Nicholas Roerich: The Invincible (1874-1947)

        Serendipity

Dr. Cannon, a professor of physiology at Harvard University, recently gave a lecture in Peking about the meaning of success in scientific discoveries. After citing many examples of diversified scientific practice the professor came to the conclusion that “success follows only those who accept it.” An excellent formula, completely correct and applicable in all walks of life. Truly, in addition to conscientious, far-sighted work it is necessary to show the ability to perceive the symptoms of the germ of success. Many a time the occasion arose to write that success must be caught, realizing that it is an “easily frightened bird.” Many a time ancient proverbs have been quoted. “Risk not, gain not.” Different peoples, each in their own language, interpret them in their own way, yet in the same direction. An endless number of fairy tales and legends tell about unlucky simpletons who, because of their dullness, lost the Firebird. The fool was warned, “When you pluck the Fireblossom, do not look back.” But just at that moment something seemed to appear to him, the gaper naturally turned around, and all that had been found by him was lost. Verily, success must be seized—taken firmly, without retreat and in full striving. In this complete striving is expressed that faith which already borders upon great true knowledge.

In all these stories, which were warnings, there are always brought out many circumstances that aided the discovery of luck. Beginning with grey wolves or unknown benevolent beggars and passers-by many circumstances become helpers in success. One should also pay great attention to this inspired assistance. Not only should one discover such prepared assistants, but in the social structure it is also necessary to create conditions that act quickly. Precisely, such conditions should be created. The inception of success is not only a personal affair, it is a success of the state. Each private beneficient success is also the success of the government, which means the government itself must be consciously solicitous that such successes be attained. The attainment of all the best proceeds through all the highest. It means that the state, as such, should give to its citizens all of the best, all of the true culture.

As usual, we do not speak about quantity, but about quality. What of it if the newspapers come out containing many scores of pages, which because of their quality could be shortened successfully into half the amount! What of it, if all sorts of questionable restaurants and cabarets grow like mushrooms and choke up people’s thinking? Not without cause did some Easterner confuse the difference between a cafe chantant and a shaitan. Yesterday, in the middle of the desert, we listened to a radio. Listened for over two hours. We changed all possible radio waves, and visited the most diversified countries. And what did we hear? True, somewhere, it seems in America, a fragment from “Lohengrin” flashed out, but the rest was so much restaurant and fox trot music that once again we were horrified by what was filling space. After all, all of these sounds, manifested and not manifested, influence human consciousness.

It is sufficiently known that space is filled, but apparently it is not yet sufficiently assimilated that the filling of space is the greatest responsibility of humanity. The essence of quality is that very diversified building material, out of which is built the success of civilization and with it eventually that of culture. A man civilized by a fox trot will be lost on the paths leading to culture. For him these blessed pathways will already appear unattainable. “This is not for us.” “Aspirations are destined for us, but not their attainment.” This is the kind of pessimism into which not even a bad consciousness can fall, but the one weighed down by the baseness of daily life can. He who utters these negative, pessimistic words will thus renounce constructiveness. No matter how many times one may show to such a man the means of salutary successes, he will shrug them off as something unattainable, and will go to drown his sorrow in the nearest bar.

In this “drowning” of sorrow is evidenced a very cowardly pessimism. You see, the two-legged one has an urgent need to forcibly “drown” something. He thinks that he is drowning his sorrow, whereas he drowns his achievement or lets it go up in smoke. If at present space itself thunders with the horror of vulgarity, is it not the duty of every government to replace vulgarity with actions of high quality? Many a time we had occasion to say that the people are being slandered unjustly, in insisting that they demand vulgarity and meanness. Both of these are thrust upon them from an early age. But give beautiful harmony, beautiful singing, beautiful words, and the people will be drawn open-heartedly to them.

Dark forces are everywhere. Everywhere they conduct their destructive work, and they dream of depriving the nations of those achievements which are already destined. Of course, that which is destined can be considerably delayed, but nevertheless it will reveal itself. Each such delay is an abominable crime against mankind. Each one who wishes to drive someone into the darkness and deprive him of light is but a co-worker of darkness. But nations, as such, are by no means co-workers of darkness. No matter by what means the servants of darkness induce them to commit abominations and vulgarity, sooner or later they sober up. Whole masses arise and rebel against all kinds of “drownings, fumes, and poisonings.” Blessings to that government which understands that one cannot keep the people on a low level, giving them products of low quality. Then space itself will not roar and howl, but will merge into the Beautiful. Whether successes be in scientific discoveries, whether they be in ennobling creativeness, finally, whether they be in simple daily life, which also is in need of good fortune, is immaterial—success must be perceived everywhere and accepted. Sufficient is told in fairy tales about gapers and simpletons who let their luck slip. The age of building a new culture should be the age of successful people, who, each one in his way, will find his treasure-trove, his destined success. “Success follows those who accept it.”

