Diferences and Sameness: Abstract Secularity in the Case of Nicholas Roerich1 The article explores the conceptual structures behind secularity and associated concepts such as immanence versus transcendence and progress versus anachronism by drawing on the life and Mi You and Eszter Szakács activities of Nicholas Roerich (1874–1947). Roerich was a Russian painter, theosophist and archaeolo- gist. He established his reputation both as a spiritual leader and as a painter mixing syncretic religious symbols, from Orthodox Mi You (由宓) is a curator, researcher, and academic staff member at the Academy of Christianity, Theosophy to Tibetan Buddhism. Together with his Media Arts in Cologne. Her long-term research and curatorial project takes the Silk Road as a figuration for deep-time, deep-space, de-centralised and nomadic imageries. Under wife, he pursued—and ultimately failed—to establish Shambhala this theme she has curated a series of performative programmes at the Asian Culture (paradise in Tibetan Buddhism) in the area from Tibet to South- Center Theatre in Gwangju, South Korea, and the inaugural Ulaanbaatar International ern Siberia, in a time of great geopolitical tension. Media Art Festival, Mongolia (2016). Her academic interests lie in performance philoso- phy, science and technology studies, as well as philosophy of immanence in Eastern and Western traditions. She is a Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (Germany) We argue that Roerich’s enterprise emerges from the ruins of and serves as advisor to The Institute for Provocation (Beijing). multiple broken orders: the empire/transnationalism, tradi- Eszter Szakács is a curator and editor based in Budapest. She has worked at tranzit.hu tionalism, mysticism, religiosity and Communism on the one since 2011. There she is curator-editor of the ongoing collaborative research project hand, and nation-state, modernity, scientism, secularisation and Curatorial Dictionary that has been realised as an online dictionary with various offline liberal democracy on the other. His curious path transgresses research events, among other work. She was co-editor of the book IMAGINATION/IDEA. The Beginning of Hungarian Conceptual Art. The László Beke Collection, 1971 (Budapest/ ideological divides and points to the categorical limits of the Zurich: tranzit.hu, /JRP|Ringier, 2014) and has since 2016 been co-editor of tranzit.hu’s dichotomies they produce. His legacy is appropriated today by online international magazine on art and culture Mezosfera. Her research interests various, often conficting lines of thought, canonising him in include concepts of internationalism in art and curatorial discourse, especially in relation to Eastern Europe. From 2013 to 2016 she was a guest lecturer at the Art Theory and the context of Russian art, esoterism, and in Russia’s revived Curatorial Studies Department of the Hungarian University of Fine Arts. geopolitical interest of Eurasia. 156 157 Svetoslav Roerich. Portrait of Nicholas Roerich, 1928. Oil and tempera 1 Nicholas Roerich [Nikolai Konstantinovich Rerikh], born in Saint on canvas. Courtesy The State Museum of Oriental Art, Moscow. We would like to thank the V-A-C Foundation Petersburg in 1874, is today a renowned, and also infamous, fgure in as well as Beatrice von Russia and the Western world, especially in the US, as well as in Asia. Bismarck, Benjamin Meyer-Krahmer and Roerich was a versatile fgure: already in his youth he was drawn to Maria Mkrtycheva who archaeology and ethnography, throughout his life he published liter- made it possible for us to participate in 2016 in the ary works, he was an especially prolifc painter, in the 1910s he was a 5th Moscow Curatorial successful stage designer, and he was regarded by many as a guru and Summer School. The Curatorial School was a leader who, as a makeshift diplomat, was capable of exercising pow- that year based at and er and convincing people at the highest levels to support his cause in around the State Museum of Oriental Art in Moscow, Central-East Asia. which also houses a major collection of paintings by Nicholas Roerich and his son Svetoslav Roerich. We would also like to thank Kathleen Reinhardt for Nicholas Roerich and the the many discussions and ideas we had together Debated Roerich Legacy Today about Nicholas Roerich at the 5th Moscow Curatori- Upon his father’s wish Nicholas Roerich studied law in Saint Petersburg, al Summer School. and art at the Academy of Arts in the landscape studio of Arkhip 2 Kuinji.3 Throughout his career, Roerich created more than 7000 Taylor, Charles. A Secular Age. Cambridge, MA, and paintings of various themes and series, and his oeuvre is often con- London: Harvard University textualised within the broader art movement of symbolism.4 At the Press. 