Loving Limitlessness

Carl Sagan observes out loud that “the sky calls to us.” The American astronomer’s words outline the singing power that rises from the chest and wilfully agrees to become a part of nature’s vastness. What was originally Renaissance hunger to take to the oceans and sail into the horizon grew to the 1960s fevered space race. In the 21st century, millions tuned into SpaceX’s May 2020 launch of a manned craft and watched through hours of prep for the exhilarating moment of take-off. From the knowledge that horizons are just illusions of borders, the enormity of the sky and the sea becomes arrestingly beautiful in its unfathomability. Art often preserves how people’s fascination with limitless physical space interacts with their contexts.

Claude Monet’s 20th century triptych, Water Lilies, memorialised his beloved lily ponds and was painted with the intention of creating space. Each panel revels in an approximately 6 by 13 feet expanse of oil-painted serenity. The triptych lies on a curved wall in The Museum of Modern Art— it revealed that Monet intended the piece to “convey the sensation of water without end.” Made in the early-20th century, Water Lilies created a pocket of limitless natural space in a time of industrialisation – which made these pockets a rarity in reality. The sprawling lily pond, dotted with plant life and hazy globules of clouds, immerses the viewer in an external space and an olden glamour that persists through time.

Today, the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic ravages the streets and pushes people back into their homes after they’ve savoured a short-lived taste of the outside world. People capture photos of the sky and text it to each other for comfort instead of just wonderment. Watching fields stretch endlessly in a movie provides more overwhelming solace than a sense of adventure. As the radius of available space is shortened, artists’ tributes to limitless space challenge horizons with increased zeal. Where Water Lilies painted a limitlessness to step into, fashion designer Iris van Herpen’s 2021 Earthrise collection materialises this vastness as an extension of the body. Harnessing the space around the body, Earthrise recreates our planet (viewed from above) as skin. Bringing something so large so close to a person is an act of boldness that is only born of restriction. Isolated in our homes, the fascination for vast spaces morphs into longing for it.

The New York Times asked van Herpen what she wanted to be as a child, and she replied, “a dancer.” A fashion designer so frequently influenced by dance, who seeks to “look at the space around the body as much as the body itself,” may have felt this longing for ever-extending space as deeply as Monet felt affection for it. Earthrise, which was heavily inspired by the NASA archives, is as much a reminder of vastness as a consolation of a longing that has turned so personal amid the pandemic. Looking out of the window into the expansive grey skies and strongly feeling the space one takes up is the fascination with limitless space reflecting the pandemic. As we move into a post-pandemic world, the powerful pull of vastness awaits yet another opportunity to transform

Written by: Anushka Roy

Edited by: Ishani Patil