The Art of Nicholas Roerich

Art is the expression of life. Those dreamy moments which we devote to the realisation of this eternal life are the only moments in which we truly ‘live.’ They alone are the symbol of utmost wakefulness. We do not live by merely keeping our eyelids widely apart. The mind which does not resound to the sweet twitter of a bird, the heart which does not leap with joy at the smile of a flower, the soul which does not see its reflection in the twinkle of the stars, and does not move with the mad waves of the ocean, cannot be a proper vehicle of life. Those who really live have in their eyes the glamour of the eternity of life, in their emotions a sensitiveness to the sorrow of the whole creation, in their soul a great rapture, in their love an infinite expanse. They are the persons who can find companions in the snow-clad mountain-peaks and who can share their feelings with the withering leaves of autumn. They alone can create art.

The small storms and tempests of our world do not reach the Himalayan heights of art. Our petty prejudices, the ties between man and man, selfishness and passion–all scatter themselves in the lower ranges and die down. On the heights the pink rays of the setting sun play hide and seek with the whiteness of snow. In this ocean of beauty the artist alone keeps himself above the thousand coils of irrepressible creative urge. The rest remains merged in beauty. Whatever is created out of this turmoil is the eternal possession of mankind.

The name of Nicholas Roerich is highly reputed as one of those few personalities who have been able to pitch their tents at the Everest heights of art. This great artist, poet, thinker, and researcher is spending his sixties in the final sadhana of life in the Kulu district of the Himalayan valleys.

The duality of the world he has left long behind him. Time and space lose their dividing lines at those heights of art which he has attained, and thus make it difficult for us to place him in the conventional grades of painters. He has so completely harmonized himself with the unity of life in its diversity that it has become impossible to trace behind his colours the influence of country or creed. Born in a Russian village and learning the rudiments of his art in St. Petersburg and Paris, he has today imprinted his name on the rocks of the whole world. More than three thousand of his paintings are adorning the various art galleries in all the continents, an honour never attained by any other painter. A sky-scraper of forty-nine storeys has been specially raised in New York for the exhibition of his works. The ‘Kalabhavan’ of Rai Krishnadas at Benares is also fortunate in possessing a dozen of his best creations.

The art of Nicholas Roerich is universal. It bears upon it neither the imprint of East nor of West. Roerich has been a ceaseless traveller and has drawn his paintings in various countries, in different surroundings; and at all places he has dipped his brush deep into the soul of the atmosphere. This has been the key to his success. The expressive colours and the surprising originality which he has exhibited in his works on the Himalayas are incomparable. He has completely merged his personality in the snowy expanse of the Himalayas.

He is famous as a wizard in colours. The touch of his brush, the depth of his colours and the clear vagueness of his outlines bring with them a tempest of emotions, but what appeals to me most in the paintings of Nicholas Roerich is his symbolism. There is a school in the West which confuses painting with photography. It places Satyam above both Sivam and Sundaram. But true art does not lie in merely dipping your brush in the colour-box and sketching what is seen by the physical eye alone. A Japanese writer of the 18th century considered it a great fault of the Western pictures that they dived too deeply into the realities, and called these pictures mere groups of words.

To create art is to enter into the inmost depths of life and to express its soul in beautiful colours. Nicholas Roerich does not think much of painting ‘matter’ as it appears to the naked eye, but he has entered deep into feelings and has been able to catch by his artistic eye a full glimpse of the eternal truth of life and has expressed that great truth in his art.

The paintings represent the deepest poetic emotions at their highest. It appears that the painter has filled his outlines with songs which have lost their voice into the faintness of the lines, and thus his creation is all poetry in colours. Einstein once wrote that he was never impressed by anything so much as by a painting of Roerich. To see one of his paintings is an education in the highest poetic culture.

It is one of Roerich’s’ special virtues to give fitting names to his paintings. The artist finds it difficult to name his latest offspring. What he paints in the tempest of his feelings is sometimes incomprehensible to himself in ‘saner’ moments. But Nicholas Roerich is an artist who never slumbers, who has made the art the expression not of his madness but of his sanity. Whatever he creates with the strength of his genius out of the waves of the emotions belongs as much to him as the child to its mother. He may play with it and fondle it. He may kiss and cajole it. He gives a simple, easy name to his creation at the mere mention of which the whole picture stands at your beck and call, naked in all its beauty.

‘Remembrance’ is one of these small colour poems. In the distance, the blue peaks of the Himalayas, with all the rapture of Nature in their limbs, stand smiling. A man with an air of self-confidence in his expression, is riding a white steed. In the corner, two women stand looking wistfully at him. Their hearts seem to spring into the gleam of their eyes and ask, ‘Will you remember?’ The artist has so arranged things that the question reverberates through the whole atmosphere. The traveller looks , but the horse will not stop. And then, who can remember this small hut in the wide range of mountains? It will fade from the traveler’s vision in a moment. Then gradually, these high cliffs too will fall , because the traveller has to move on. Then, in another world, will the traveller who has not stopped and is still moving, be able to remember all this? Who can tell?

