A Holy Place
Whether we think of paradise as a place or a state of being, it is fundamentally unitive in nature, characterized by the harmonious interrelationship of all creation. By 1859, inspired by his travels to South America, the American artist Frederic Edwin Church had painted The Heart of the Andes. It is a landscape in which the interconnectedness of the created world becomes a metaphor for God’s Kingdom.
The painting is Church’s largest and most ambitious work, and a tribute to the naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt. It was inspired by Humboldt’s Naturgemälde, or plant geography map, which recorded data relating plants to the environment of Mt. Chimborazo in Ecuador. Like the map Humboldt created and which served as a template for Church, the painting depicts a totality rather than a single place at a specific time. As a visualization of Humboldt’s scientific study, The Heart of the Andes possesses qualities that make it unique in landscape painting, while it also speaks to a deeper understanding of the interdependence of all beings.
The influence of landscape painting seems to run deep, its influence on early photography and eventually mass media conditioning how we look at nature. We seek beauty in the environment, creating our own landscapes every time we point a cell phone camera at a breathtaking view.
In Los Angeles, where I live, when the day is clear enough, the cool shimmer of the Pacific Ocean may be just visible beyond the city. I will breathe deeply, drawing in the surrounding air as my attention becomes centered. Depending on the season or place, the path I climb may be covered by a blanket of matted leaves, gently thudding underfoot, or dry as a bone pressing through the soles of my shoes.
Though I feel small in the immensity of my surroundings, I will sense an intimate attachment to all of it. If I am with someone else, I don’t feel the need to speak in between the puffing of my lungs, and anyway I don’t want to interrupt the communion I’m experiencing with nature. Oftentimes, when passing someone on a trail, I sense a shared reverence for the place we are traversing. Like walking into a great cathedral, there is peace and a quiet respect for the sacredness of the place.
I imagine climbing the terrain of Church’s landscape, where I stand on a height at a distance, consumed by the splendor as though watching a stage on which creation unfolds. This abundance of life includes over one hundred identifiable plants, part of a comprehensive topography representing every climate zone of the region. Lush vegetation in the foreground leads past sunlit plains towards the barren mountains. Mt. Chimborazo hovers in the far distance, its snow-capped peaks like a majestic crown of ice. Humboldt believed that everything in nature is connected. Church undertook the challenge to present this belief through the language of painting. He arranged the varied forms of nature into a cohesive whole.
As we scan this panoramic space, our eyes alight upon a winding path in the lower left portion of the canvas. It is a sign of human life imprinted on the land. Following its trail we are led to two tiny figures on a cliffside, situated at the foot of a wooden cross. These are the native people of the Andes, who were thought to share a harmonious existence with the larger environment in which they are embedded. Almost lost in their bountiful surroundings, the two figures are consumed in a sea of green. Human presence is no more significant than any tree or stone. In the far distance, their small village sits at the center of the picture, nestled along the river, protected by dense foliage. The divine presence, arising through the rich tones of the earth, folds human life and environment into one.
Identification with the natural world is a product of contemplation, and the landscape is produced by the imaginative recollection that follows. Much more than a record of a place, Church’s landscape is an inspired reflection of the sanctity of the environment as he experienced it. It is true of the Romantic landscape in general, that as the artist goes outdoors and contemplates nature, he or she integrates with its source and projects themselves into the land. In the far left foreground of the painting, Church signed his name on a tree trunk, simulating carved letters and personalizing the landscape. It is as though he is reminding us that a landscape painting is always the artist’s subjective reconstruction of a place, born out of the experience of oneness with nature.
