Like angels propelled through the storm: artists on travel past and present

Not every trip is voluntary, sometimes it is made as a result of political conflict, migration and climate concerns. Who leaves voluntarily and who has a home to return to? And what do the paintings tell us about the role of travel in the past?

The exhibition On the horizon in the Centraal Museum opens with the 17th century painter elite, for whom the grande tour to Italy often meant an initiation journey into adulthood. A gap year avant la letter. You had to be in Italy to see the latest trends in painting. Back in the Netherlands, the Italians painted warm, Mediterranean horizons.

While the Italians set out on a journey with a clear goal in mind, ‘Wanderlust’ or ‘Fernweh’, as it came to the fore more emphatically in Romanticism, focuses precisely on the journey as such. That Wanderlust is timeless. This is still the case today, as evidenced by the impressive work of the Albanian artist Adrian Paci (1969). In the oil painting The Wanderers four men stroll through a warm-colored landscape that seems to be in constant motion, as if the yellowed grasses and twilight-colored sky (could it be morning or evening?) are swaying on a stiff breeze. Their faces are vague brushstrokes, and yet the body language that the red-haired man tells in a gesticulated manner betrays; the man next to him has his head turned towards him and listens intently, while the man in the back right half-heartedly tries to catch the conversation. Finally, the fourth man has lost his mind, he looks into the distance.

A video diptych of the same name by Paci can be seen next to the painting, in which the camera pans in opposite directions over the artist’s Albanian homeland. Paci fled Albania with his family in 1997 because of a civil war. In the left video, the camera moves forward in black and white along a road, past a tuft of sheep and people here and there. Then the right video shows a majestic mountainous landscape, over which the camera moves along another road, but looking backwards. Occasionally people enter the frame of the camera and quickly leave.

Removing angel

The opposite camera movement is reminiscent of Walter Benjamin’s (1892 – 1940) interpretation of the watercolour Angelus Novus by Paul Klee (1879 – 1940). The philosopher of culture describes the Angelus Novus in On the concept of history (1940) as “an angel about to move away from something on which it fixes its gaze.” Beautifully is how he describes the flight of the angel propelled by the storm: “Into the future into which he has turned his back, While the heap of rubble before him grows to heaven. This storm is what we call progress.”

The storm of progress: industrialization and globalization resulting in oppression, migration and the climate crisis. With Paci, the camera seems like the angel: the way forward is a delayed black and white interspersed with the past, while in the right video the camera moves forward but is turned to the past.

Promised land

The exhibition includes work by many young artists, such as the impressive Ntabamanzi (2022) by Lungiswa Gqunta (1990). She carefully wrapped meters of barbed wire with blue textile, a time-consuming process to give this prickly material a slightly softer edge. The visitor can carefully go through the tunnel, at his own risk. A slightly chilling experience. The installation is reminiscent of the barbed-wire borders that migrants encounter.

Even those who reach the promised land have hurdles to overcome. Then the question arises how welcome the stranger is. The words ‘you don’t have to be here’ look down at the visitor from a high angle in space. Demissionary Prime Minister Mark Rutte clearly processed the statement ‘You don’t have to be here’ in an open letter (2017) prior to the parliamentary elections to people with a migration background. He implied that everyone should adapt to the Dutch ‘norm’. Greek artist Antonis Pittas (1973) executed the statement in yellow reflective foil Untitled (You don’t have to be here)2018.

Etel Adnan

While the travel of artists in the 17th century was a rather elitist, purposeful expedition, concerns about migration, climate and displacement cast a veil over the once carefree journey in a large part of the contemporary works. In that light, Etel Adnans (1925-2021) offers work Le Soleil Toujours (2021) a glimmer of hope. The artist grew up in Beirut and lived in Paris and San Francisco, among other places. In her poems and books she wrote much about the grim political reality of displaced life. But towards the end of her life she made this impressively sized work, made up of 136 colorfully painted, handmade ceramic tiles. With the sun in the radiant center.

The last space called ‘Annex’ is also cautiously optimistic. Documentary The Undercurrent (50 minutes, 2019) by Rory Pilgrim (1988) contains interviews with young American climate activists and the homeless, interspersed with beautiful music in which the young people move through a detached house in free choreography. (Pilgrim himself played the piano, the organ and made electronic music). The house seems like a refuge from the storm of ‘progress’. The British multidisciplinary artist won the Prix de Rome in 2019 with this poetic work. Fortunately, the new generation – despite a lot of worries – has the courage, music and each other to keep the house of the future habitable.