INAUGURAL ISSUE - AUGUST 2003

ISSN 1448 - 6326

WILLIAM ROBINSON AND NATURE

Robert Tilley

Ideas matter, and those that matter most are about exactly that: matter. Which is to say, ideas about the world, or rather the cosmos. How it is constituted and, more importantly, its relationship (if any) to God (if any).

In other words, metaphysics, and more particularly ontology, are matters of utmost importance not only to philosophers proper but to us in our everyday world as well. So, for example, if we see the world as merely so much 'stuff' to be pressed into service then our attitude, not to say our government policies, will differ greatly than if we see it as a unitary living organism going by the name of Gaia. With the former we may be tempted to mine and despoil great tracks of rainforest, while in the latter we might fall on our knees and worship these same great tracks.

Not that these are the only options, but the opposition they have to each other expresses well the fact that our ideas will influence the world around us, whether we like it or not. And this can be seen not only in academic debates but in the everyday world around us: in pollution, land clearing, erosion and so forth.

How we view the world is likewise profoundly felt in art - here, in fine art - and it is this paper's argument that it is seen not merely in the way one might choose to represent a landscape, but also in the way an artist develops: how their talent, their vision, will grow, and how their work will come to be assessed.

To explain what is meant by this I will treat of one of Australia's - if not the world's - greatest landscape painters, William Robinson.

Some years ago (January 1995) I presented a paper at the second Religion, Literature and the Arts conference in Sydney, entitled 'William Robinson: The Turning of Fecundity'. Although unpublished it had something of a readership, and in his column in the SMH of 13/7/96 ('Sea Change'), John McDonald referred to it as a "reassuring" essay. Why? McDonald wrote that any "spiritual reading of Robinson's work" was "often sneered at." Consequently, it was good to see that some were treating the topic seriously.

Well, times have changed, and the changing of the times can be tracked through the works on Robinson. Compare, for example, the first book published on the artist by Lynn Fern, William Robinson (Craftsman House, Sydney, 1995), with that of Lou Klepac's (William Robinson. Paintings 1987-2000, The Beagle Pr., Sydney, 2001). And, more recently still, the collection of essays in the work that served as the catalogue to the Queensland Art Gallery's retrospective on Robinson (Lynne Seear Darkness and Light: The Art of William Robinson, Qld. Art Gallery, Brisbane, 2001). If anything at all strikes one it is the fact that more and more the discussion on Robinson's work has become overtly religious (1). Both on the part of those who write about him, and on Robinson's part as he discusses his work.

Although there are references to God and religious affections in Fern's work they are nowhere near as pronounced as in Klepac's book, and in that edited by Seear. Prior to 1995 this comparative reticence was aided by the artist himself, at least in public. Certainly, at times, he did pronounce upon matters religious (see for example his comments in the SMH, Good Weekend of 20/8/94 ('William Robinson's Mature Perspective'), but by and large he was still playing the dumb-hillbilly-from-the-farm role.

For whatever reason it is quite plain that since at least 1996 on, Robinson has been more willing to talk more publicly and openly about his religious ideas, and the vision of such that informs his landscapes. One might say then, all well and good. But is it? There seems to me to be a problem in both the treatment of Robinson's religious vision and how it affects his work. I mean by this that there seems little evidence on either the critics' part, or on Robinson's, to actually address what the worth is of those ideas. Perhaps the most contentious issue in this paper is the assumption that some religious ideas are better than others, and that an artist has a responsibility to both his art and audience to understand what it is he or she is saying.

In our day 'faith' is seen as something private, enriching, and even healthy, but to be kept as a thing vague and non-systematic. For the assumption appears to be that by doing so one preserves its otherworldliness. In other words, there seems little consideration of the object of faith. Or, to put it another way, of the ideas involved. As long as such faith stays within these rather blurry borders, content to remain in an ethereal fog, then it wont come under the modern day ban of being 'dogmatic'. (If a faith should become 'dogmatic' then it is traduced as being 'fundamentalist'.)

But it is the idea that lends the faith any virtue it might possess, and which, in fact, informs and moves that faith. Which is to say, gives the faith its impetus, direction, and worth. Today, what many describe as 'faith' is in fact a rather confused mix of pantheistic and monistic systems with an overlay of theistic language.

What then is the faith that informs William Robinson's vision? What is it that guides his hand?