                                                                                                                                                                                Tzagan Kure 

                                                                                                                                                                                May 30, 1935

Manly Palmer Hall: The secret teachings of all ages (1928)

   The 
     Dionysiac 
             Architects 

The most celebrated of the ancient fraternities of artisans was that of the Dionysiac Architects. This organization was composed exclusively of initiates of the Bacchus-Dionysos cult and was peculiarly consecrated to the science of building and the art of decoration. Acclaimed as being the custodians of a secret and sacred knowledge of architectonics, its members were entrusted with the design and erection of public buildings and monuments. The superlative excellence of their handiwork elevated the members of the guild to a position of surpassing dignity; they were regarded as the master craftsmen of the earth. Because of the first dances held in honor of Dionysos, he was considered the founder and patron of the theater, and the Dionysians specialized in the construction of buildings adapted for the presentation of dramatic performances. In the circular or semicircular orchestra they invariably erected an altar to  Æschylus, the famous Greek poet, that while appearing in one of his own plays he was suspected by a mob of angry spectators of revealing one of the profound secrets of the Mysteries and was forced to seek refuge at the altar of Dionysos. So carefully did the Dionysiac Architects safeguard the secrets of their craft that only fragmentary records exist of their esoteric teachings. John A. Weisse thus sums up the meager data available concerning the order:

"They made their appearance certainly not later than 1000 B.C., and appear to have enjoyed particular privileges and immunities. They also possessed secret means of recognition, and were bound together by special ties only known to themselves. The richer of this fraternity were bound to provide for their poorer brethren. They were divided into communities, governed by a Master and Wardens, and called γυνοικιαι (connected houses). They held a grand festival annually, and were held in high esteem. Their ceremonials were regarded as sacred. It has been claimed that Solomon, at the instance of Hiram, King of Tyre, employed them at his temple and palaces. They were also employed at the construction of the Temple of Diana at Ephesus. They had means of intercommunication all over the then known world, and from them, doubtless, sprang the guilds of the Traveling Masons known in the Middle Ages." (See The Obelisk and Freemasonry.)

The fraternity of the Dionysiac Architects spread throughout all of Asia Minor, even reaching Egypt and India. They established themselves in nearly all the countries bordering on the Mediterranean, and with the rise of the Roman Empire found their way into Central Europe and even into England. The most stately and enduring buildings in Constantinople, Rhodes, Athens, and Rome were erected by these inspired craftsmen. One of the most illustrious of their number was Vitruvius, the great architect, renowned as the author of De Architectura Libri Decem. In the various sections of his book Vitruvius gives several hints as to the philosophy underlying the Dionysiac concept of the principle of symmetry applied to the science of architecture, as derived from a consideration of the proportions established by Nature between the parts and members of the human body. The following extract from Vitruvius on the subject of symmetry is representative:

"The design of a temple depends on symmetry, the principles of which must be most carefully observed by the architect. They are due to proportion, in ἀναλογία. Proportion is a correspondence among the measures of the members of an entire work, and of the whole to a certain part selected as standard. From this result the principles of symmetry. Without symmetry and proportion there can be no principles in the design of any temple; that is, if there is no precise relation between its members, as in the case of those of a well shaped man. For the human body is so designed by nature that the face, from the chin to the top of the forehead and the lowest roots of the hair, is a tenth part of the whole height; the open hand from the wrist to the tip of the middle finger is just the same; the head from the chin to the crown is an eighth, and with the neck and shoulder from the top of the breast to the lowest roots of the hair is a sixth; from the middle of the breast to the summit of the crown is a fourth. If we take the height of the face itself, the distance from the bottom of the chin to the under side of the nostrils [and from that point] to a line between the eyebrows is the same; from there to the lowest roots of the hair is also a third, comprising the forehead. The length of the foot is one sixth of the height of the body; of the forearm, one fourth; and the breadth of the breast is also one fourth. The other members, too, have their own symmetrical proportions, and it was by employing them that the famous painters and sculptors of antiquity attained to great and endless renown."