The work of Nicholas belongs to that range of art where there is no division and classification, but where there is only an effort to realise the ultimate harmony. This has carried the artist so near to Nature. In his paintings, Nature does not serve the slavish purpose of decorating man’s activities or giving fuller expression to his feelings, but spreads with the fullest freedom of its own expanse. Men with all their pettiness do not eyen dare look up at the high cliff, but pass on, with awe and reverence in their eyes. There is a painting named the ‘Dowry of the Princess.’ The mountain peaks rise higher and higher. But the dowry of the princess, hiding all its grandeur in its small bosom, moves slowly on, and occupies hardly a tenth part of the whole picture. In the ‘Audience’ a man sits down in a corner and listens to the vast message of Nature. In ‘Lord Buddha’ and the ‘Leader’ Nature appears so much akin to man that the scattered mountain ranges give us an impression of human children at play.

Nicholas Roerich, in spite of his birth in the West, is nearer to the soul of the East. The unity behind all life was perhaps never before understood so well by any body in the West. But let us acknowledge one thing. In the whole history of Indian painting, though the painters sat in the lap of Nature herself, they could never give such a predominance to her as we find in the works of Roerich. The Indian painter always measured the value of Nature in human coins. The Chinese and Japanese, who owe their inspiration in colours to India, seem to have been more moved by the vast infinity of Nature. Our painters could never paint Nature in her great seclusion.

Roerich has drawn his motifs largely from Nature but he does not so much enter into the form as into the spirit. His landscapes are not mere reflections of Nature. They are poems in colour. Emerson rightly expressed the true function of this type of art. ‘In landscape,’ he writes, ‘the painter should give the suggestion of a fairer creation than we know. The details, the prose of Nature, he should omit, and give us the spirit of splendour. He should know that the landscape has beauty to the eye because it expresses the thought which is to him good, and this because the same power which sees through his eyes is seen in that spectacle; and he will come to value the expression of Nature, and not Nature itself, and so exalts in his copy the features which please him. He will give the gloom of gloom and the sunshine of sunshine.’ These words can be literally applied to the paintings of Roerich.

Nicholas Roerich is a creative artist. His creations have enriched the richness of the world. He is not one of those millions of painters, who spend their life-time in imitating higher artists. Roerich’s technique of painting, his emotions and the method of their expression, are all his own. What he has attained in his successful life of thought and action, he has expressed with great fondness in his pictures. His pictures are not merely full of deep emotions, but also reflect the intensity of his thoughts. Behind each painting of Roerich there is a philosophy of life and an effort to solve problems which have been confusing us for ages.

The ‘path of Nicholas Roerich is one of peace and love. His subjects of creation are not the restless hours of tumultuous night when the bedewed lamp-posts look wistfully at the sottish crowd, but the snow-peaked cliffs of the Himalayas and the vastness of the sky. In the eternal solitude of life the art of Nicholas Roerich has reached its climax. He has portrayed women much better than men, because they are more akin to beauty and art, but his mountain ranges cannot be rivaled even by the portraiture of Kwan-thin, the Chinese goddess of grace.

The life of Nicholas Roerich itself is the expression of a great truth. His name has resounded from one corner of the world to another, but he has found the progressive realisation of life, not in the ball-rooms of Europe nor in the sky-scrapers of New York, but in the ‘Uruswati Institute’ which he has established in the lap of the Himalayas. Humanity itself will one day get tired of this tumult of death and will seek its true life in the vast expanse of Nature.

But Roerich does not believe that to seek eternal peace we have to flee physically from the madding crowd. He has himself dreamt the best visions of art in the busiest streets of the world, and given them form and colour. Roerich thinks that, by drawing the horizons of beauty round us, we can attain those heights where there is no place for the smaller things of life. At one place he writes: ‘In beauty we unite. Let us repeat these words not on snowy heights but in the tumult of the towns. And taking this to be the sole truth, with a joyful smile, we welcome the future.’

The pictures of Roerich are even more optimistic than his life. In Rai Krishna’s collection, there is a painting named ‘Kalki.’ ‘Kalki’ stands as a symbol of optimism, but the feelings which have been given voice by Roerich in that painting, where this incarnation of hope appears in the clouds above the Himalayas, are too deep for our expression. ‘The Sign of Maitreya’ also paints the future Messiah of the world in the same vivid colours. But the artist in Roerich has not lost sight of the hard facts of life in the golden dreams of his optimism. ‘The Unspilt Cup’ is another of his immortal works. A man is descending from the Himalayan peaks full of snow and glaciers. He holds in his hand the cup of eternal life. The path is steep. There is danger of its contents being spilt. There is always that danger. Who is there among us who has carried his cup through the steep path without spilling a drop?

Nicholas Roerich’s ideas regarding art are also worth studying.. He does not believe in art being for art’s sake alone. This principle casts a bitter reflection of keeping ourselves aloof from the humdrum of everyday life. It gives flowing tresses and squint eyes and frock-coats to the artists. Roerich considers that art alone to be true which unites. His beliefs are that ‘art alone will establish unity among mankind,’ and that ‘it is for the enjoyment of each of us.’ ‘Each man,’ he writes, ‘can feel the joy of true art. The doors of its sacred expression should be open for all. The light of art will fill all hearts with a new love.’

In this period of Indian Renaissance, when art is undergoing the travail of a new birth, the existence of this universal poet of colour in our midst should be a matter of congratulation for us. The renascent painting of modern India has a surprising record of progress. The names of Abanindranath Tagore, Nandalal Bose and Kshitindra Nath Majumdar must cause pride to any country. We have been able to revive the memory of Ajanta, but as the famous art-critic O. C. Gangoly thinks, our modern art ‘is hardly yet pulsating with the throb of modern aspirations.’ A study of Roerich’s art will lead our painters nearer to the soul of the world.