To begin to answer this I should start by confessing a failing in my earlier essay. One that I think John McDonald intimated when he wrote that although "Robinson would not see his work in the same philosophical terms" that I'd employed, "he would probably endorse this fundamental insight to his aims." (2)

What I was working with was a Trinitarian hermeneutic-ontology, one that would inform a revisioning of Natural Theology. I was explicating such by reference to the works of Robinson so as to counter Natural Theologies which are based on simple monotheistic schemes. Consequently, it was working with a specifically Christian Trinitarian metaphysic. I was using the example of Robinson's 'multi-viewpoint' perspective to understand Pericoresis (that is, dealing with the relations of the Divine Persons) in terms of a hermeneutic 'fecundity' (don't worry, it probably didn't make much sense then either).

The point is that if I gave the impression - which I think I did - that this was Robinson's 'faith' then that would have been misleading. And although in an interview with Craig McGregor ('Master of Creation', SMH 28/12/96) Robinson stated he was a Catholic, and read the "Bible almost every day," it is not clear that he would agree with the thesis above.

To begin to answer why Robinson wouldn't agree with it we need to turn to what will probably seem an altogether unrelated subject; to Romanticism (3).

There were, and are, different strains to Romanticism, and yet there are also common currents and these tend to be informed by a pantheistic dynamic (although, at other times, this pantheism could be more akin to a monistic Idealism). Attendant upon this was a natural theology wherein nature and God (usually Pan, though following Hutton, more and more the Goddess (4)) were one and the same. Nature revealed its divinity, as it were, through opposites: death/life, good/evil, dark/light, male/female etc. But these opposites resolved themselves, at least to those who could see, into a monistic unity.

There was also the sense that the human observer, by reason of his or her ability to reflect on the One/Whole, inhabited a special place. Nevertheless, human life is only as significant as everything else, for all is of the One. The so-called 'Transcendentalism' in such systems (Emerson's for example) is more a Kantian inspired Romanticist than a Christian one. It is not a transcendence predicated on an ontological difference between Creator and creation, but is rather an apprehension of the Whole/One which is both the ground and end of all particulars.

Finally, the accent in Romanticist thinking was on 'feelings' over reason. Indeed, this could often be seen as a disdain for reason as being merely 'theory', and a life-denying one at that. Thus, the poets, the writers, the artists, appealed to experience, for it was in setting out to experience all things that one would find liberation and life. Which often meant, for the nature mystics among them (5), the contemplation of nature untouched by the order of the human mind. It is a sentiment dominant today, and it is one commonly expressed in the saying, "Think with the heart, not with the head," and in the concomitant sentiment that reason and theory are 'cold and dead.'

And, of course, alongside the above was the catch cry of artistic Romanticism (via Ruskin): 'Art for art's sake'. Meaning by this, that art is an activity in itself and comes under the authority of no other discipline. Indeed, that it is the activity of humanity par excellence, being the experience par excellence, and is something of a secular religion.

It will be argued that for all of Robinson's standing apart from the 'art establishment' and its orthodoxy, he is, in fact, firmly to be located within it, at least in respect of the latter point. Further, that this position flows from his religious views, which views are very similar to those sketched above.

But first, I am neither arguing that art does not have its own proper domain, nor that an artist must be dictated to by theory. Only that there is no escaping such, and to the measure that one thinks one can do just that, one merely falls for an unstated, unargued for, and thus little understood theory. And today that 'theory', that faith, is a vague mish mash of Romanticist ideas.

Secondly, this has important ramifications, for at root such systems as the above tend to the inhuman. Or, perhaps less pejoratively so, to the nonhuman. Why should this be so? Art as a fundamental expression of humanity is, thereby, inextricably tied to those other fundamental expressions: worship and reason. As Chesterton pointed out (6), we know in the study of human evolution when we are dealing with humanity proper due to the presence of cave paintings and grave goods. Or, in other words, with art, religion, and reason. Cut off from religion and reason, art will simply become a travesty of the human. Indeed, it will become inimical to what is good in humanity, and end up in an increasingly diminishing range of self-referential, ever fragmenting, tedious attempts at cleverness or outrage. Or take a similar, although ostensibly opposed, route and become simply sentimental 'myth' replete with spectacular fireworks of some sort or another (think of the films Star Wars, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings). In short, in both cases art ends up as kitsch (7).