The edifices raised by the Dionysiac Builders were indeed "sermons in stone." Though unable to comprehend fully the cosmic principles thus embodied in these masterpieces of human ingenuity and industry, even the uninitiated were invariably overwhelmed by the sense of majesty and symmetry resulting from the perfect coordination of pillars, spans, arches, and domes. By variations in the details of size, material, type, arrangement, ornamentation, and color, these inspired builders believed it possible to provoke in the nature of the onlooker certain distinct mental or emotional reactions. Vitruvius, for example, describes the disposition of bronze vases about a room so as to produce certain definite changes in the tone and quality of the human voice. In like manner, each chamber in the Mysteries through which the candidate passed had its own peculiar acoustics. Thus in one chamber the voice of the priest was amplified until his words caused the very room to vibrate, while in another the voice was diminished and softened to such a degree that it sounded like the distant tinkling of silver bells. Again, in some of the underground passageways the candidate was apparently bereft of the power of speech, for though he shouted at the top of his voice not even a whisper was audible to his ears. After progressing a few feet, however, he would discover that his softest sigh would be reechoed a hundred times. 

The supreme ambition of the Dionysiac Architects was the construction of buildings which would create distinct impressions consistent with the purpose for which the structure itself was designed. In common with the Pythagoreans, they believed it possible by combinations of straight lines and curves to induce any desired mental attitude or emotion. They labored, therefore, to the end of producing a building perfectly harmonious with the structure of the universe itself. They may have even believed that an edifice so constructed because it was in no respect at variance with any existing reality would not be subject to dissolution but would endure throughout the span of mortal time. As a logical deduction from their philosophic trend of thought, such a building--en rapport with Cosmos--would also have become an oracle. Certain early works on magical philosophy hint that the Ark of the Covenant was oracular in character because of specially prepared chambers in its interior. These by their shape and arrangement were so attuned to the vibrations of the invisible world that they caught and amplified the voices of the ages imprinted upon and eternally existent in the substance of the astral light.

Unskilled in these ancient subtleties of their profession, modern architects often create architectural absurdities which would cause their creators to blush with shame did they comprehend their actual symbolic import. Thus, phallic emblems are strewn in profusion among the adornments of banks, office buildings, and department stores. Christian churches also may be surmounted with Brahmin or Mohammedan domes or be designed in a style suitable for a Jewish synagogue or a Greek temple to Pluto. These incongruities may be considered trivial in importance by the modern designer, but to the trained psychologist the purpose for which a building was erected is frustrated in large measure by the presence of such architectural discordances. Vitruvius thus defines the principle of propriety as conceived and applied by the Dionysians:

"Propriety is that: perfection of style which comes when a work is authoritatively constructed on approved principles. It arises from prescription (Greek θεματισμῷ), from usage, or from nature. From prescription, in the case of hypæthral edifices, open to the sky, in honour of Jupiter Lightning, the Heaven, the Sun, or the Moon: for these are gods whose semblances and manifestations we behold before our very eyes in the sky when it is cloudless and bright. The temples of Minerva, Mars, and Hercules will be Doric, since the virile strength of these gods makes daintiness entirely inappropriate to their houses. In temples to Venus, Flora, Proserpine, Spring-Water, and the Nymphs, the Corinthian order will be found to have peculiar significance, because these are delicate divinities and so its rather slender outlines, its flowers, leaves, and ornamental volutes will lend propriety where it is due. The construction of temples of the Ionic order to Juno, Diana, Father Bacchus, and the other gods of that kind, will be in keeping with the middle position which they hold; for the building of such will be an appropriate combination of the severity of the Doric and the delicacy of the Corinthian."

In describing the societies of Ionian artificers, Joseph Da Costa declares the Dionysiac rites to have been founded upon the science of astronomy, which by the initiates of this order was correlated to the builder's art. In various documents dealing with the origin of architecture are found hints to the effect that the great buildings erected by these initiated craftsmen were based upon geometrical patterns derived from the constellations. Thus, a temple might be planned according to the constellation of Pegasus or a court of judgment modeled after the constellation of the Scales. The Dionysians evolved a peculiar code by which they were able to communicate with one another in the dark and both the symbols and the terminology of their guild were derived, in the main, from the elements of architecture.

