Pyramids of Lithuania, Music of the Deep:M.K. Ciurlionis & the Dulwich Picture Gallery.

"One must carry light within oneself. It has to dispel darkness for all on the road so that they may find light in themselves and walk on rather standing in the darkness" - M.K.Ciurlionis, 1900

Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis was a new name on me. A long one too. The surname is pronounced Chur-lon-iss as I heard a slightly grumpy invigilator tell a visitor when I was attending a retrospective of the artist's work at the Dulwich Picture Gallery recently.

Ciurlionis (1875-1911) didn't live very long (he died of pneumonia aged just 36) and his painting career was even shorter. Every work in the Dulwich show, M.K.Ciurlionis:Between Worlds, was made between 1902 and 1909. It's quite a body of work though. Symbolist painting hovering on the edge of abstraction, full of pyramids, gods, angels, fantasies, fairies, altars and lightning. Ciurlionis, like William Blake or Hilma af Klint, created his own world.

Morning (1903/4)

 

Or at least transformed the existing world to a shape of his own imaginative liking. Born in the spa town of Druskininkai, Ciurlionis immersed himself in both the natural world around him and in Lithuanian folklore. As well as painting he became a proficient pianist (by the age of five!) and studied at the Institute of Music in Warsaw and the Conservatoire in Leipzig.

Halfway through the exhibition there is a small room where you can listen to some of his music and, of course, the curators haven't missed the chance to expand on their theory that the rhythms and textures of his music are reflected in his visual art.

Rex (1904)

Lithuania, we learn, was the last European country to adopt Christianity in 1387. Before then there had been a dominant mix of paganism and pantheism, a worship of the natural world. As things changed Lithuanian folklore, it seems, fused with more Christian beliefs to create a kind of syncretic belief system. Certainly that's how it looks when you consider a work like 1904's Rex.

Rex is a godlike figure. The big white beard is the clear giveaway. He's an omnipotent creator, spirit, and protector and he'll crop up often in the work of Ciurlionis. Elsewhere, the artist will concentrate more on light, be it from the sun or the moon. Sometimes how that light would play on the sea. A sea that, for Ciurlionis, represented infinity and eternal life. Although in Ship, below, the waters look choppy and dangerous. Life looks fraught. I'm reminded of Turner's Snow Storm:Steam-Boat off a Harbour's Mouth.

Ship (1905/6)

News (1904/5)

News, at first glance, appears to be almost entirely abstract but closer inspection reveals a large bird flying over the mountains and, to the mind of Ciurlionis and his admirers, bridging the gap between the heavens and the Earth. In Lithuanian folklore, birds were associated with the soul.

It's a nice painting. I also like Night. Clearly Ciurlionis was familiar with the then popular Japanese prints and possibly also with the nocturnes of Whistler which this painting reminds me of. It shows a figure from Greek mythology ferrying souls across the River Styx into the underworld.

Night (1904/5)

Forest (1906)

Between the fourteenth and the eighteenth century, Lithuanian and Polish histories were intertwined as Russia grew more poweful and, this will sound familiar, began to occupy parts of each country. In Lithuania, 'Russification' took hold. The Lithuanian language was banned in schools and in print. Those that tried to smuggle books in Lithuanian into the country faced the threat of imprisonment or deportment to Siberia.

This history informed the work of Ciurlionis but so did the tumultuous times he lived through. The Russian Revolution of 1905 saw some concessions made to Lithuania (including reversing the ban on the language) but it wasn't until the artist had passed, after the end of World War I, that Lithuania was given it's (brief, at the time) independence.

This means Ciurliunois was reliant on Russian, and Polish, authors and composers in the main as influences. This also, I rather suspect, is why he was so keen to bring what he could of Lithuania into his art, and his music. All that was left for him to use was folklore and tradition. Most of which had been kept alive by the working classes.

Although it's equally possible this is how he'd have chosen to paint anyway. He enjoyed cycles of paintings in which he could tell stories and sure enough several of them are on display in Dulwich. They tackle subjects as big as the creation of the world and use Goethe's colour theory. Musical instruments appear alongside fantastic worlds inspired by the architecture of the ancients. A whole new world is created, Again, it's not too far from William Blake.

Raigardas (1907)

Sometimes he looked closer to home. Raigardas is a popular walking spot near where Ciurlionis grew up but, crucially, one with a folktale attached. Raigardas is said to have been, in the past, a wealthy city whose citizens behaved indulgently and thus incurred the wrath of the god of thunder who punished them, rather harshly you might think, by having the ground swallow them up.

Legend has it that the sunken city comes to life at night and you can hear both the tolling of the bell and the wailing of those stuck underground. It's quite a bleak story for such a pretty painting. It shows that Ciurlionis had a moralistic thrust behind his work as well as a fanciful one. A political one too. The Sorrow series have been read as the artist's commentary on political protests he'd witnessed in Warsaw. The thrusting black forms believed to be representative of protestor's flags.

Sorrow (1906/7)

Daybreak (1906)

 The Zodiac:The Sun is Passing the Sign of Scorpio (1906//7)

 The Zodiac:The Sun is Passing the Sign of Virgo (1906/7)

The Zodiac:The Sun is Passing the Sign of Aquarius (1906/7)

Zodiac:The Sun is Passing the Sign of Pisces (1906/7)

It's a stretch but let's go with it. What we can see with more certainty is that Ciurlionis seemed to be more at home when he was dabbling in more airy-fairy, or ethereal, belief systems. I'm always astounded, and disappointed, when I meet a person who takes astrology even remotely seriously. The letters of Ciurlionis suggest he was one of those people and the fact that he was interested in the idea that zodiac signs date back to ancient Indian vedas doesn't really excuse him but his Zodiac series of paintings are rather lovely.