There is, however, another path that art takes into its descent into kitsch and that is through a faux religiosity or, to use the term common today, spirituality. And again, this brings us back to Romanticism.

When Robinson writes describing his work 'Creation Landscape. Water and Land' (1991) (8), "The whole work came together as a dark and mysterious series of events where I was tapping some eternal sources of truth and revelation; of how we are bound to this earth and how we relate our innermost feelings to nature,"(9) he is echoing many of the themes described above in relation to Romanticism.

In the Introduction to her book, Fern relates that when she visited the Robinson's farm at their rainforest property, she understood "how it was James Lovelock came to develop the concept of the earth as a total organism - as Gaia. It is a concept expressed visually in the landscape painting of William Robinson." (10) It is not entirely clear if these sentiments came to Fern via Robinson, but there is clear evidence that they are shared by him.

In the interview cited earlier with Craig McGregor, Robinson answered what appeared to be a query regarding pantheism. "...Pantheism? If God could be explained that simply, there would be no disbelievers. I don't find God under a stone or in a shell or in every grain of sand. If you use a word like pantheism it becomes very nineteenth century, a very unscientific and uncomplicated belief, almost like fundamentalism, so I wouldn't say that at all. Critics also talk about Caspar David Friedrich but that's also very nineteenth century...No. I paint what I feel." The point is here is that Robinson's rejection of pantheism relates more to the charge of being 'nineteenth' century, and thus dated and pigeon-holed, than it does to theological or philosophical concerns. When he does touch on these concerns - that it is to the charge of its being too simplistic and uncomplicated a belief - he clearly does not know of what he speaks. Nineteenth century pantheism/monism was far from being simplistic and unscientific.

A similar mistake occurs in Fern's book wherein she notes how comparisons with Caspar Friedrich's work, and related concepts of the Sublime, make Robinson uncomfortable. This is because, "the pantheism in their work is seen by him as a kind of primitive magical animism. Yet those who see aspects of the Sublime in his work have responded to it rather as the expression of a universal spirit in all things, identifying God with the forces of nature." (11) One should note that the nineteenth century Romanticist concept of pantheism was hardly of the order of a "primitive magical animism," but was more akin to identifying God with the "forces of nature."

It would appear, from Fern's comments, that the latter sense of pantheism would not meet with Robinson's disapproval. And this is something somewhat confirmed by many of his comments in Klepac's book.

Thus, in relation to the raison d'etre of his use of 'multi-viewpoint' (begun in 1984 and now something of a signature to his work), Robinison states that "the Oxford definition of pantheism is identification of God with the Universe, and as such I agree with a search for a presence in my work." However, "I do not believe that my work is particularly linked to the nineteenth century concerns with pantheism." Rather, is his inspiration found in "my life and places where I live." (12) In other words Robinson is still concerned with being 'dated', and being identified with what he thinks is a variety of nineteenth century pantheism. He wishes it to be made quite clear that his work proceeds from an unsullied (in theory at least) contact with the bush. His point is that his is a personal experience of pantheism, not one mediated through ideas from another century. His is an unmediated apprehension of the oneness of all that is. Although it is his aim to mediate this apprehension to others through his work, and he endeavours to do so through the employment of the aforementioned 'multi-viewpoint' device. Writing on his work The Rainforest (1990) Robinson states how it strives to convey "a feeling for the one-ness of soul with all creation. Each part is closely observed but belongs to the one-ness of existence." (13)

This 'one-ness' is tied to a notion similar to, if not identical with, Lovelock's on Gaia (which would seem to confirm that Robinson was the source of Fern's comment recorded above). Thus, in discussing Tweed Valley and Numenbah from Springbrook (1998) Robinson writes, "I view the earth as a living organism of which we are a part, that is ideally part of its complete unity and complexity. I believe my paintings reflect this in some way by the inclusion of the viewer." (14)

This is close to the Romantic monistic-Idealism wherein the Mind is the cosmos knowing itself as a Whole. Or to put it in the Neo-platonic terms often employed by the more philosophical of the Romanticists: The Same knowing the Same through its very sameness (fulfilling the Graeco-Roman epistemological rule 'Like is known by Like' in an absolute ontological manner). However, for the Romantics (and this is one of the places Hegel parted company with them in his conception of the One as Spirit) 'Mind' became 'feelings'. The accent fel on knowing through the emotions for, it was held, these were more 'honest' and direct, and 'in tune with' nature, than reason was. It is a sentiment very much in evidence in Robinson's remarks. "If my work is a response to the powers of nature, the whole range of emotions react to what I see." (15)

For it is the All, the One, that knows itself through itself in its feeling for itself. There is in Romanticism no ontological Other which can stand over and judge this world. A sentiment exemplified in the works of Nietzsche who stands squarely within the Romanticist tradition.