While stigmatized as pagans by reason of their philosophic principles, it is noteworthy that these Dionysiac craftsmen were almost universally employed in the erection of early Christian abbeys and cathedrals, whose stones even to this very day bear distinguishing marks and symbols cut into their surfaces by these illustrious builders. Among the ornate carvings upon the fronts of great churches of the Old World are frequently found representations of compasses, squares, rules, mallets, and clusters of builders' tools skillfully incorporated into mural decorations and even placed in the hands of the effigies of saints and prophets standing in exalted niches. A great mystery was contained in the ancient portals of the Cathedral Of Notre Dame which were destroyed during the French Revolution, for among their carvings were numerous Rosicrucian and Masonic emblems; and according to the records preserved by alchemists who studied their bas-reliefs, the secret processes for metallic transmutation were set forth in their grotesque yet most significant figures.

The checkerboard floor upon which the modern Freemasonic lodge stands is the old tracing board of the Dionysiac Architects, and while the modern organization is no longer limited to workmen's guilds it still preserves in its symbols the metaphysical doctrines of the ancient society of which it is presumably the outgrowth. The investigator of the origin of Freemasonic symbolism who desires to trace the development of the order through the ages will find a practical suggestion in the following statement of Charles W. Heckethorn:

"But considering that Freemasonry is a tree the roots of which spread through so many soils, it follows that traces thereof must be found in its fruit; that its language and ritual should retain much of the various sects and institutions it has passed through before arriving at their present state, and in Masonry we meet with Indian, Egyptian, Jewish, and Christian ideas, terms therefrom the supreme ambition of their craft and symbols." (See The Secret Societies of All Ages and Countries.)

The Roman Collegia of skilled architects were apparently a subdivision of the greater Ionian body, their principles and organization being practically identical with the older Ionian institution. It has been suspected that the Dionysians also profoundly influenced early Islamic culture, for part of their symbolism found its way into the Mysteries of the dervishes. At one time the Dionysians referred to themselves as Sons of Solomon, and one of the most important of their symbols was the Seal of Solomon--two interlaced triangles. This motif is frequently seen in conspicuous parts of Mohammedan mosques. The Knights Templars--who were suspected of anything and everything--are believed to have contacted these Dionysiac artificers and to have introduced many of their symbols and doctrines into mediæval Europe. But Freemasonry most of all owes to the Dionysiac cult the great mass of its symbols and rituals which are related to the science of architecture. From these ancient and illustrious artisans it also received the legacy of the unfinished Temple of Civilization-that vast, invisible structure upon which these initiated builders have labored continuously since the inception of their fraternity. This mighty edifice, which has fallen and been rebuilt time after time but whose foundations remain unmoved, is the true Everlasting House of which the temple on the brow of Mount Moriah was but an impermanent symbol.

Aside from the operative aspect of their order, the Dionysiac Architects had a speculative philosophic code. Human society they considered as a rough and untrued ashlar but lately chiseled from the quarry of elemental Nature. This crude block was the true object upon which these skilled craftsmen labored--polishing it, squaring it, and with the aid of fine carvings transforming it into a miracle of beauty. While mystics released their souls from the bondage of matter by meditation and philosophers found their keenest joy in the profundities of thought, these master workmen achieved liberation from the Wheel of Life and Death by learning to swing their hammers with the same rhythm that moves the swirling forces of Cosmos. They venerated the Deity under the guise of a Great Architect and Master Craftsman who was ever gouging rough ashlars from the fields of space and truing them into universes. The Dionysians affirmed constructiveness to be the supreme expression of the soul, and attuning themselves with the ever-visible constructive natural processes going on around them, believed immortality could be achieved by thus becoming a part of the creative agencies of Nature. 

