Cosmic Landscapes

            These pictures search for visual language for converging concepts drawn on the one hand from current advances in particle physics and cosmology, and on the other from ancient Buddhist philosophies of impermanence and dependent origination.  The series title is borrowed from physicist Leonard Susskind’s sweeping 2006 survey of the implications of string theory for the emerging understanding of the “multiverse”.  That understanding describes our own universe as one among countless separate universes, each bubbling up from a random quantum fluctuation in empty space.  Each universe comes with its own fundamental physical laws and constants from among the 10 ⁵⁰⁰ possible sets that arise from the math underlying string theory. 

The multiverse converges with traditional Buddhist understandings of the impermanence and emptiness of all observed phenomena –

“even though phenomena lack reality, they don’t happen at random.  This is the emptiness of Buddhism.  It isn’t nothingness, but rather the absence of any permanent and autonomously existing phenomena”. 

Matthieu Ricard and Trin Xuan Thuan, The Quantum and the Lotus, at 32

Buddhist philosophy sees all things, including our selves, as the observed implications of an endless web of interdependent cause and effect, contingent on each other with no underlying reality beyond that set of relations – ideas often described as contingent genesis or dependent origination.  Like the multiverse, these ideas offer a sense of proportion, a perspective on our individual place in the cosmos.  As a speck in a universe that is a random speck in the cosmos, it is harder to cling to the illusion of autonomous, permanent essence.  The multiverse illuminates the transient, contingent character of existence.

            These paintings are created as palimpsests – layered images that offer a tactile sense the history of their own production and their multiple potential meanings.  The Cosmic Landscapes are constructed by successive layers of paint added and removed, treading an edge between figuration and abstraction, seeking out imagery that might reinforce notions of emptiness, contingency and uncertainty. 

Barry Margolin, June 1, 2012

For deeper insights:

On the multiverse, string theory and contemporary physics:

Brian Greene, The Hidden Reality (2011)

Leonard Susskind, The Cosmic Landscape (2006)

On the fundamental teachings of Buddhism:

Walpola Rahula, What the Buddha Taught (1959)

Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching (1998)

On the intersection of Buddhism and contemporary physics:

Matthieu Ricard and Trinh Xuan Thuan, The Quantum and the Lotus (2001)

Vic Mansfield, Tibetan Buddhism & Modern Physics (2008)