Rocks of Ladakh 1933

Nicholas Roerich made this painting, Rocks of Ladakh, with thin paint in what looks like tempera or gouache. It's got this otherworldly color palette, right? Like a dreamscape made real. What strikes me is how he's flattened everything, simplifying the forms of the mountains into these geometric shapes. Look at the rocks in the foreground – they’re covered in these ancient, scrawled figures. It's like Roerich is collapsing time, layering human history onto the geological history of the landscape itself. The paint is so thin it's almost like looking at a fresco, a surface that's been aged and weathered by time. The more I look, the more it reminds me of Arthur Dove, in the way he captured the essence of a place, but Roerich does it with this added layer of mysticism. You can almost hear the echoes of prayers and chants in the wind. Roerich isn't just showing us a place; he’s inviting us into a different way of seeing.