"There is a pulse," writes Robinson, "of which we are part - the same matter. One earth, from which there is no escape, we are not made from anything that has not always existed...I always remember that matter cannot be created or destroyed; only changed." (16)

There it is then, the Heraclitean - Stoic variety of monism (more so than the Parmenidean, Hermetic and later Neo-platonic variety), but this is the same variety that - pace Robinson - nineteenth century Romanticists ascribed to, and to which Nietzsche gave his imprimatur. The One is eternal (and thus so too all that is) but is so in eternal - or primal - contradiction and change. The Same as Same in changing sameness. A theme expressed in the idea of the Monad in the Dyad; the One manifested in difference. It was, and is, a theme prevalent in nineteenth and twentieth century esotericism and occultism, and was made popular by the works of Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell.

The Same in, through, and to the Same is via difference in opposition. These oppositions so-called, being those of Good/Evil, Darkness/Light, Creation/destruction, and Life/Death. Each part of the opposition is as equally constitutive of the One as the other, and are each ultimately of equal moral and ontological value. (This was Jung's, and some occultists', 'Philosopher's Stone' a theme the Harry Potter books take up.)

The foregoing is a theme not as explicit in Robinson's comments as is the subject of pantheism. Nevertheless, the logic of the Monad/Dyad dynamic is clearly present in his works, and not merely by reference to his comments on the "duality of nature," (17) or to statements like "in my painting this produces a movement from darkness to light and back." (18) It is a logic that informs his vision since at least the late 1980s, and it is one that utilises the symbol of the serpent.

In Creation Landscape - Darkness and Light (1988) there is, writes Robinson, a "development of the opposites." It is about the "oneness of the cosmos," and includes in its depiction of creation "Adam and Eve figures" (Robinson and his wife Shirley), as well as the serpent (19). What is of special interest to us is the coiling motion that runs through the five panel work. It is a coiling motion that mimics that of a tracing, turning serpent. It is a motif Robinson uses a number of times usually employing a river or creek in a serpentine manner. See, for example, his Landscape with Night and Day (1989), and Bush Pool and Sunlight (1992). But it is in his work The Sunshine Painting (1990) where it is most clearly, and effectively, evident. Across the three panels of this painting runs a river (Botan Creek), which river appears very much like, both in coiling and colour, the Rainbow Serpent. (The Rainbow Serpent has become, at least in Western New Ageist folklore, a figure of creation and destruction.)

In the Neo-gnostic currents associated with certain movements in Romanticism the unity of all was depicted by the primal forces of Death and Life, symbolized by the Knowledge of Good and Evil, which Knowledge came via the serpent. But the serpent coils in on itself, just as 'creation' returns to itself through the processes of death, destruction, and evil. As the famous image has it, the serpent turns to swallow its own tail. Ultimately, however, it is, as Nietzsche put it, the 'Eternal return of the Same.'

I stress that I am not arguing that Robinson has such a fully worked out system as that detailed above, only that his is a system that, like so many others' today, is a mixture of themes taken from classical theism but wedded, often unknowingly, to ideas antithetical to theism; namely to pantheism and monism.

It is here that I want to suggest what tends to be the end of such pantheistic/monistic systems and how their failure expresses itself in art.

In my earlier essay I tried to make the point that in Robinson's art there was a coiling fecundity, one that swept the viewer like a wave, over and over into an abundance of life. That it did so by a kind of baroque swelling outward, and inward, opening as it did onto what is ontologically Other to creation; namely God. God is not identical with nature, and yet it is this ontological difference that is the very dynamic of the unfolding life that is creation. I would argue then, that pantheism/monism being the absolute dominance of the Same, being an entirely closed system, is inimical to fecundity, which is to say, to life. It is the subordination of the Other to the Same par excellence. In short, it is opposed to a Christian doctrine of creation. No wonder then that Pope Pius IX in his Syllabus of Errors (1864) declared that pantheism was "the first heresy to be anathematized by true Christians." (20)

In pantheism there is no true, no real, other, all is subordinate to a primal, final, Same. Furthermore, evil/sin in such systems is accorded the same ontological status as the good, and, for that matter, ultimately the same value and worth as well. Whereas, in Christianity evil is parasitic on the good, and is nothing in itself. Properly speaking, evil/sin has no substance/essence of its own: it is a disorder. It is not, again properly speaking, natural. For all that is, all that is natural, is per se good, having been created so by a good, omnipotent, God. Evil/sin is a derogation from being, a falling away into non-being, it is not equal in any way to the good (21). What implications, then, does this have for art?

