Mystical Landscapes: From Vincent van Gogh to Emily Carr. Ed. by Katharine Lochman with Roald Nasgaard & Bogomila Welsch-Ovcharov. New York: DelMonico Books, 2016.
There has been a regrettable tendency to falsely and naively assume the right wing of the Enlightenment project (with its excessive focus on the empirical, rationalistic, scientistic and secular ideology) defines the modern ethos. Such an approach negates the ongoing interest in spirituality, religion and a contemplative way of knowing and being that have played a significant role in the romantic and humanist commitments of the Enlightenment. The sheer beauty and bounty of Mystical Landscapes: From Vincent van Gogh to Emily Carr is the way this visual and literary text amply illustrates how many of the finest artists of the 19th and 20th centuries expressed their spiritual longings on canvass as they drew inspiration and deeper insights from the vast landscape of Nature.
The animated and deeply committed vision of Katharine Lochnan (Senior Curator, International Exhibitions, Art Gallery of Ontario) and Stephen Jost (Michael and Sonja Koerner Director, and CEO Art Gallery of Ontario) and Guy Cogeval (President of Musee d’Orsay and Musee de L’Orangerie) must be acknowledged for their intricate and meticulous labour in drawing together such a rich tapestry of historic art that links spirituality and nature. Needless to say, there are a variety of ways of approaching mystical landscapes and the varied painting in the tome and comprehensive essays illustrate the ways both mysticism and landscape can be understood in a wide spectrum. But, there can be no doubt the underlying thesis is clearly proven: there was much more afoot and awake for those who had the senses to see in the 19th and 20th centuries than merely hard and empirical science. The artistic and literary mystics and romantics refused to be caged by a narrow and one dimensional approach to life and their paintings make such a countercultural stance obvious.
The intricate and delicate interplay in this packed tome between multiple essays and classical paintings drawn, mostly, from the European and North American context make for a comprehensive read and visual tour. The fact that Evelyn Underhill is often cited as a guiding visionary of the mystical grounds Mystical Landscapes in a solid and sustained manner. The equally important fact that the paintings included in the text were housed at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) from late autumn 2016 into the early months of 2017 make this collection an unusual and rare coup of sorts for the AGO.
Most of the paintings in Mystical Landscape are not simply realistic depictions of mountains, land, sky and water. The artists, rightly so, have attempted to live from the inner dynamism of the natural world and all its pied beauty, challenges, elusive colours, impressions and shifting seasons. The lenders come from Austria, Brussels, Canada (generously honoured), Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Ireland, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom and the United States. The fact that Europe is offered many a canvass and palette means that a vivid kaleidoscope of night and day, winter and summer seasons, star thick sky and the sheer bounty of mountain ranges are aptly and intricately portrayed. A meditative approach to both the articles and page after page of larger and smaller paintings yield much that draws the attentive and curious into a panoramic vision of life and subtle ways of seeing through such a vison. I found myself, again and again, returning to both the well scripted and articulate essays and the colour rich and replete paintings. There can be no doubt, after doing many a trek through Mystical Landscapes, that the artistic canaries in the 19th and 20th centuries had contemplative longings and yearnings. The canvass and nature became, for them, their sacred text.
There is a tendency when thinking of mysticism and landscapes (mountain, forest, sky and water) to assume people, cities and civilizations are excluded. This is, of course, not the case in the 19th and 20th century painters included in the book. Landscapes, obviously so, are in cities, also, and the mystic vision can be front and centre as much in the city as the country, ocean, heavens or mountains. This means there are many fine painting in this collection of city life-- buildings, cathedrals, monks in procession, saints in forests, wrestling with angels and city streets at various times and seasons. Landscapes are also shaped and formed by human decisions to make and go to war, hence painters, at times in dire, graphic and brutal detail, highlight the impact of war on the once verdant and greening landscape. Can the mystic vision find hope (and a visual description of it) in such a tragic context? Such were the sensitivities of the painters that the very worst could become a sacred site of poignant vision.
Many of the artists in Mystical Landscapes are saints of sorts of the painting pantheon: Munch, Gauguin, O’Keeffe, Van Gogh, Whistler, Monet, Turner, Hodler, Klimt, Strindberg, Harris, Thomson, Carr, Mondrian, Kandinsky, Varley, Chagall, Jackson and a variety of lesser known but equally significant painters live in this gallery of artistic greats. The years I lived in the Swiss, Norwegian and Canadian mountains drew me, naturally, to Willumsen’s Jotenheim, Friedrich’s The Watzmann, Sohlberg’s Winter Night in the Mountains, Giacomett’s Bergelli Mountains, Hodler’s Mount Niesen and, of course, the exquisite mountain paintings of Varley, Carr and Harris. The fact Mystical Landscapes begins with Munch’s The Sun reveals much about the pioneering and light bearing nature of the book and exhibits.
The fact that Mystical Landscapes comes to a close with some rather eastern art does enrich the collection, and such inclusion could have been broadened, given the fact that many of the most sensitive spiritual seekers in the 19th and 20th centuries turned to the Orient for insight, illumination and wisdom---Ananda Coomaraswamy was certainly decades ahead of his time in this suggestive Eastern iconic approach to art, spirituality and nature.
The other approach within Mystical Landscapes that is needful and developed well is the way many painters pondered the relationship between nature, science, the cosmos and art. It was not a case, for the more thoughtful, that art, mysticism and nature were in conflict with science and nature. Most of the mature artists stretched forth their imaginative vision in probes that attempted to heed and hear what science could speak about nature and, in some ways, the mystical nature of a deeper notion of science.
The wide ranging nature of the topics included in the essays, the depth explored, at both a theoretical and applied level and the constant return to the actual paintings makes Mystical Landscapes an evocative and illuminating read---the sheer synthesis is amply admirable. It might have been valuable, by way of conclusion, to draw in more of the standard Canadian mountain and landscape painters beyond the Group of Seven and Emily Carr (such as Peter/Catherine Whyte---Whyte Museum in Baff) and ponder how Underhill’s journey from her earlier Mysticism (1911) to her more mature Worship (1936) might redefine the relationship between mysticism and landscapes, spirituality and nature but these are minor quibbles.
There can be no doubt that Mystical Landscapes: From Vincent van Gogh to Emily Carr is a pioneering book of the highest quality and, as such, presents, through the eyes and souls of artists and writers, a more nuanced and balanced notion and understanding of the modern enlightenment ethos. Do meditatively read and inwardly digest this beauty---soul, mind and imagination will never be the same.
Ron Dart
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