Screening of ‘Walking the Western Range II’

In January 2025, The Remarque Institute of New York, our esteemed institutional partner, hosted the screening of Walking the Western Range II, choreographed and performed by Linda Karshan and filmed by Ishmael Annobil (Western Galleries, British Museum, London, July 24, 2023).

This initiative was part of a series concerning Legacies of Classical Ideas and their Recasting in the 20^th Century, generously supported by the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation and presented in collaboration with ACLA.

The event was hosted by Stefanos Geroulanos, Director of the Remarque Institute and Professor of European Intellectual History at New York University, in conversation with Linda Karshan, President of ACLA.

The discussion was followed by the recitation of an ekphrastic poem by Karthika Nair, composed in response to Karshan’s work. We thank Karthika Nair for agreeing to publish the poem wRiting Time II: Wandering the Western Range through Linda Karshan in our journal De Litteris et Artibus.

As a means of introduction, we are pleased to share a meaningful extract of Linda Karshan’s correspondence with Karthika Nair, in which the artist reflects upon her performance drawing in the Western Range.

“In The Western Range, I walked a labyrinthine form, by necessity. While decisions were made at every turn, it all seemed inevitable. As if I had no choice. I drew my art in Karshan time.

I began in the Egyptian galleries, at the very spot visitors-of-old entered the British Museum. While I had not much affinity with these oversized kings and queens, I warmed to them, over time.

As they did to me. We developed a professional relationship.

They lead me to The Rosetta Stone, around which I ‘twirled’, readying myself for classical Greece–close to my heart. And mind (The Rosetta Stone, key to learning, grounded me for all that lay ahead.)

It should be noted, Karthika, that The Parthenon Galleries were built only in 1966. I visited them, by design, in 1968, crossing The English Channel by ferry. I sensed, already then, that these marbles and I belonged together.

From the Rosetta Stone, it was almost straight ‘run’ towards the Parthenon Galleries.

I nodded, respectfully, to the Hellenistic copies en route. But copies they are; they had little hold on me. I navigated past them, eager to enter the world of ancient Greece in the age of Pericles.

Here I felt at home, in perfect harmony with the frieze. It may even be a case of ‘energetic inversion’ as Warburg would put it, where classical forms reappear in modern dress.

The Parthenon Galleries are grand, and they took time. Karshan Time.

‘I wanted to construct a time that belonged to me, alone’ (Italo Calvino, On Shells and Time).

The sound of the work kept me in pace and in place.

Exiting the Parthenon Galleries, I moved forward in time. I was still at home in this later, Greek world. The smaller temple was in my sights; the three, winged figures ‘had my back’.

Quickness, lightness, exactitude, visibility and multiplicity were the orders of the day.

Less taken with the Hellenistic galleries, I nodded, respectfully, but not in awe.

‘Passing through’: a bardo, of sorts. They were a necessary transition to Assyria, and the lion hunt of King Ashurbanipal.

I bore in mind his pride in being an educated man. A king who ruled with wisdom and intelligence. I aimed to match that with grace, born of respect, while worrying about the lions aloft by my side.

I slowed down a bit, in response to their call. Variety was needed, I felt.

Finally, I could exit, and pose between two giant, winged figures.

For effect, without affect.

Simply to mark human scale and proportion.”