Here I would employ, and adapt, Arendt's thesis concerning the 'banality of evil' in her famous work Eichmann in Jerusalem. Evil is, in the pejorative sense of the word, banal. It is shallow, vapid, and clichéd. It is so because it is nothing in itself except parasitic on, and thus destructive of, the good. Only the good can be deep and profound, and evil can only mimic such profundity, hence it is only in Gothic novels and Hollywood that evil appears sophisticated and deep. Only in Hollywood does evil seem sexy, sensuous, witty, and cultured. The reality of evil, however, is rather different. (Look for example at the art produced by the Nazis, Fascists and Communists. Try sitting in on criminal trials, or Royal Commissions, or hang around drug addicts and thugs, and see how deep and profound 'sin' is.)

Pantheism, as Pattison argues, is 'vulgar', by reason that it is most-common, being self-referential, and because it encompasses all in a measure of equal worth. Consequently, it is only ever able to ultimately die. It feeds upon itself until it starves itself, and then, exhausted, it decays, and that usually by way of a sentimental nostalgia. A nostalgia depicted by sunsets and landscapes, with ruins evidencing the passing of man. In other words, pantheism in the arts will end up with the sigh, "Great Pan is dead."

The sunsets become confused with the dawns (after all, they're all one and the same), but there is always a drift toward a darkness: a gothic darkness of melodrama and caricature.

Since at least 1998/1999 there is a discernible drift in Robinson's work towards a kind of coral darkness: a reef of hues but all tending to a tidal black. A closing in of still glittering colours, but now the trees, more often than not, appear to be turning in on themselves. (I think here especially of the work on show at the Australian Galleries from 13/8/02 - 7/9/02. But one could see this, as well, in the beach series exhibited at the Ray Hughes Gallery from 28/6/96 - 24/7/96.) In other words, what occurs is a descent into an ever decreasing world, through the logic of absolute self-reference that is pantheism.

It might be objected that Robinson's is not so thought out a system, and that his pantheism is merely a misnamed 'panentheism'. Which is to say, simply a doctrine of the radical immanence of God in creation, along the lines of de Chardin's work, or that of certain Process Theologians. Perhaps, only it is not just Robinson's statements but his works as well that appear to be operating, increasingly so, within the logic of pantheism. Further, although many have a rather eclectic mix of ideas it is still true to say that over time the inherent logic underlying these ideas will work itself out. We tend to underestimate the power of ideas, thinking that the dynamic of such is well within our conscious control. But that is not the case, and history is full of ideas the logical corrolaries of which work themselves out in horrific ways (22). Ideas matter, and this leads us to ask, where then now for Robinson?

In the collection of essays that make up the Queensland Gallery's catalogue, reference is made a number of times to Robinson's drawing a parallel with his depiction of the rainforest and Chatres Cathedral. Both Seear and Hannah Fink, for example, cite this as a point of entry into understanding Robinson's religious vision (23). With this I would agree, but in the very opposite way that Robinson and these authors would have it. To put it simply: Chatres, like other Gothic structures, is human, Robinson's art, however, is increasingly inhuman, because purposefully devoid of the human.

In earlier works Robinson would include himself and his wife as a locus of the landscape, through which the landscape was being viewed, while they too were viewed as being part of that landscape. From the late 1980s on they begin to disappear. In Creation Landscape: Man and the Spheres (1991), Robinson writes how a "kind of mystical Adam and Eve appear." "This work has William and Shirley in the illusion of the cosmos itself (24)." He and his wife have become respectively, a disembodied head with stars on the crown, and a figure in a pool, reflecting the sky, swimming with the moon. There is a point being made about the relationship between the macro and the micro (or, as the Hermetica has it, in one of the more popular monistic-esoteric phrases, 'As above, so below'), but the deeper point - quite possibly not being consciously made by the artist - is that the micro (the human) is being swallowed up by the macro (The Cosmos/The One). Soon the transition is complete and what we are left with is the picture of the turning, primal forces of Nature which, we are led to understand, precede humanity and will continue long after humanity is gone. Humanity is a mere instance in the eternal 'changing' of the cosmos. We are not - as the Romantics and, more recently, Deep Ecologists tell us - the summit of creation; we are merely one more, very little part of it. We are, objectively speaking, of no greater value than any other animal. We come, we go, just like them, and the landscape keeps bursting on in all its wild and dark beauty. In other words, Robinson's paintings present the One, the Same, in all its indifference to what is human. It is in this sense that they are becoming, increasingly so, inhuman.

