Some late thoughts on the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church Painting The popular perceptions According to the teachings of the Church Tewfit, tradition embraces not only religion, church rites, culture and history; but also the rites of worship that have been handed down from ancient times without any distortions or changes. As the country was blessed from the outset and accepted the three religions of mankind, like no other country, there was no room for the Ethiopian Church to show any sign of suspicion or distrust for the artistic expressions of these religions. The fact that iconography and symbolism of the Judaic, Christian and Islamic art were not held exclusively by a particular race, group of people, individual century, or nation, but universally intelligible language and values, the Ethiopian Christian thinkers considered the validity of these artistic expressions. The paintings conceived out of such theory, like all other religious art, by virtue of its ability to produce beauty and maintain unity and consistency of style, has become just as much an expression of aesthetic thought and feeling for the society. Like all religious art, Ethiopian Church paintings primary purpose was to bring God closer to the human soul. The question of representation had already been laid down in the Scripture, and the Apostles created some of the first icons. Its aesthetic nature and formal solution were more egalitarian, accessible and effective for teaching the Scripture. As the Church believed to be the heir to Judaism, the guardian of Christianity, and the elect of God, the paintings did not show any deviation nor did they shy away from respecting the traditional forms of expression and symbols. They strived perpetually toward the spiritual and absolute, devoted to the task of almost unequalled sacredness. They were totally committed in Christianity’s distinctive claim to mediate an experience of the Divine power. Before the shipwrecked Abba Selama/ Frumenatius landed in Ethiopia and Christianity became the official religion of the court, there were already converted Christians in the country. Several oral and legendary histories, as well as Biblical verses supported that Christianity came to Ethiopia approximately the same time it came to Jerusalem. Even if there was no physical evidence to that effect, it was possible to conclude that early Ethiopian Church paintings may have begun simultaneously, or even earlier, from other parts of the Christian world. Evidently, the paintings had been decorative and arabesque, with geometric designs. Ethiopian Church paintings of these periods and those seen in later periods were easily identified as Christian, not only for their expression of the spiritual aspects of Christian faith, but specifically because they shared practically all the known elements and features of Christian art. However, as Ethiopian civilization did not begin after Christianity, Ethiopia did not abandon its earlier art forms and expressions after it accepted Christianity. When Ethiopia started losing or abandoning its maritime and commercial power after officially converting to Christianity, political and cultural changes followed. At that time, Christianity spread to Western and Eastern Europe. Events having effects and outcomes that strengthen the course of history of the Ethiopian Church and its religious philosophy are the major decisive factors for the evolutionary process of Ethiopian Church paintings. Of these evolutionary stages one noticed four turning points that effected the Ethiopian Church painting movement: 1) The coming of the Nine Saints; 2) The birth of Islam; 3) The coming of the Portuguese to the “land of Prester John” and 4) Era of Princes, The Zemene Mesafent. During these stages, the Church paintings not only maintained but kept alive the tradition that has been handed down and exposed the very desire of the church – its independence and sovereignty. Following the coming of the Nine Saints, iconography forms of early Christian paintings were produced throughout the Christendom, and eventually penetrated the Ethiopian Church. By whatever means they reached the country, these early Christian paintings, which uphold closely and truly to the text of the Bible, had a special value for the expressions of Ethiopian Church paintings. As the religious feeling was at its height of intensity, and since religious iconography was not polluted by thinkers, writers and artists, these forms of expressions of the early Christian painting were believed to be authentic. Afterward, this belief was encouraged by several other historical factors. Compelled by force of logic, from the 7th to the 15th century, early Ethiopian Church paintings followed suit and were influenced by the religious art movements seen in Eastern Christian, and later, Islamic nations. Western models, particularly those seen after the coming of the Portuguese, different from early Christian paintings in their structure and style, were believed to be not only blasphemy but blatantly secular. Also, due to their different ideological positions, they were believed to shift the creative aspect away from God and toward a pagan or secular culture, which contradicted the traditional form that gave the church its individuality and identity. The seemingly apparent changes seen in the paintings after 15th century were not actually about a need for change in the original artistic principles. It was simply a type of overhaul that was initiated and imposed by the nature and history of world politics, as well as the yearnings of the Ethiopian Royal court. Even when the Western models seemed to be favored by the church painters, the symbolism and the ideology behind the representation was