mystical landscapes

visiting toronto from mumbai recently, i treated myself to the mystical landscapes exhibit at the art gallery of ontario. aside from any specific surprises, disappointments or expected delights, some more general impressions:

canada’s troupe (including carr and the group of seven) plunge into god as well or better than most of the rest of that presented world

the extra-thick crowds around van gogh, while not unjustified (the represented starry night is powerful) and not as wholesale an absurdity as the gaggling routine camera competition around the louvre’s mona lisa, remind of something mostly to be forgotten

humans (and other animals) – while thick as art voyeurs on the exhibit floor – are almost entirely absent from the art. yes, we can say this emerges partially from the period – mostly a century ago, the selection process, in which a certain strain of artists struggled with the increasing potency and pervasiveness of a technocapitalistic society by withdrawing from its human and industrial faces. but it is not just this (and related factors)

the divine vision – almost however we define it, palpably elusive in definition though it must be – places the human alongside the myriad creatures, without ascendancy … and how then can it appear in greater proportion than the entirety of creation – almost [but not quite] nothing, an aspect among teeming aspects of the creator, oneness, the universe, thingness, irreducible and vast complexity, love (call it what you want)

starry night has, for example, some humans, blurred individuals, hardly individuals, forms of sorts really, in the foreground, but small, more like re-shaped stars … and those other stars (the original ones, our likely destiny), those popping out like thoughts in god’s universal mind are the backdrop and centerpiece of the drama, the settlements and affairs of earth like icharus rippling into the sea in auden’s poem or bruegel’s painting … a reality to be sure, but one like a shutter being closed or opened on some lane in a village beside drying laundry in dusty-sunny air, clouds working nonchalantly as they do on their important projects

and now? a century later? 6 billion more humans, the urbanized percentage having risen from 13 to 58%,12 cities with more than 1,000,000 humans leaping to over 400, technology our skin and consciousness, god in an unmarked grave, capitalism like nero in an rpg of rpgs, art a useless caboose, a used tampon, a credit limit of vision, a dream journal, a cosmic rosary, a desert song … now … where are the mystic landscapes and those who paint them? with the soul made of garbage rather than numinous emptiness, how shall we ascend descend migrate to the forbidden light?

around the time nietzsche went mad, georges-albert aurier wrote – and this quote is prominent in the ago’s exhibit –

we must become mystics again. mysticism is what we need today; only mysticism can save our society from brutalization, sensualism and utilitarianism. the noblest faculties of our soul are atrophying … we must react.

is this sentiment even translatable in 2016?

(the journalistic reports on the exhibit in the dailies suggest in their expected prose thudding lightly across pragmatic landscapes that mysticism isn’t for everyone – a little out of place really – but that they’re glad at least the results exist even if the origins seem somewhat off to the orthodox)

does the more contemporary reel-unreel short shot in kabul (on the ago’s 5^th floor presently) hold hints?  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IuEM4w7Gbc

do the films on https://vimeo.com/videovectors ?

the paintings in http://bernardlegay.fr/ ?

the sounds on https://thenidus.bandcamp.com/ ?

the dancing dead, holding hands across the waking world?