Vincent van Gogh: The Letters (1853-1890)

Letter 218 
The Hague, 21 July 1882

Dear brother,

It is already late, but I felt like writing to you again anyway. You are not here - but I need you and sometimes feel that we are not far away from each other. Today I promised myself something, that is, to treat my illness, or rather what remains of it, as if it didn't exist. Enough time has been lost, work must go on. So, well or not well, I am going back to drawing regularly from morning until night. I don't want anybody to be able to say to me again, “Oh! but those are only old drawings.” I drew a study today of the baby's little cradle with a few touches of colour in it. I am also at work on one like one of those meadows I sent you recently. My hands have become a little too white for my liking, but that's too bad. I'm going to go back outdoors again, a possible relapse matters less to me than staying away from work any longer. Art is jealous, she does not like taking second place to an illness. Hence I shall humour her. So you will, I hope, be receiving a few more reasonably acceptable things shortly. People like me really should not be ill. I would like to make it perfectly clear to you how I look at art. To get to the essence of things one must work long and hard. What I want and have as my aim is infernally difficult to achieve, and yet I don't think I am raising my sights too high. I want to make drawings that touch some people. “Sorrow” is a small beginning - perhaps such little landscapes as the “Meerdervoort Avenue,” the “Rijswijk Meadows,” the “Fish-Drying Barn,” are also a small beginning. There is at least something straight from my own heart in them. What I want to express, in both figure and landscape, isn't anything sentimental or melancholy, but deep anguish. In short, I want to get to the point where people say of my work: that man feels deeply, that man feels keenly. In spite of my so-called coarseness - do you understand? - perhaps even because of it. It seems pretentious to speak this way now, but that is the reason why I want to put all my energies into it.

What am I in the eyes of most people - a nonentity, an eccentric or an unpleasant person - somebody who has no position in society and never will have, in short, the lowest of the low. All right, then - even if that were absolutely true, then I should one day like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody, has in his heart. That is my ambition, based less on resentment than on love malgré tout [in spite of everything], based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Though I am often in the depths of misery, there is still calmness, pure harmony and music inside me. I see paintings or drawings in the poorest cottages, in the dirtiest comers. And my mind is driven towards these things with an irresistible momentum.

Other things increasingly lose their hold on me, and the more they do so the more quickly my eye lights on the picturesque. Art demands dogged work, work in spite of everything and continuous observation. By dogged, I mean in the first place incessant labour, but also not abandoning one's views upon the say-so of this person or that.

Pollard birches, pencil, ink heightened with opaque white (1884)

I am not without hope, brother, that within a few year's time, or perhaps even now, little by little you will be seeing things I have done that will give you some satisfaction after all your sacrifices. I have had very little contact with other painters lately. I haven't been the worse for it. It isn't the language of painters so much as the language of nature that one should heed.I can understand better now than I could six months ago why Mauve said: don't talk to me about Dupré, I'd rather you talked about the bank of that ditch, or something of that sort. That may sound a bit strong, and yet it is absolutely right. The feeling for things themselves, for reality, is of greater importance than the feeling for painting; anyway it is more productive and more inspiring.

Because I now have such a broad, such an expansive feeling for art and for life itself, of which art is the essence, it sounds so shrill and false when people like Tersteeg do nothing but harry one.

For my own part, I find that many modern pictures have a peculiar charm which the old ones lack. To me, one of the highest and noblest expressions of art will always be that of the English, for instance Millais and Herkomer and Frank Holl. What I would say with respect to the difference between old and present-day art is - perhaps the modern artists are deeper thinkers.

There is a great difference in sentiment between, for instance, Chill October by Millais and Bleaching Ground at Overveen by Ruysdael. And equally between Irish Emigrants by Holl and the women reading from the Bible by Rembrandt. Rembrandt and Ruysdael are sublime, for us as well as for their contemporaries, but there is something in the moderns that seems to us more personal and intimate.

It is the same with Swain's woodcuts and those of the old German masters.

Olive trees in a mountain landscape (1889)

And so it was a mistake when the modem painters thought it all the rage to imitate the old ones a few years ago. That's why I think old Millet is right to say, `Il me semble absurde que les hommes veuillent paraître autre chose que ce qu'ils sont. [It seems absurd to me that people want to seem other than they are.] That may seem trite, and yet it is as unfathomably deep as the ocean, and personally I am all for taking it to heart. I just wanted to tell you that I am going to get back to working regularly again, and must do so quand même [at that] - and I'd just like to add that I look forward so much for a letter - and for the rest, I bid you goodnight. Goodbye, with a handshake,

                                                                                                                Ever yours,

                                                                                                                                                                Vincent

Please remember the thick Ingres if you can, enclosed is another sample. I still have a supply of the thin kind. I can do watercolour washes on the thick Ingres, but on the sans fin, for instance, it always goes blurry, by no fault of mine. I hope that by keeping hard at it I shall draw the little cradle another hundred times, besides what I did today.

