Dear friends and colleagues
I have always been fascinated by them. How could I not be when my father was a priest and a medieval historian to boot? I have seen them in airports and on the sides of long, dusty roads, but I have never joined them. Yet, always, I am envious of their commitment, their purposeful passion, striding out, their smiling faces. Pilgrims.
It amazed me in Rajastan ten years ago to see them walking in the midday summer heat, carrying nothing other than a small bundle of clothes or a small bottle of water. Carrying flags on long bamboo poles. One and a half million Indians trekking from pilgrimage site to pilgrimage site. We stopped and got out of our air-conditioned car and drank some tea at a wayside stall. Some of these pilgrims were sitting around, taking a break, chatting. They were happy. There was a camaraderie I was not part of: those in cars and coaches passing them as they trudged onwards would wave and shout, encouraging.
Rajasthan 2005
In Mexico I saw them on their knees, making their pained way across the rough cobbles outside the basilica at Guadalupe. I have seen them in the airports at KL or Singapore wearing the simple, shapeless robes enjoined on Muslims when they do the haj – the pilgrimage to Mecca. I do not relish the lacerated knees nor the very uncool costume, but I envy them their experience.
The nearest I have done to a pilgrimage? Trips to see Piero at Monterchi or Rothko in Huston. It’s not the same. For one thing there is no moral obligation attached; for another, it is not such a communal experience.
Working in a predominantly Muslim country as I often do, Indonesia, I am very intrigued by those artists who have gone on the haj. The senior artists Sunaryo and Srihadi have both done so, just as artists of an earlier generation, Widayat and Affandi, had before them. And just like Widayat and Affandi they have both felt inspired afterwards to make paintings that embodied the mystical experience they had and that could perhaps convey that experience to others.
Srihadi made a painting after his first haj, trying to share the sensation of this experience of circling the Ka’aba.[1] He tells us that as he made the seven circumambulations he was no longer aware of the other people, he saw them no longer, they had disappeared. All he could see, as if in a chant made visible, was the calligraphy Allah Allah الله الله. His painting Echo of Allah expresses this as the courtyard of the ka’aba appears filled by the vibrations of that calligraphy. For him it was a feeling of ecstasy, of becoming one with God.
Srihadi, Echo of Allah, 2012, oil on canvas, 200 x 150cm
The painting Sunaryo made of his experience of the Thawaf at Mecca, made a week after his return was a more physical experience than Srihadi’s for he raked his hands through the plaster till they bled. He wanted to recreate the sensation of circling the ka’aba seven times. He talked of his sense of losing his ego, of being at one with the umma (community), of how, so tightly packed they were, they moved as one body.
Sunaryo. Thawaf # 3-2000
But what intrigues me now is that many younger artists, those in their thirties and forties, have in their turn made the haj but they have no intention of making a painting of it. Irfan, Arin Dwihartanto, even Yunizar who is seen as a devout Muslim: all of them shook their head when I asked if they would make a painting like their predecessors. Not possible.
Does this tell us something about the difference between modernist and contemporary art? That we have lost the faith in art to encapsulate and convey intense experiences? Or, that it never could do that anyway?
I am staying in Bandung at the moment and seeing Arin in his studio later so I will ask him what he thinks and let you know next week.
I am very privileged: when I come to Bandung I stay at a house Sunaryo himself designed. Inside it has complex but clear geometry and on the outside is a large balcony set above the garden. You can look down on the city below, for the house is high on a hill above, and also enjoy the trees that grow so luxuriantly in the garden and around. I am going there now to have my early morning coffee.
Above Bandung: the city hidden by early morning mist
Have a good Tuesday
Tony