2007. turn of the twentieth century Roerich belonged to the conservative 3 part of Russian art circles, and was not always well-regarded by the Klimentieva, Victoria. Nicholas Roerich: In search more European lenient, Art Nouveau-style group and magazine Mir of Shambhala. MA disser- isskustva (World of Art). Nevertheless, he collaborated with them, tation. Graduate School of the University of Texas. and in 1910, after the movement’s heyday, he became its chairman.5 This essay aims to examine and problematise 2009. p. 6. Roerich’s most notable and highly regarded theatre design works some aspects of the conceptual history of secularity in the case study 4 for Borodin’s Prince Igor (1909), and particularly Stravinsky’s Le of the Russian theosophist and painter Nicholas Roerich (1874-1947). Leek, Peter. Russian Sacre du Printemps (1913) were the productions of Sergei Diaghilev, Painting. Bournemouth: More precisely, it looks at conjunctions of secularity and politics Parkstone. 2005. p. 256. co-founder of Mir isskustva and later founder of the Ballets Russes, through the tracing of Roerich’s messianic life project to bring about who trusted Roerich as an expert in ancient history and Russian 5 the mystical kingdom of Shambhala, a pan-Buddhist state in Cen- Klimentieva, op. cit., pp. medieval architecture.6 tral-East Asia—a plan that also coalesced various conficting strands 9-13. of political ideologies. Following Charles Taylor, we treat secularity 6 In his early period, including his stage designs, ancient Slavic culture as it arises from the modernisation process of European societies, Ibid., p. 14. characterised the theme of his works, such as in his 1905 painting Slavs through which religion is taken as only one option among other ways 7 on the Dnieper.7 This period was infuenced by journeys and observa- of self-fulflment and human fourishing, and the latter as an indica- Troncale, Joseph C. “The tions made in 1899 along the ancient trade route from Lake Ladoga to transcendent as theatre tor that self-sufcient humanism has never existed on the same scale in Roerich’s paintings”. In Novgorod, and in 1903 and 1904 to a range of old Russian cities—such before in European societies before the Enlightenment.2 Manju Kak (ed.). Nicholas as Yaroslavl, Kostroma, Uglich, Vladimir, Suzdal, Pskov, Izborsk and 158 159 Smolensk.8 Especially after his marriage to Helena Shaposhnikova Roerich: A Quest and A 11 him as their guru, making a peculiar case of the intertwining of the Legacy. New Delhi: Niyogi Ibid., p. 178. in 1901, he turned towards mysticism and Eastern religions (Helena Books. 2013. p. 201, p. 204. secular and the religious, and even the occult, on these missions.11 Roerich also acted as a medium to communicate the messages of 12 8 See especially McCannon, higher powers), and together they created their own school of mys- Leek, op. cit., p. 256. John. “Competing legacies, Roerich’s highly complex life project, and particularly his political ticism, the theosophy-based Agni Yoga in the 1920s. competing visions of ties and motivations, however, contain still many nebulous parts, 9 Russia: the Roerich Troncale, op. cit., p. 204, movement(s) in Post- due also to the fact that many ideologically opposed forces are His “oriental” interest also signalled a shift in his paintings in the p. 209. Soviet Russia”. In Birgit trying to claim Roerich’s legacy as their own.12 The reception and Menzel, Michael Hage- mid-1910s: he departed from the theme of the roots of Russian cul- 10 meister, and Bernice contemporary interpretations of the Roerichs over the last decades ture, and based his painterly work more on Eastern mysticism and Another significant facet Glatzer Rosenthal (eds.). have been just as manifold as the activities of the family itself. After of Nicholas Roerich’s life The new age of Russia: spiritualism, creating “philosophical landscapes”.9 This metaphori- is the so-called Roerich occult and esoteric dimen- Nicholas Roerich and his works were made to be forgotten in Sta- cal-mystic interpretation of the world subsequently defned the style Pact/Banner of Peace sions. Munich: Kubon & linist Russia, because of their religious-occultist path, his rehabilita- that pushed for interna- Sagner. 2011. pp. 348-369. and the iconography of Roerich’s work, which he practised until his tional alliances for the tion started in the late 1950s. As John McCannon outlines, George death. With their two children, later Tibetologist Yuri (George) Ro- preservation of cultural 13 Roerich returned to the USSR from India in 1957 at the invitation of heritage and that essen- Ibid., pp. 349-350. erich and later painter Svetoslav Roerich, the couple emigrated in tially served as a basis for Nikita Khrushchev, and a major exhibition showcasing Roerich’s 1918, after the October Revolution, from Russia to Finland, subse- the unesco charter for 14 painting was organised in 1958 in Moscow, thus re-canonising Ro- the “Protection of Cultur- Ibid., pp. 350-351. quently to London, and then to the United States, and they fnally al Property in the Event erich as an artist—but not as person of occultism, not to mention settled in India in the 1930s.