Chatres is not like that, because Gothic is emphatically not like that. Gothic architecture peopled its domain with a profusion of figures human and demonic, and it did so to present what is ontologically Other to this cosmos; namely God. When darkness was used in its demonic form or as an absence of light, it was done so as to provide a foil to the light and to the good. To serve, by way of highlighting and contrast, what is other to a world tainted by evil. The dark and the demonic are not equal, ontologically or morally, to the light and good.

Humanity, in all its variety, is represented in these cathedrals because humanity is also what a cathedral serves. Humanity is no mere incidental to these cathedrals, rather is humanity at the apex of the cosmos. The personal is what all creation serves (and this both by reference to the Persons of God and to humanity). Chatres, therefore, stands in opposition to the logic in Robinson's work (25), and the fecundity and awe he found in that cathedral is one predicated on the Other and not on the Same.

What, then, of the effect of such ideas upon the work of the artist? The following is, of course, highly speculative but I think they are tendencies that can be traced in the history of Romanticist culture.

The general tendencies in Romanticist thinking are by and large few, although the expressions of such can be more varied. In the face of the inevitable, because logical, tedium and enervation that comes from monistic/pantheistic systems, one is driven to a number of responses so as to regain some kind of drive.

First, there is the leaning to the esoteric. One gains a kind of zest from a select sense of a spiritual hierarchy, based on how one knows the Oneness of the Cosmos. While others, who are caught in the drab confines of the city and so-called civilisation, just can't understand. They are, after all, out of touch with the One, because out of touch with Nature.

When Robinson writes against the host of imaginary interlocuters that, "the power of nature is not observed from the armchair of suburbia, (26) " and how he has experienced the intensity of such power, unlike those who practice a "bloodless dispassionate way of dissecting art, (27)" then he draws perilously close to the just mentioned activity.

Secondly, and often following on from the first, there is the recourse to posture: to acclamation, to fame. Our age is an age of celebrity writ large. Where fame doesn't just convey adulation and riches, but also the idea that being so elevated one is, as well, gifted with wisdom. Fame is success, and that is enough to prove that one is right. One becomes a solitary hero, but one with a large audience. It was never enough for Nietzsche to believe he alone knew, or he alone stood on icy peaks, he had to have an audience to applaud him for it.

And, following on from that is the third, and often final, station for the artistic vision: the descent into kitsch and sentimentality. Fame is, as we all know, a passing thing, and out of fear of losing it people resort to formulas. Now there is nothing wrong with formulas per se in art, or in anything else for that matter. Rather, it is when formulas go bad; when they become simply caricatures. Empty, sentimental, button-pushing works that sell, but reflect badly on the artist concerned, as every travesty does. To adopt and adapt Arendt's insight: kitsch is the banality of evil as expressed in art.

Often times, especially in these eclectic late-modern days, we think that we are not influenced by ideas. We are pragmatic, follow-the-evidence-of-our senses types who are not given to systems, unlike those fundamentalists. Others claim their vision is one given to them by Nature, unmediated by other people. The landscape talks to them and they listen, their feelings are their ears. Such people claim an unmediated authority, and they insist that what they hold to really has no forebears; their progenitor is Nature herself. But, the nineteenth century thinkers and painters still exercise their influence - no matter how much we may think otherwise - because ideas do not die so easily, and unless addressed by reason and argument they will simply grow in darker, more hidden environs: in this case, in the denials of a Nature mystic.

FOOTNOTES

1. Given the time we live in one might be tempted to use the term 'spiritual'. But it is a ghastly word, conjuring up images of anaemic religion. Given that, however, if used to describe modern, secular forms of consumer religiosity then it serves a purpose. In Robinson's case to use it so early on would be to assume too much.

