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THE
faces that form a long gallery are not of this world and
yet they are of it—arcane presences invoked by the
artist Mark Lewis Higgins, both from his fervid
imagination and from his journeys into remote times and
places. They are human, nonetheless, and they bear their
humanity with utter grace: the women with soft doe eyes
and flawless skin, the men with a deep penetrating gaze
and a darker tint—no one can escape their spiritual
aura. At the same time, they bear the signs of their
noble rank with natural ease, in costumes laden with
jewels and sacred symbols. Often, they face you
frontally and they assert power with their steady,
unflinching gaze. At other times, their gaze is below
eye level, avoiding secular contact. But the pharaohs
among them gaze through you and beyond you to the
distant horizon where they seek their vision of
infinity.
Male and
female, they are also creatures of ritual with their
choreographed gestures, their long fascinating fingers
given to perusing sacred texts or writing messages in
strange calligraphies. Sometimes, their hands displayed
as separate icons on both sides of their heads reveal
their personal mark and symbol as letter or fruit. In
the series of Invisible Cities, these personages
of ancient nomadic tribes do not belong to a particular
country of origin, nor do they have distinct
physiognomies to link them with any tribe or social
group. They thus possess a pervasive hybridity, which,
though from ancient times, particularly gravitates to
the postmodernist, multicultural and multiethnic themes
of our times.
And yet,
these personages who seem to live in a liminal,
dreamlike world have a real claim to human history.
Hybrid beings though they are, such was nonetheless the
social and cultural condition that arose in the 2,000
years of the Silk Road, which linked together a
multitude of nomadic tribes, cities and civilizations
from China, Central Asia to the West. The great import
of this remarkable historic project which lasted for
many centuries from the time of the Greek statesman
Pericles to the Mongol warrior Genghis Khan was that it
made possible a lively exchange in terms not only of
material wealth, but also of ideas, religions and the
latest human innovations nourishing the Eastern and
Western civilizations and the whole extensive cultural
gamut in between, all the subtle nuances of belief and
ritual. It was of this time that Marco Polo wrote of his
travels to China with a tinge of romantic nostalgia
which stirred the adventurous spirit of the seafaring
Venetians. And, indeed, the Silk Road also opened a
maritime route where magnificent vessels plied the
ports.
Doubtless, the Silk Road created a unifying bond around
the world, as it also created sophisticated human
communities that developed their own arts, literature
and music. Cities grew and flourished along its path: on
one end, Peking in China, Karakorum in Central Mongolia,
Samarkand in Transoxania, Tabriz in Northern Iran,
Astrakhan in the Lower Volga and as far as
Constantinople in Turkey. Through these places, often
divided by barren deserts, such as the
Sahara, the
Gobi and the Kalahari, as well as forbidding cliffs and terrains,
passed the caravans of the
Silk Road, with relays and changes of animals, mostly camels,
elephants and horses, many of which were traded in
Europe. They carried innumerable chests filled with all
kinds of luxuries which the traders sometimes gave as
gifts to emperors and kings: silk, lapis lazuli, pearls,
jade, gold and ceramics in order to open a congenial
atmosphere for trade.
But with
these products also came a vast intellectual awakening
to the variety of human thought possible and a general
tolerance and coexistence of the different faiths and
philosophies. The cities of the Silk Road invited the
Nestorians, the Manichaeans, the Buddhist and later
Islamic clergies into Central Asia, China and the whole
of the Mongol Empire. They basked in the unlimited
speculative possibilities of the human mind.
Thus in
Higgins’s series of Invisible Cities and, later,
Diaspora, there is an underlying awareness of
human potential and fulfillment. The cultures of these
men and women do not follow a cut-and-dried distinction:
Greek intermingles with Egyptian, Chinese with Indian,
the tribes of Karakorum with those of Astrakhan—they all
come from the same rich mélange of culture that emerged
in the Silk Road. They, likewises display the opulence
of the culture with their gem-encrusted costumes,
fantastic headdresses and gilded calligraphies.
Their
very names hark back to this universal source: Rashaida,
Basileus, Tarquin, Amalric, Salamis, Belisaurus—names
resounding through time and place and evoking distant
kinships. It is they who have inherited the wealth of
the Silk Road. In the twin paintings entitled
Architecture 1 and 2, the first shows a
figure on the left in luxurious printed silk robe
wearing an exquisite headdress of the Hagia Sophia while
she holds a large illuminated tome in her hands, while
the second shows another woman wearing a headdress of
the Kaaba while she, too, peruses a formidable volume.
The pair Milutin and Simonides, wearing sacred symbols
on their lantern headdresses, carries models of Russian
churches in their hands. Architectural design, along
with mathematics and the arts, was, likewise, borne on
the currents of the time. Semiramis, wearing a halo and
touching her lips with painted fingers, displays a
fantastically illustrated book of geometry produced in
the time of the great Islamic scholars Avicenna and
Averroes.
In
Diaspora, these various personages disperse and seek
the four corners of the earth, if not their ultimate
end. Now, they possess an even greater hieratic quality
in their solemn frontality which here acquires a
three-dimensional aspect. Enhancing their solemn mien,
the glowing gemstones project from their costumes and
headdresses in inexhaustible designs, even gilded
ornamental bands following the line of the eyes and the
nose. But in this series, while the faces retain the
color of life, they are sometimes embedded or encased in
sarcophagi amid thick rope coils or paper packing. As
such, they convey the appearance of a newly excavated
figure just opened to the sight, an archaeological
marvel. The artist has, likewise, expanded his figures
in a single frame to three or four, with the central
head projecting three-dimensionally as molded in terra
cotta or shaped as a lapis lazuli mask.
To
create these images, Higgins basically uses gouache,
chalk pastel, acrylic, gold leaf, semiprecious stones
and gems. And with these, guided by his artistic
wizardry, he is able to bring to life the infinitely
alluring personages of the vanished world of the Silk
Road. |
