Why would an artist create a series of ‘mystical’ images of war? This was the question that ran through my mind as I viewed the prints by Natalia Goncharova (1881–1962) recently on display at MoMA in New York. I knew some of the background about this artist. She, along with her husband, Mikhail Larionov (1881-1964), was a key member of the early Russian avant-garde, which emerged just before World War I. The movement that they led was called Rayonism, and many of Goncharova’s most abstract paintings are organized by shard like shafts of light. Brilliant, brittle and fractal-like, this work was as close to abstraction as Kandinsky’s; living near Munich, he had shifted to total abstraction in art at about the same time, but the Rayonists’ parallel experimentation demonstrates that the idea was at a point of realization in more than one locale.
Kandinsky’s own breakthrough to abstraction was influenced by his reading of theosophy, a hybrid set of esoteric teachings that ultimately had its roots in teachings revealed to a certain Madame Blavatsky, who is credited with founding that movement. Was Goncharova’s ‘mystical’ view of war theosophical in origin as well?
Most of the work that I had seen by the artist prior to that moment of encounter was derived from nature or from folk traditions. Perhaps she saw war as the inevitable result of powerful natural forces? Alternatively, maybe there was a strong folk tradition in Russia of creating mystical references to war and she was responding to that in a nationalistic sense? (Nationalism was a powerful force in art in the years leading up to WWI). Other writers have suggested that it was the influence of the Italian futurists that was at play in Goncharova’s little prints; was she inspired by their shrill endorsement of violence and destruction as a legitimate means for sweeping away outworn ideas and politics?
It is likely that a combination of these elements had come into play: nature-inspired mysticism, folkloric visions of redeeming angels and godlike heroes, and a celebration of the new, modern machinery of war all tied together in a series of small lithographic prints. Goncharova’s hard-edged visual vocabulary intensified the combination and, to my way of thinking, collision of these themes.
I see these as a collision of themes because I am always skeptical of imagery and language that appeals to the gods in order to fan the flames of war fervor. Goncharova’s images were created in the fall of 1914, just after WWI had broken out. So that war, which famously later bogged down into endless bloody trench warfare, could still have been seen through a lens of relative enthusiasm at that early point. But, her complete cycle, which will be on view next spring at the University of Notre Dame, also included images of warning about the consequences of war.
Of course, Russia in 1914 was still under the control of the Czar, who might have instructed his generals and captains to have their troops kneel down before ikons before lunging forward into battle. Was Goncharova glorifying these same conservative, nationalist forces in images such as “St. George the Victorious” from her own little cycle of prints?
Elsie Clews Parsons wrote an article titled “Mysticism in War” long ago in 1916, during the heart of the very war in question, which reflected the issues running through my mind. She noted that the supernatural role of chieftancy in time of war is a feature of cultures across time and place. From the ancient Greeks to the warrior tribes of Melanesia, leaders have invoked magical sources in order to empower their followers.
And, for Parsons, the same sympathetic spirit that is the source of the leader’s war magic imbues those in battle who share an almost tribal bond, or, in the more elegant French, esprit de corps. A mystical bond must take place between soldiers in order for them to endure and succeed the trials of war. Goncharova’s prints capture both the commanding presence of the gallant commander and the soldiers’ sense of acting as a single inspired unit.
Of course, mysticism is a term usually used to refer to union with a deity, not with one’s comrades. However, Parsons, writing from the heart of the war, reminds us that mystical bond between soldiers and mystical ties to gods have crossed before. “The Crusades and the Inquisition gave Christians a full measure of the sense of union with God, probably the fullest measure they were collectively to have.” It was the fullest measure in the context of Christianity because nationalism soon followed, and in that new political context, the gods were subsumed under the banner of nation, not church. Parson quotes none other than Dostoevsky (1821-1881), the famous countryman of Goncharova who lived two generations before her, to explain ‘god-feeling’ in the name of nation.
“The object of every national movement in every people and at every period of its existence is only the seeking for its god, who must be its own god, and the faith in Him as the only true god. . . . If a great people does not believe that the truth is only to be found in itself alone (in itself alone and exclusively); if it does not believe that it alone is fit and destined to raise up and save all the rest by its truth; it would at once sink into being—not a great people.”
Parsons states that Dostoevsky’s words form the essential outlook of “the patriotic Christian, the Christian national.” At one level Goncharova’s prints seek not only to express this sentiment, but to grow it. They are rooted not in the Theosophist’s sense of the commonality of religions but in patriotic Christianity.
Parsons goes on to contrast the outlook of the patriotic Christian with that of the pacifist. Just as the mystical power of the war leader and the magic bond between warriors has a long history, so does repugnance at killing. Killing evokes a disturbing fear, a ‘ghost’ fear animated by the unsettled spirit of the murdered victim, that many a soldier finds it difficult to shake. Goncharova captures that deep anxiety in prints titled “A Common Grave, “the Doomed City,” and “The Pale Horse”.
Because we humans are able to experience a combination of fear, guilt, and repulsion in the act of killing another, Parsons, writing in direct response to the largest scale of killing ever to occur up to that time (WWI), stated that human nature is not murderous. She writes, “ . . . I suggest that war has been possible not because according to the common view, man are naturally warlike, individually bellicose, but because they are naturally fearful and, above all, in their gregariousness highly mystical. Collective fears and uncritical gregarious impulses are thus the data the pacifist propagandist must consider. Expressions of combativeness or aggressiveness are not so much his concern as are expressions of cowardice and mysticism.”
Here, then, are two documents of a war begun one hundred years ago. One, a cycle of prints, reminds us of the mystical level of patriotic and religious conviction that allowed the war to ignite and, at the same time, of the dark consequences of war. The other, a short essay written in the deep, bloody heart of the war, two years after it had begun, reminds us that mystical union in the name of the godhead of nationalism is the natural human impulse we must guard against.
A handful of Goncharova’s prints were on view in conjunction with the exhibition “Designing Modern Women 1890–1990,” which ran through October 19, 2014 at MoMA.
The portfolio of 14 prints, Mystical Images of War, may be seen next year from February 1–March 22, 2015 at the Scholz Family Works on Paper Gallery of the Snite Museum of Art at the University of Notre Dame.
To read the full article by Parsons see Mysticism in War Elsie Clews Parsons The Scientific Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 3 (Sep., 1916), pp. 285-288 Published by: American Association for the Advancement of Science Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/6202