Written 21 July 1882 in The Hague. 
Translated by Mrs.  Johanna van Gogh-Bonger, 
edited by Robert Harrison, number 218 

Carl Chiarenza: Interview with Robert Hirsch

Transmutation:

Turning detritus                into splendor

                                               Photo Technique, November/December 2012 

Chiarenza’s luminous, meticulously crafted black and white photographs remove his subject from the everyday world of color. This allows his images to transcend their specific subject matter and evoke an inner state of consciousness that grapples with his subject matter beyond its external structure. Chiarenza’s spirit of experimentation disrupts customary expectations through his use of everyday materials to visualize their metamorphosis into hauntingly beautiful abstractions that hint at horizons, geological strata, and quixotic figures. His constructed meditative symbols forge a connection between the mind and nature that elicits emotional responses. This work, often relating to the landscape, dismantles formal media boundaries and permits photography to merge with graphic design, painting and sculpture. Conceptually, Chiarenza’s transformative imagemaking pulls back the photographic cloak to reveal its illusional qualities. In turn, this draws attention to the difference between a photograph and the reality it depicts, reminding us that all photographs are constructed images and not concrete realities. Ultimately, Chiarenza’s work invites psychological speculation by encouraging us to examine the unconscious and/or the subliminal workings of the mind, thus demonstrating how knowledge about our world and ourselves can be gleaned through a fabricated methodology. Chiarenza is also a photo-historian noted for his acclaimed biography, Aaron Siskind: Pleasures and Terrors (1982).

Robert Hirsch: How did you get interested in photography?

Carl Chiarenza: The playground across the street from our house in Rochester, NY had a meeting and storage shack. When I was eight years old I made my first pictures of neighborhood kids playing ball with a Kodak Brownie. I processed them in a tiny darkroom the playground director built in that shack. My first serious picture was of a Rochester East High School wall on graduation day 1953, upon which people had scribbled their names over the years. It was essentially my first abstract picture.

RH: What is the key visual theme running through your work?

CC: In high school I was already leaning towards a formalistic picture. When I started attending Rochester Institute of Technology and making photographs for assignments Minor White gave us, I found myself doing close-ups. This furthered my interest in abstraction which can be seen in my 1957 senior thesis, Interaction: Visual Verbal, which essentially consists of close-ups and details of a railroad yard (facsimile edition available from Nazraeli Press).

RH: How did your notion of the landscape evolve from outside to inside?

CC: I have always been attracted to the landscape and tried hard to photograph outdoors, but I couldn’t get the pictorial ideas to evolve in nature. So I went into the studio and tried to let collage and light dream up images of my feelings for and about nature. Later, in 1983, I was invited to participate in an exhibition called Arboretum for which I made a series of collage pictures called Woods, which more directly explored my feelings about nature. I concluded that the idea of landscape is really a pictorial construction. In the past, people didn’t refer to nature as the landscape out there. It only became a landscape after it was pictured. My sense of landscape, therefore, is that it is an abstract, emotional, pictorial mindset that we construct to examine nature in relation to ourselves. Nature is not picturesque, it is often ugly and unruly, which is why one has to struggle to make a photograph out in it. By working in the studio, I have control over the light and its effect on the collage. This allows me to alter that relationship in a manner similar to how I burn and dodge in the darkroom.

RH: How have people created a landscape genre?

CC: People bring their feelings to the landscape and in turn the landscape affects them. The picture comes from a place in between by taking these experiences and reconstituting them into visual symbols that one associates with them.

In the studio, I play with scraps of paper, and with the lighting on my copy stand to make what I would love to see in nature, but isn’t there. I can’t see it out there, but I feel it. It is my way of giving back to nature something that I got indirectly from nature.

RH: What is your work’s connection to the logic of perspective and the illusion of visible reality?

CC: My engagement with the landscape has led me to form an awareness about the effects of human incursion in our world, and I have no interest in recreating such scenes. My work has its own illusions, which occasionally do include a sense of visual reality. However, my goal is to draw viewers into a new experience; one of a non-physical reality, much as music does (one of my other passions). My photographs evoke rather than mirror a sense of place. My working methodology of making and photographing my collages allows me to respond to imaginary places in a photographically expressive manner.