always questioned. The models were never copied, or even adapted, as they were. It was rather a critical reinterpretation that was perused, a reference from the model that was initiated. The models were objects of interest, but not of influence, as some scholars wanted us to believe. The paintings did not show any futile effort to glorify the majesty and splendor of the human body in order to create the immortal religious characters. Ethiopian Church painting did not portray legends or mythology, nor was it used to celebrate the mortals. It did not overwhelm, confuse or inhibit the imagination and religious spirit of the mortals by representing and honoring immortals and symbolizing them as mortals. If there were any attempts at perspective and modeling in some of the paintings, as scholars suggested, it was not a conscious intention. The simplification and descriptive arrangement of figures, the essence of the early Ethiopian Church paintings was later strengthen and more strictly followed during and after the political divisions of the Zemene Mesafent. Scholars, who believed that perspective was a natural outcome of progress in painting, and not an ideological construct of Western culture and value, unwisely criticized Ethiopian Church paintings. The tactful and consistence avoidance of perspective, anatomy and modeling was a result of a long tradition of artistic vocabulary and the presence of strong ecclesiastical organization, as well as the spirit of independence fermented for hundreds of years. The Scholarly approach The revolutionary artistic change seen in the industrial world made the values of Ethiopian religious art visible and more interesting even to the society that created it. The Ethiopian Church arts began to attract the attention of scholars a century after the industrial world art tradition had undergone drastic alterations. Since the second half of the 20th century, Ethiopian Church arts, and particularly the paintings, were a much talked and written about subject by foreign scholars, even more than the history of the Church itself. Institutes of higher education and museums, both at home and abroad, became patrons and collectors of these paintings. Works by expatriate painters and other paintings believed to have been influenced by Western models after the 15th and into the 16th century exhausted the intellectual curiosity of scholars. Evidently, the writings of scholars targeted Western readers. As a matter of logic, they tended to concentrate, in any number of ways and for any number of purposes, on the dominant art history and commentary of representation and Western grand narratives in order to describe Ethiopian Church paintings. Their main concerns and speculations were largely to prove the origin and source of these paintings. They said that the origins and sources of Ethiopian Church paintings were the Christian world and that it was influenced by Byzantine and Italian paintings. Several others explained that its source was also Islamic, Middle Eastern and Asiatic paintings. Some scholars even believed it was a colonial form of painting. Even some of the distinguished scholars who acknowledged Ethiopian Church paintings’ true characteristics and manifestation tended to be interested only in what they called the processes of adaptation and assimilation copying of western models. As far as origin and external influence in art was concerned, it was always an ideological battle in art literature. There were more questions than answers. The point however, should not have been where it came from, since religious symbols transcended specific places, people and times. In their privileged positions, acting as judge and jury, the scholars missed the very nature and merit of Ethiopian Church paintings and devoted their abilities and academic knowledge to these matters. Demography, commercial and several other social and political factors, decisive forces for the production of various kinds of aesthetic works, were not considered at all. Less so, the lingering presence of apocalyptic tensions, the conservative and the monastic virtues and ideals of the Church, and the absence of urban culture in the country were not taken into consideration. In order to substantiate their findings, the scholars concentrated their studies and writings on when and how the Ethiopian Church paintings borrowed from other arts and maintained the art forms that had been extinct in the countries of origin. Regrettably, by doing so, the scholars who raised the status of Ethiopian Church paintings to an academic discipline missed its merit, validity and authenticity. Furthermore, when the facts showed that the plastic solution and structure of Ethiopian Church paintings had nothing to do with post Renaissance Western Christian art, save the religious personage and iconography, scholars dared to use the theory and practice of Western painter to describe and analyze the works of Ethiopian Church painter. The Ethiopian Church painter was unlike the goldsmith, potter or even the sculpture, and had never been a craftsman that produced pictures. After learning the Bible and the Church doctrine, he spent years past his adult life learning the arts of calligraphy, manuscript making and painting. He was a man of the church who sought to uphold the ethical tone of the church and its dogma. The Ethiopian Church painter was well aware of the limit imposed on him, as well as on his work. The strictness of the artistic canon was such that expressions such as talismanic arts, folk practice such as magic and even Awde-Negast, astrology were outside the approved disciplines of the Ethiopian Church painter. The painter who was faithful to these factors, deliberately and systematically avoided any indication