Krishna. Magic flute. 1938

Nicholas Roerich painted Krishna playing his flute amidst an epic mountain landscape in this canvas of unknown date. Roerich’s approach to color and mark-making is fascinating. The paint is applied in these smooth, almost graphic planes, creating a flattened, dreamlike space. The mountains, rendered in blues, purples, and whites, are simplified into geometric forms, and Krishna himself is outlined with a crispness that feels almost like a block print. The texture of the paint doesn't seem to be particularly emphasized, it is more about the precise arrangement of colors. There is something so wonderfully surreal about this image. It is a scene rooted in the spiritual traditions of India, but transformed into something almost otherworldly. The starkness of the composition, the cool palette, and the stylized figures all contribute to this sense of a reality slightly askew. Roerich's blend of spiritual subject matter with a simplified, almost modernist aesthetic reminds me of the work of Marsden Hartley. Like Hartley, Roerich seemed to be searching for a visual language that could express something beyond the material world, embracing ambiguity and multiple interpretations.