RH: Why do you work in black-and-white?

CC: In 1979 while working with the Polaroid 20x24-inch camera and color film, I discovered the only pictures I was satisfied with were monochromatic. This led me to realize the feelings and emotions I wanted to convey are best expressed in black and white. For me, color distracts from my objectives; it doesn’t have that depth, that richness, that pulse, or as we would say in music, “that sound” I seek to convey.

RH: Why have you used Polaroid Type 55 Negative/Positive film?

CC: By seeing the results I can immediately tell what

I need to change in the collage or lighting or both. Without those instant prints I would have to develop film and then go back to remake the collage. The collages are not in themselves an end; rather they are a means to represent what I want to articulate. Once you touch them they are gone.

RH: What is your allure to photographic black?

CC: I start with black and something grows out of it that slows you down and encourages you to stop and stay in the picture. By reducing a subject to its essential qualities, black and white provides a direct connection to your thoughts and feelings. However it’s not only the blacks, but also what happens with the light. It’s really about light and the absence of light without the interference of those distracting colors. It’s a riddle that simultaneously baffles and challenges one and reminds us that every photograph is an abstraction.

RH: How has a long life affected your picture making?

CC:  As I have gotten older, I have the desire to simplify. My wife, Heidi Katz who is a landscape designer, has an excellent garden analogy. She says: “When one is younger one wants to grow everything. As one gets older, one accepts limitations and concentrates on specific plants.”

RH: What is a key factor in your picture making?

CC: I’ve been making pictures so long it’s like eating. I go to work every day I can. I am interested in producing something, whether it’s imagery, writing, or music, which gives back something of what I took in. Ultimately, the most important thing is just showing up.

    

  
         

M.C Escher: Engravings (1898- 1972)

     The 

         Graphic 

                Work

      Anyone who applies himself, from his early youth, to the practice of graphic techniques may well reach a stage at which he begins to hold as his highest ideal the complete mastery of his craft. Excellence of craftsmanship takes up all his time and so completely absorbs his thoughts, that he will even make his choice of subject subordinate to his desire to explore some particular facet of technique. True enough, there is tremendous satisfaction to be derived from the acquisition of artistic skill and the achievement of a thorough understanding of the properties of the material to hand, and in learning with true purposefulness and control to use the tools which one has available - above all, one's own two hands! I myself passed many years in this state of self-delusion. But then there came a moment when it seemed as though scales fell from my eyes. I discovered that technical mastery was no longer my sole aim, for I became gripped by another desire, the existence of which I had never suspected, Ideas came into my mind quite unrelated to graphic art, notions which so fascinated me that I longed to communicate them to other people. This could not be achieved through words, for these thoughts were not literary ones, but mental images of a kind that can only be made comprehensible to others by presenting them as visual images. Suddenly the method by which the image was to be presented became less important than it used to be. However, one does not of course study graphic art for so many years to no avail; not only had the craft become second nature to me, it had also become essential to continue using some technique of reproduction that would enable me to communicate simultaneously to a large number of my fellow men that which I was aiming at.  If I compare the way in which a graphic sheet from my technique period came into being with that of a print expressing a particular train of thought, then I realize that they are almost poles apart. What often happened in the past was that I would pick out from a pile of sketches one which seemed to me suitable for reproduction by means of the same technique that was interesting me at that moment. But now it is from amongst those techniques which I have to some degree mastered, that I choose out the one which lends itself more than any other, to the expression of the particular idea that has taken hold of my mind.

