Beth Ganz

“Among summits, I am Meru…among standing things, Himalaya.” (Bhagavad-Gitā, 10.23, 25)

In one of the most revered Hindu texts, dating back at least two millennia—the Bhagavad-Gītā or “Song of the Blessed Lord”—the divine incarnation Krishna gradually reveals his identity to his friend and disciple, the warrior-prince Arjuna: a revelation that culminates in a cosmic vision in the text’s eleventh chapter. But just before that, there is a verbal epiphany in which the God-man offers a series of similes for his transcendent being. Notably, two of them reference mountains in that mighty chain of peaks, containing all of earth’s highest points, that comprise the northern boundary of the Indian subcontinent. Indeed, the “abode of snow” (Himālaya) has been revered by South Asians throughout recorded history as the “land of the gods” (deva-bhūmi), and among its many dazzling white summits, several, including Kailash, Meru, and Nanda Devi have been singled out for special veneration as embodied deities in their own right, and as the goals of pilgrims and seekers from all the spiritual traditions indigenous to the region: Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, and Sikhism.

Such admiration for mountains as inspiring emblems of both transcendence and permanence is of course widely shared among human cultures. In the recent work of artist and printmaker Beth Ganz, the theme of the sacred mountain as world-axis is celebrated once again through a unique synthesis of contemporary and 19th century technologies: satellite photography, digital transfer, and the laborious process of copper plate photogravure engraving, creatively manipulated to yield original evocations
of lofty summits, many of which have been revered for centuries or even millennia. The present series features sacred mountains of one longitudinal hemisphere of our globe, encompassing Eurasia, Africa, and the Pacific: Damavand (plate 16), Meru (plate 11), Olympus (plate 20), Sinai (plate 21), Kilimanjaro (plate 22), Kailash (plate 10), and twenty-seven others appear in striking perspectives, deep contrasts, and runic patterns that invite contemplation. Like Hokusai’s “Thirty-six Views of Mt. Fuji” (another peak featured here; plate 2), but on a global scale, Ganz’s thirty-two works explore and evoke the awe, grandeur, and enduring sacrality of some of the earth’s most revered natural features.

PHILIP LUTGENDORF
Professor of Hindi and Modern Indian Cultures, Emeritus; University of Iowa

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Beth Ganz (b. Jersey City, New Jersey) is a multidisciplinary visual artist, who lives and works in New York City. She is interested in the intersection of landscape, digital technology, and abstraction. She works in paint, brush and ink drawing, individually and alongside digital and analog printing techniques, such as photogravure and intaglio printing. She graduated from Pratt Institute with a BFA in Painting, Sculpture and Printmaking with honors.

Ganz’s work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions, including; Overview: Prints and Drawings of Sacred Mountains at Planthouse Gallery, Atlas Project at Cynthia-Reeves Gallery, Up Close and Far Away, Grids and Toiles: Beth Ganz at Wave Hill House, Wave Hill, and Geothermal Topographies at Reeves Contemporary. She has also shown in a myriad of group exhibitions, and her work is well represented in many public and private collections, including the 9-11 Memorial Museum, the Library of Congress, New York Historical Society, and the New York Public Library Prints Collection. Ganz teaches workshops in photogravure and intaglio at Manhattan Graphics Center and has been a long-time grantee of the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts.