After as long as two years of waiting and heaps of times of form filling, I was sent by Henan University as a visitor in Russian St. Petersburg State University in the year of 2010. I was in my 30, and I had clear study goals, which are: one, compare cultures of each nation; two, try to understand some representative works of European traditional oil paintings and the creation procedure so as to improve and enrich my oil painting language.
 
On April 1st, less than a week before the happening of bombing in subway of Mexico, I was upset on the HNA flight flying from Beijing to St. Petersburg. During the nine hours flight, I was curious and full of expectation. As long as I got off the plain, everything was fresh to me, for example, there was few people in the street, people were tall and thin, women walked with cigars in the hands; men walked while drinking bears. It was getting dark when I settled down at a hotel, I still can remember there were un-melted snow drifts everywhere down the stairs. As long as I entered into the house, I had a visitor, an overseas student from South Korea, who talked to me in English and Chinese. He has a Chinese name; the family name of his Chinese name is Cao. He kept saying that China is his second hometown. My English is poor, so we communicated with language and body language as well. I was exhausted by the jet lag and long distance flight. It was nearly 2 am in Russia time after he has left, that was how I started my overseas study life.
Due to reasons of the agent, I have not started my study in school after one month I arrived at St. Petersburg. The good news is I have got my student card, so I can go to every museum for free at any time, for instance, Ermitazh Art Gallery, National Gallery of Russia, both are my dreaming holly land, and Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt, Repin, Surikov, Schegloff and Dieter Ramusch……masterpieces of those great masters made me feel excited? Psychedelic? Or calm? Not really. I just wanted to finish watching all of them in a day, so I started to run in the museum and lost my direction, I can see nothing but my running legs and my surprised brain! By this way, I started my journey of museum! Day and night, the only place I go was——art gallery, I tried to memorize all masterpieces in Winter Palace and Russian National Art Gallery, after I came back to my country, I would collect all tickets of these gallery as they were my best memory in Russia. Finally it was time for me to study at school, the school has arranged detailed school timetable for me at my request. The smart Dean of Department blinked her big blue eyes, in their eyes; Chinese overseas students are “big profit” as they will charge us forty USD for each lesson. I and the agent were angry when heard this, these Russian really treated us as a cash cow!
The school I studied in, Russian St. Petersburg State University ranks second in Russia, the Alma Mater of Putin and Medvedev. Teaching in the school is very strict, as there are all small classes for language class with about ten overseas students. Chinese overseas students take up the largest proportion, South Korea students run after, then Nordic students. Teachers of the school are very responsible, even to student like me who is not good at language learning. Teachers will ask us questions in the class one by one and correct our accent. With this kind of work attitude, it is said that one year learning in here equals three years learning in domestic university. It is a pity I lack confidence and perseverance because I am indulge in painting. But I was really touched by the serious work attitude of Russian teachers. After consulting some experience of language learning of other overseas students, I weighed up the pros and cons, and gave up the learning of language and put my heart and soul on learning of European traditional oil paintings and feeling Russian customs. My teacher of profession course is called Andre, who showed his welcome to new Chinese overseas students in the first time of meeting by putting on a coat with Chinese characters on it. He is very responsible in classes. He taught us with every detail about oil painting. I asked to copy a European classic oil painting in order to understand traditional European oil painting skills. Based on the requirements of my major, Andre allowed me to copy a Russian classic oil painting. So I learned a lot by copying while seeing some masterpieces in the Winter Palace. Every festival, I was arranged to visit places of historic interest and scenic beauty around St.Petersburg, such as Church of Our Savior on Spilled Blood, Vyborg, Nizhni Novgorod, Kazan Cathedral and St. Isaac's Cathedral……before I can realize, till July, I have traveled around the whole St. Petersburg. After having been to Moscow twice, I wanted to go Western Europe. So with the help of local travel agencies, I started my art journey in Italy on August 1st, along the journey, I have been to Finland, Sweden, Denmark, German, Switzerland, Austria, Chech, Italy, Milan, Florence, Rome and Venice. What impressed me most is the journey in Florence, which is called as “Firenze” by Italians. It is a mountain city built by the river and surrounded by stone classic buildings, which are simple and magnificent. After a heavy rain, the magnificent Florence is reflected on the stone road, together with the scenes of bars, music, dancing tourists, well-designed shop windows, artists paintings in the street and the fiddler singing his sad love story in the square…….all of these moved me to tears!
The Uffizi Palace in Firenze, with almost all the representative works by great artists during the Renaissance such as Botticelli, Vinci, Titian and Dürer and so forth, prepared a gluttonous feast of classical art for art lovers all over the world. When the great works which are familiar to everybody were unveiled, a sense of satisfaction and hearty praise for the beautiful art created by Italians came out of my mind. However, Vatican City in Roman chocked me up with more emotions. Here, Michelangelo created a miracle in art history in the Sistine Chapel. After being renovated, the wall painting on it took on sparking and bright colors, which made people feel that the giant angels above their heads could walk out of the picture, and at that moment, I believed that god really existed. The journey to Vatican City came to the end in Saint Peter's Basilica whose magnificent buildings and elegant decorations reminded people of the god instantly. The Russian visitors in this journey were all fully conquered by them, their arrogance disappeared and pious praise never ended. As a Chinese, I was also deeply impressed. But then, I thought of the magnificent Great Wall and the grand Imperial Palace, unique and perfect, being created by our great ancestors and reflecting our aesthetic spirits different from European civilization. Therefore, it was totally unnecessary for me to worship it like the Russian as their culture and art were a kind of copy and extension of it, sharing the same origin. By contrast, Russia was far inferior to Italy in its architecture and painting. And this journey reminded me that during art creation, I must create great and works worthy of the pluralistic times based on Chinese unique aesthetic spirits with a compatible and inclusive attitude.
