, sleeping motionlessly; not a sound, not even breaths, could be heard. The sleeping person was covered in a white bedcover. Even his head was covered, but his limbs could still be discerned ambiguously; However, from the bulging shape, it can be told that this person must be lying straight. Everything around him was in a mess. The clothes thrown off covered the bed, the person’s toes and the armchair on the bedside and even the floor. There were white silky clothes and dresses, flowers and silk ribbons. On a small bedside table, the diamond taken off and thrown away randomly was glimmering. There were some lace quilts rolled into a ball at the feet. On the white decorative edges, a naked toe was exposed from under the bedcover; the toe looked as if it were carved out with marbles, lying still terribly. The duke felt that the more he looked, the more lifeless the room seemed. It was terribly still. A fly that was awake suddenly hummed and flew over the bed. It stopped at the bedside, and stopped humming."
From the words, we can naturally feel the rough linearity and strong degree of contrast, just like the creative techniques displayed by Rouault’s paintings. This is the kind of similarity that the subject wanted to find. It was no longer about similar traits of emotions and thinking, but the way of handling materials in the work. About “the same feelings”, Rouault used to say something interesting, “A tree against the sky possesses the same interest, the same character, the same expression as the figure of a human.” Similar ideas in traditional Chinese culture include “Nature is unkind:It treats the creation like sacrificial straw-dogs.” The supreme position in Rouault’s mind is taken by God and the Way of Heaven. The whores he drew had a pathetic touch, and even contained aversion and rejection. While Dostoyevsky, who had died once was full of emotions towards the characters he wrote about all the time, at once detached and attached.
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