Probably best enjoyed as art for art's sake without having to worry about your star sign. But then I would say that, I'm a Virgo. I like facts. One fact that nobody seems certain on is who pioneered fully abstract painting. Debate has raged on for about seventy years now. The Estonian art critic Aleksis Rannit, back in 1949, delivered a lecture in Paris in which he placed Ciurlionis in that role ahead of Kandinsky who is more often given that distinction. Before going on to suggest to the audience that Kandinsky had probably been inspired by, or even copied, Ciurlionis.

They certainly both exhibited in St Petersburg salons in 1909 and it is known that Kandinsky invited Ciurlionis to send work for includsion in a Munich show. Though the invitation arrived too late for Ciurlionis. It seems strange, then, that Kandinsky's widow later claimed her husband had never once set eyes on the work of Ciurlionis.

Summer (1907)

The Sun (1907)

I'm torn. For me, Ciurlionis' work, though impressive, is not fully abstract but then neither is all of Kandinsky's. It's a debate I'm not going to find an answer for here and it doesn't seem to be one that particularly concerned Ciurlionis during his shprt life. He was more concerned with Hinduism, Ancient Egyptian sun worship, and the cult of Prometheus.

Best seen in an amazing series from 1909 called SONATA NO.7:Sonata of the Pyramids. In it we can see pyramids and other towering peaks surrounded by palm trees and lit by a selection of suns. Bridges connect worlds on blurred horizons. It is a triumph of the imagination.

SONATA NO 7:Sonata of the Pyramids:Allegro (1909)

SONATA NO 7:Sonata of the Pyramids:Andante (1909)

SONATA NO 7:Sonata of the Pyramids:Scherzo (1909)

SONATA NO 5:Sonata of the Sea (1908)

Another 'sonata', SONATA NO 5:Sonata of the Sea, was completed when Ciurlionis was staying at the seaside resort of Palanga near the Estonian border. After swimming out to sea, the artist had become drawn to the patterns of sand and fascinating plant life below the waves. The sea he's painted looks far too dramatic to be swimming, or observing plant life, in. In fact it seems to owe more than a small debt to Hokusai's The Great Wave (Under the Wave of Kanagawa).

Ciurlionis once commented that the monotony of Lithuanian folk songs reminded him of "the eternal movement of the sea" and how "one hears in them an almost religious longing and unearthly sorrow". Ciurlionis thought a lot about music and art combined and as metaphors for life. He said he imagined "the whole world as a great symphony", the people being the notes and his home town the melody. He'd have surely been pleased that the avant-garde artist and theorist Kazimir Malevich described Ciurlionis as "the most talented member of the Russian School at the beginning of the century".

Ciurlionis, as with many who love music, also appreciated the power of silence. In a letter to his future wife, Sofija, in 1908 he asked her "to listen to silence" and told her he'd "like to compose a symphony from the murmur of the waves, from the mysterious language of the ancient forest, from the twinkling of the stars", and from his own "immense longing". Sweet. He even painted silence.

Silence (1908)

I rather like it. It stands in wonderful contract to his more fantastical, allegorical, and mythical creations. Inspired by the Symbolists, Ciurlionis would reject progress and modernity while at the same time turning out to be one of the most modernist artists out there. He looked back, or sideways, to look forward and if he didn't always reach the levels of transcendence he aimed for he can't be faulted for not trying.

1909's The Altar looks like an architectural caprice but is believed to reference "the seven steps in the theosophical creation of humanity" (the celestial sphere begins on the fourth, keep up!), The City imagines a future architecture which seems to owe a lot of the architecture of the past, while Lightning powerfully captures the brutal force of nature. Or, perhaps, nature gods.

The Altar (1909)

The City (1908)

Lightning (1909)

Fantasy (The Demon) (1909)

They're all great paintings and I don't necessarily feel the need to share Ciurlionis' belief in the supernatural, or higher forces, to enjoy them. In Prelude (The Knight Prelude), the artist has reimagined Vilnius, Lithuania's capital, as if the skyline has been dominated by that titular knight and in Fairy Tale of the Kings he's conjured up a dome, held by a queen, that holds an entire world inside it. Its own sun, its own moon, cities, constellations, and even other worlds. Then it's all pared down again for a sun dappled trip to the beach for some angels.

 

Prelude (The Knight Prelude) (1909)

Fairy Tale (Fairy Tale of the Kings) (1909)

Angels (Paradise) (1909)

Angel (Angel Prelude) (1909)

This word of angels, fairy kings, gods, and queens can get a big D&D, a bit Game of Thrones, a bit Michael Moorcock and none of that stuff, with the exception of Hawkwind, have in the past been a big drawer for me. But, with Ciurlionis, you don't have spend several days of your life watching television (I do enough of that anyway) or leaf through 800 odd pages of, sometimes badly written, fiction.

You get to be the interpreter of his vision. In your own time and at your own pace. The show ends with 1909's Rex. It's pretty big, you can't see that here of course, but it's widely held to be the artist's most celebrated work. Perhaps that is partly down to its size or maybe it's because it's a rare work he made on an actual canvas. I'm not sure. To me it's as good, but no better, than a lot of the rest of his work. That makes it very good. I enjoyed my visit to the world of M.K.Ciurlionis. It was nice for a holiday. I'm not sure I'd want to live there though. Somebody might talk to me about astrology.

 Rex (1909)