of tainted expression. Even when he refers to a model, he took it through a stage of transformation and variation until it met his artistic expectations. He never copied the models in detail, but showed a will to reinterpret, recreate or produce a variant and differentiated his work from others. There was no intention to express the inevitable of the external world through his art. He never attempted to turn around the sufferings and teachings of the scripture into a source of pleasure or feast for the eye. But as he was determined to tolerate his painful life on earth and wait for the ultimate apocalypse, instead of rebellion against it, he acknowledges it. As the end was near, he did not want to aggrandize, but remained oblivious of nature. As his works were strictly and closely tied to the Church teachings, and as he was dedicated to disseminating the word of god, he did not work for the pleasure of creating. If he reinterpreted a work of art, he acknowledged what ought to be reiterated. He had no intention of becoming a counterculture deviator of tradition, or a social deviant. As he believed that his creativity was accorded to his religious faith, he valued and saw his works as a conveyer of a general, rather than specific emotion and never intended his creativity to be destructive. Not only did he stick to the traditional form, but also questioned other foreign forms of expressions and symbols for their sanctity, covert agendas, intentions of religious domination, or revisions. He was a cultivated man par excellence of the church. If the interest of the Ethiopian painter in the iconography of external models had initiated a variation and simplification, any form of copying representational symbolism without transformation of the original was never practiced. He created his own version of the teaching of the scripture. The images of religious subjects and personalities were substituted with signs and symbols of everlasting immortal characteristics. Neither the efforts by the expatriate painters nor the imported models were convincing enough to change the Ethiopian Church painter’s approach. Even those second -rate expatriate painters favored by the Monarchs did not resist this canon and form of expression. In the end, they, too, had to adjust to the style of the Ethiopian Church painters. The scholars, however, with very few exceptions, applied theory and methodology of Classical European paintings to describe Ethiopian Church paintings, even after the Western avant-garde artist of the 20th century choose as his predecessors the African and Oceanic artists, the Japanese masters the anonymous folk artists of bygone days and far away places,. Needless to say, it was impossible to understand the style of Ethiopian Church paintings if one took part in Western paintings and their legacies. Conclusion The cultural interaction inflected on Ethiopian Church paintings was significant, but only one factor among many that gave it characteristics. The appropriation of other arts was one of its greatest achievements. However, the main reason for it to flourish and maintain its unique style for two thousand years was not because of this factor. This occurred because it was established on an already flourished religious art. The Ethiopian church is three thousand years old, one thousand in its Jewish form, and two thousand in its Christian form. The Ethiopian Church painting closeness to Judaic, early Christian and Islamic art, and its apparent unusual artistic solution due to the inspiration it received from Christian art of the West, made it significantly original. Regrettably, since this painting was not studied with other arts, particularly African art, much of what made it similar to others, as well as much of what made it different, is simply not seen, much less understood. The systematic culture of resistance and suspicion of anything other than the tradition and the basic characteristics of Ethiopian Church paintings were tactfully avoided. Scholars, who tended to emphasize the Christian heritage of Ethiopian Church painting and not its African soul, emphatically disassociated it from African art, even though there was clear evidence of its African origin and characteristics. Their methodology and approach was significantly limiting for an appreciation and understanding of Ethiopian Church paintings. Whatever their school or ideological beliefs, there was no question that the scholars, through their writings, immensely assisted in conservation, protection and respect for the Ethiopian Church paintings. As the works were continually revealed, documented and analyzed, one was more easily able to observe the merits and true characteristics of Ethiopian Church paintings. But as Ethiopian Church did not intend to make painting a progressive discipline, our knowledge and appreciation of Art by itself cannot illuminate the inherent meaning and nature of Ethiopian Church painting. The Ethiopian Church painting belonged more to the history of religion than to the grand narratives of the history of art. Its history was a remarkable reflection of Ethiopian Christian thinkers- the clergies, and it could not be anything other than the mirror image of the history of the Ethiopian Church. Ethiopian society, as it did preserve in its originality the Judaic and Islam religions, has safeguard Christianity and remained a protector of lost, artistic tradition of Christianity. The interesting and intriguing artistic paradigm of the Ethiopian Church painting is its systematic resistance, negation and suspicion to dominating and threatening artistic forms. It remained an indisputable symbol of independence and survival, not only of the Church, but also of the Nation. By: Esseye Medhin, April 20, 2003