The journey to Italy changed my attitude toward Russian art. I became calm and reasonable, and with a comparison parameter, I reevaluated Russian architecture and painting after being back to St. Petersburg, starting to find that the walkers in Russian street were not so attractive to me like before, which made me look forward to visiting Europe again. And luckily enough, after some struggling time of waiting for visa extension, I started my artistic journey focusing on France in October and passed by Netherlands, German, and countries in North Europe and so forth along the journey.
The first highlight in this journey was Amsterdam. Its advertisements in which actors and actress expose their secret parts of their bodies in the streets reminded people that it was a pornographic city with unlimited freedom. Their urinal in the art gallery was made like a woman’s cleavage and was painted with a fly, which reflected a perfect combination of pornography, art and practicality. The most attractive in the National Gallery was Rembrandt’s The Night Watch which was powerful, serious, natural and unstrained. Vermeer painted his works in small size, but very beautiful, natural and elegant. The most amazing part about Amsterdam was the great Van Gogh. I have misunderstood that Van Gogh moved the spectators only with his passion as he started to learn painting in his middle age and his skill must be poor. But when facing the open country and boundless flower fields he painted, I was suddenly enlightened and realized that I was so wrong and Van Gogh’s objective painting talents was so excellent and fruitful in European painting history. He had a mature and serious painting skill and dealt properly with the space. It was totally dark outside after the Van Gogh Art Gallery was closed, and with respect to the wise men, I took a train to the art center of Europe—Paris without experiencing more in Amsterdam, the pornographic city.
The mention of France always reminded me my earnest praise for Delacroix. And the appreciation of his works was my biggest benefit I reaped in this journey to Europe. All his strokes were full of passion, and the overall pictures were very perfect. I sincerely praised in front of his painting: what a great Delacroix. And by contrast, Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa paled and Ingres became a heartless iconographic painter. Great Delacroix changed my view on European art and it was he who created a golden time of European art centered on France. I visited Le Louvre museum twice during the limited time, and the works created by Delacroix and Hals gave me an unforgettable and deep impression.
Notre Dame de Paris, Orsay Museum, Eiffel Tower and Centre Georges Pompidou are places which can not be missed in the journey to Paris. In Centre Georges Pompidou, I was deeply impressed by two gays kissing earnestly in the elevator. Giacometti’s sculpture created a kind of new delusion, and Balthus’ oil painting was not as good as I thought, and you could even name it as coarse. A contemporary artist created lots of equipment works based on the idea “repetition” with piles of sickles and water taps …… which took on a cold passion. But to be frankly, the impression they left on me was even less than the gays’ earnest kiss in the elevator.
When I came back to Russia after the journey to France, it was already November. The whether turned worse, and it was later and later to get bright and earlier and earlier to get dark. Snowing continuously day by day, it seemed that it would keep going on all the time. Therefore, I decided to go back to China after coming back to St. Petersburg for less than a week. It made me feel so excited and I had no emotional attachment to Russia at all except for several young brothers who shared the same room with me and moved me a lot. Every night, we would stew a pot of pigs’ trotters, and all the overseas students’ homesickness would be highlighted to the greatest extension while drinking Russian beers named “Three Bears”. We sang loudly “one night in Beijing, and how much affection you kept” again and again with hugs and tears bursting out.
With a ticket in my hand, when I had my passport stamped and stepped over the custom seal, I looked back and stared at the dark St. Petersburg in the evening, a sense of sadness came to my mind: Goodbye! St. Petersburg! Thank you for opening the door of Europe for me and take care of yourself! And then I took my bag and strode on the overseas airplane…After 9 hours flight, I finally arrived at Beijing. As Beijing city could be seen more and more clear, all the people in the plane burst into excitement. When the plane landed in Beijing International Airport steadily, all the passengers applauded warmly. Pushing my baggage out of the airport, I was so excited that the airport pickups in the passageway blurred and I shouted loudly “Beijing, I’m back.”
Back to Beijing, I went to the Imperial Palace at once. The grand Meridian Gate, the golden roof and red walls, the magnificent palaces and elegant buildings, all of these took on a Chinese air. standing on the Fragrant Hills and getting a bird’s--eye view on the Imperial Palace, I felt that it was so grand, majestic and boundless that I was sincerely impressed by the unique and great building created by our ancestors in the world. After a short stay in my school, I went back to my hometown Tuoyao village. I painted in the fields and open country. It was weird that what I missed most was right this barren countryside. Aunts in the countryside said, “Western living environment is not so favorable, look, you are getting tanned.”(Actually I got tanned because of painting outdoor) Yes! The countryside in which I was born and raised is the best place in the world. Barren and blocked as it is, it is the driving force for my endless art creation, and it is always my roots!
 
                                                                                                                                                                       
                                                   By Haifeng on the 6th floor in 2011

作者：杨海峰