Concentric rinds, 1954 wood engraving

Nowadays the growth of a graphic image can be divided into two sharply defined phases. The process begins with the search for a visual form that will interpret as clearly as possible one's train of thought. Usually a long time elapses before I decide that I have got it clear in my mind. Yet a mental image is something completely different from a visual image, and however much one exerts oneself, one can never manage to capture the fullness of that perfection which hovers in the mind and which one thinks of, quite falsely, as something that is "seen". After a long series of attempts, at last - when I am just about at the end of my resources - I manage to cast my lovely dream in the defective visual mould of a detailed conceptual sketch. After this, to my great relief, there dawns the second phase, that is the making of the graphic print; for mow the spirit can take its rest while the work is taken over by the hands. In 1922, when I left the school of Architecture and Ornamental Design in Haarlem, having learnt graphic techniques from S. Jessurun de Mesquita; I was very much under the influence of this teacher, whose strong personality certainly left its mark on the majority of his pupils. At that period the woodcut (that is to say the cutting with gouges in a side-grained block of wood, usually pear) was more in vogue with graphic artists than is the case today. I inherited from my teacher his predilection for side-grained wood, and one of the reasons for my everlasting gratitude to him stems from the fact that he taught me how to handle this material. During the first seven years of my time in Italy I used nothing else. It lends itself, better than the costly end-grained wood, to large-side figures. In my youthful recklessness I have gouged away at enormous pieces of pearwood, not far short of three feet in length and perhaps two feet wide. It was not until 1929 that I made my first lithograph, and then in 1931 I tried my hand for the first time at wood-engraving, that is to say engraving with burins on an end-grain block. Yet even today the woodcut remains for me an essential medium. Whenever one needs a greater degree of tinting or colouring in order to communicate one's ideas, and for this reason has to produce more than one block, the woodcut offers many advantages over wood-engraving, and there have been many prints I could not have produced had I not gained a thorough knowledge of the advantages of side-grained wood. In making a colour-print I have often combined both of these raised relief techniques, using end-grain for details in black, and side-grain for the colours. The period during which I devoted such enthusiasm to my research into the characteristics of graphic materials and during which I came to realize the limitations that one must impose on oneself when dealing with them, lasted from 1922 until about 1935. During that time a large number of prints came into being (about 70 woodcuts and engravings and some 40 lithographs). 

The greater number of these have little or no value now, because they were for the most part merely practice exercises; at least that is how they appear to me now. The fact that, from 1938 onwards, I concentrated more on the interpretation of personal ideas was primarily the result of my departure from Italy. In Switzerland, Belgium and Holland where I successively established myself, I found the outward appearance of landscape and architecture less striking than those which are particularly to be seen in the southern part of Italy. Thus I felt compelled to withdraw from the more or less direct and true to life illustrating of my surroundings. No doubt this circumstance was in a high degree responsible for bringing my inner visions into being. On one further occasion did my interest in the craft take the upper hand again. This was in 1946 when I first made the acquaintance of the old and highly respectable black art technique of the mezzotint, whose velvety dark gray and black shades so attracted me that I devoted a great deal of time to the mastery of this copper-plate intaglio, a process that has today fallen almost entirely into disuse. But before long it became clear that this was going to be too great a test of my patience. It claims far too much time and effort from anyone who, rightly or wrongly, feels he has no time to lose. Up to the present I have, in all, produced no more than seven mezzotints, the last one being in 1951.  I have never practiced any other type of intaglio. From the moment of my discovery, I have deliberately left etching and copper-plate engraving to one side. The reason for this can probably be traced to the fact that I find it preferable to delineate my figures by means of tone-contrast, rather than by linear contour. The thin black line on a white background, which is characteristic of etching and copper-engraving, would only be of use as a component part of a shaded area, but it is not adequate for this purpose. Moreover, with intaglio, one is much more tied to white as a starting point than is the case with raised relief and planography. The drawing of a narrow white line on a dark surface for which raised relief methods are eminently suitable, is practically impossible with intaglio, while on the other hand, a thin black line on a white background can be satisfactorily achieved, albeit as a rather painstaking operation, in woodcuts and wood-engravings. The ideas that are basic to them often bear witness to my amazement and wonder at the laws of nature which operate in the world around us. He who wonders discovers that this is in itself a wonder. By keenly confronting the enigmas that surround us, and by considering and analyzing the observations that I had made, I ended up in the domain of mathematics. Although I am absolutely without training or knowledge in the exact sciences, I often seem to have more in common with mathematicians than with my fellow artists.

       

                   On reading over what I wrote at the beginning of this introduction, about the particular representational character of my prints, I feel it may be rather illogical to devote so may words to it, not only here but also beside each separate reproduction as well. It is a fact, however, that most people find it easier to arrive at an understanding of an image by the round-about method of letter symbols than by the direct route. So it is with a view to meeting this need that I myself have written the text. I am well aware that I have done this very inadequately, but I could not leave it to anyone else, for - and here is yet another reason for my astonishment - no matter how objective or how impersonal the majority of my subjects appear to me, so far as I have been able to discover, few if any of my fellow-men seem to react in the same way to all that they see around them.