Teacher's order 1931

Nicholas Roerich made this painting, Teacher’s Order, with either tempera or oil, and a small canvas. Look at how he's built up these flat planes of colour, one behind the other, to suggest the vastness of the mountains. It’s like he’s making a stack of paper cut-outs, or maybe using theatre flats. You can tell that artmaking for him was really a process. The materiality of the painting is remarkable; the surface is matte and the colours are soft yet intense, almost dreamlike. The layers of paint give depth, but also flatten the perspective. The texture looks so smooth and dry, that you want to touch it and the colours, the blues and purples, give it such an ethereal quality. Notice the little silhouette of a figure on the left; they're so small in comparison to everything else. Are they part of the landscape, or are they separate from it? The way that Roerich plays with light and shadow reminds me of Edward Hopper, who creates such a feeling of stillness and mystery. In both artists, we can see that art is more about asking questions than giving answers.