And then there is that tiny, humble cross at the end of the footpath. Church traveled to the Andes inspired by Humboldt. But the artist saw the environment through the eyes of his religious faith. Knowing that Church was a devout Protestant, we can imagine how he may have projected a vision of the garden of Eden onto the landscape. Like Church’s Andes, Eden represents the totality of the created world, including humankind, living harmoniously in one place. The cross in Church’s landscape serves to mark this locale as a cathedral of nature and a modern garden of Eden. Although from a historical perspective it is a mark of colonialism, pictorially it depicts the interdependence of man and nature and their common source in God. The cross invites us to view the grandeur in front of us from the perspective of redemption.
One of the most famous artists of his time, Church was a leading figure among a group of American artists known as the Hudson River School. These artists carried on the Romantic tradition inherited from Europe, helping to shape an emerging national identity. Their landscapes presented a vision of America as a land where human life and nature coexist in pastoral settings that reflect the presence of God. Today, the Romantic landscape is commonly thought to be a cultural construct linked to the idea of land as a commodity, or a form of idealism, nostalgia or escapism from the anxieties provoked by the progress of industrialism. Visions of a pure land in which human life is part of the natural order have been seen as expressions of pantheism.
But I am compelled to view The Heart of the Andes in the light of panentheism, not the world as God, but as the world being in God. As a meditation on interconnectedness, it is both deeply personal and universal—a manifestation of the Cosmic Christ experience.
For Pierre Teilhard de Chardin the Cosmic Christ is an expansion of the historical Jesus. It denotes the essential oneness of reality. Richard Rohr writes about it when referring to interconnection in the flow of love, calling it the Universal Christ. Its place in Christian tradition and its potential for reimagining a more just society have been more recently explored by Matthew Fox and others. Like the Buddha Nature, the Cosmic Christ is a way of describing the holy consciousness of the created world. As the mystical side of Christianity, emphasizing the interconnection of the material and the spiritual, the Cosmic Christ encourages our compassionate nature when we find our own place in its flow. Church’s composite landscape is a visualization of this state of interconnectedness through the Cosmic Christ, and thus a meditation on compassion as directed towards the environment. It summons us to a compassionate engagement with all of life, and recognizing the sacred nature of place naturally leads us to care about the ecology that sustains us.
Nothing has a separate existence from God. Nature and all it includes makes up the body of Christ. Therefore the spirit of Christ is resurrected when we contribute to and share in the blessings provided by the earth, with all its abundant life forms. Embracing oneness with all of creation, we share in the body of Christ and we are moved to act for the benefit of all life.
An Art of Consciousness
The artists of the Hudson River School leave us an important legacy with regard to raising consciousness about our relationship to the earth. Their paintings had a strong influence on the preservationist movement of the mid- to late-nineteenth century, and some of these artists were directly involved in science and environmental work. In the case of The Heart of the Andes, Church realized a vision of rich beauty built on scientific observation. The painting provides a bridge from aesthetics to environmental awareness.
Humboldt’s geography of plants was unique at the time because it was a study of relationships in the natural world, rather than a pure description of isolated parts. While other scientists looked at nature through the limits of classification, he saw the earth as a living organism. For Humboldt, the earth constituted a web of life in which all parts were interdependent. Church viewed the environment similarly, and through painting communicates these relationships in a way that a mapping of data cannot. His painterly skill in representing the region’s climate, environmental features, and local people transports us to another world.
The taxonomic accuracy with which the flora and fauna of his landscape were painted are in fact part of the work’s expressive impact. The play of light and shadow as it falls across the vegetation, the muscular beauty of rocky outcroppings, and the majesty of the rugged mountain range evoke feelings of delight. I can hear the rumble of the falls, breaking the glass surface of the tranquil lake. The wildflowers expel their aroma along the cliff sides. All sorts of creatures live amongst the dense foliage, their chatter carried on the breeze.
As viewers we are impacted by the aesthetic power of his painting, which invites us to identify our own relationship to nature and to venerate the larger set of relations in which we play a part. This self-identification within a system of relations is what leads to spiritual maturity. Growing beyond our limited self and recognizing ourselves in the Cosmic Christ engenders compassion for the earth. Acting through compassion leads to healing.