2. McDonald op cit.

3. For overviews of Romanticism, its history, influences and ideas I have used among other works the following; Abrams, MH Natural Supernaturalism, W.W.Norton & Co., New York, 1971. Berlin, I The Proper Study of Mankind, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 1997. Coates, P Nature: Western Attitudes since Ancient Times, Uni. of California Pr., Berkeley, 1998. Gillespie, M Nihilism Before Nietzsche, The Uni. of Chicago Pr., Chicago, 1995. Kirschner, S The Religious and Romantic Origins of Psychoanalysis, Cambridge Uni. Pr., Cambridge, 1996. Pattison, R The Triumph of Vulgarity, Oxford Uni. Pr., New York, 1987. On the esoteric/occult Romanticist themes informing much modern 'spirituality' see, Noll, R The Jung Cult, Free Pr. Paperbacks, New York, 1994. Goodrich-Clarke, N The Occult Roots of Nazism, The Aquarian Pr., Wellingborough, 1985, Hitler's Priestess, New York Uni. Pr., New York, 1998. Hutton, R The Triumph of the Moon, Oxford Uni. Pr., Oxford, 1999.

4. Hutton op cit. p.34ff.

5. There were those within the current who sought out 'liberating experience' from civilisation and reason's dead hand via debauchery and libertinism. See, Gillespie op cit ch.4.

6. Chesterton, G K The Everlasting Man, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1925, ch.1.
The philosopher Karsten Harries wrote, "The need for Kitsch arises when genuine emotion has become rare, when desire lies dormant and needs artificial stimulation. Kitsch is an answer to boredom. When objects cannot elicit desire, man desires desire. More precisely, what is enjoyed or sought is not a certain object, but an emotion, a mood, even, or rather especially, if there is no encounter with an object that would warrant that emotion. Thus religious Kitsch seeks to elicit religious emotion without an encounter with God, an erotic Kitsch seeks to give the sensations of love without the presence of someone with whom one is in love."

7. Cited by R Kimball, 'Kitsch Appeal', Spectator, 26/6/99.

8. I think this 'emptiness' lies behind the elevation of 'faith' above the object of faith, and in the modern appropriation of negative theology in which it is tied to an eclectic, and vague, mysticism one divorced from tradition and institution.
It should be noted that the date given after the paintings in the text refer only to the painting and not to Robinson's comments on them. By and large, unless noted otherwise, his comments were made around the turn of the millennium and are to be found in Klepac's book. This means that the ideas expressed in them are the result of some years reflection on Robinson's part and therefore provide a good insight into his religious ideas.

9. Klepac op cit p.80.

10. Fern op cit p.12. Lovelock's work Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth, locates itself squarely in the Romanticist tradition, see for example the Epilogue to the book.

11. Fern op cit p.31.

12. Klepac op cit p.41.

13. ibid p.75.

14. ibid p.139.

15. ibid p.150.

16. ibid p.169.

17. ibid pp.98, 105.

18. ibid p.105. That this 'movement' of the opposites of Light/Dark, which expresses a unity/one-ness in nature, informs most of Robinson's paintings since at least 1995/96 is to a degree confirmed by the title of the Qld. Art Gallery's catalogue of the Robinson retrospective, Darkness and Light.

19. Klepac op cit p.54.

20. One notes as well that the coiner of the term 'pantheism' John Toland wrote his work Pantheisticon, or the Liturgy of the Socratic Fraternity (1720) as a counter to Christianity.

21. For those interested in this see, Pelikan, J Christianity in Classical Culture, Yale Uni. Pr., New Haven, 1993.

22. I imagine the German Romantics, for example, would have been incredulous to see what came of much of their ideas in Nazi Germany. Hegel and Marx as well would, I venture, been likewise horrified at the Gulags.

23. Seear op cit, pp.23, 27. Hannah Fink, I think, wishes to see Robinson within a more theistic framework and so writes that he wishes "to trace God's exuberant creativity." That "what is in question is the relation of man to that universe" p.26. I think that Fink should have asked a little more as to what is the nature of this 'God', and what is the answer to the question concerning man's relationship to "that universe."

24. Klepac op cit, p.84.

25. Robinson cites the influence of Chatres while discussing his Creation Landscape - The Ancient Trees (1997) in Klepac ibid p.26.

26. ibid p.166.

27. ibid p.168.