In a pithy and innovative treatise on travelling titled Wanderlust: A History of Walking, American author Rebecca Solnit offers a strikingly simple explanation as to why creative type tends to be restless and peripatetic. We often wonder why travel or even the allure of it seems to influence the thoughts and lives of so many writers and artists and why immobility — mental or physical — can be disastrous for them. Solnit gives the following reason: “Whether or not the Sophists were virtuous, they were often mobile, as are many of those whose first loyalty is to ideas. It may be that loyalty to something as immaterial as ideas that sets thinkers apart from those whose loyalty is tied to people and locale, for the loyalty that ties down the latter will often drive the former from place to place. It is an attachment that requires detachment.”

The histories of art and culture owe much to itinerant thinkers and creative people disseminating ideas as they moved from one place to the next. The years leading up to the development of modern art saw wanderlust become almost a necessary component of the stereotype of the artist. Paul Gauguin’s seminal trips to Tahiti, James Joyce’s ramblings through Europe and Georgia O’Keeffe’s sojourns in New Mexico helped to establish travelling as a prerequisite for artistic breakthrough. At home, too, artistic expeditions to the West served as initiatory rituals for artists fresh out of art schools and many of our modern masters, such as Shakir Ali and Anwar Jalal Shemza, arrived at their syncretistic styles as a result of their travels and familiarity with visions other than their own. But can great art also be made over the course of an insular existence?

Richard Dadd, the Victorian painter now known for his marvellous pictures of crepuscular fairy gatherings and his horrific patricide, was an artist whose life can be divided cleanly into two phases. He toured the Middle East during the first, as an illustrator for Sir Thomas Phillips, his employer. The second phase of his life was spent entirely in confinement in mental asylums in England, during which he created his richest, most deliriously imaginative work. Immobilisation, in his case, opened his eyes to luxurious microcosms that still flourished in the undergrowth of the solemn Victorian landscape.

Travel sparks creativity and creativity sparks the desire to travel. But the question remains: is travelling necessary for artists?

Separated from Dadd by half a century and an entire ocean, American artist Joseph Cornell — the gentle diorama-maker, the quiet wizard who lined boxes with condensed, segmented worlds — lived in New York all his life and the only travelling he did was to the city’s flea markets, which provided him with the material for his assemblages. But it is largely the wistfulness for places not really seen, people not really met, and experiences not really had that makes his work so fragile and evocative.

Referring to one of Cornell’s works, ‘Object (Roses des Vents)’, Robert Hughes writes: “It is full of emblems of voyages Cornell never took, a little box of mummified waves and shrunken exotic coasts, peninsulas, planets, things set in compartments ... Even the map on the inside of the lid, cut from some 19th century German chart book, depicts an excessively remote coastline: that of the Great Australian Bight. The earth is presented not as our daily habitat but as one strange planet among others, which to Cornell it was.”

The work of Pakistani artist Mussarat Mirza further illustrates how inspiration can repeatedly be found in a seemingly unchanging environment. From an enduring relationship with her native Sindh, she has derived a visual language that is nuanced enough to withstand the often curtailing effects of isolation.

The internet has greatly satisfied the need to travel in order to discover, and learn from foreign art. It has become a vast museum itself, growing and changing according to the requirements of its disembodied visitors. But, as if in a constant effort to undermine second-hand viewing, the contemporary art world keeps presenting artists with new pretexts for travelling in the flesh. Whether it is a reportedly riveting performance like Anne Imhof’s ‘Faust’ (which won her the Golden Lion prize at this year’s Venice Biennale) or the transcendent video work of Bill Viola, an increasing number of artistic enterprises the world over call for intimate viewership and engagement.

So the urgency for artists to travel persists. And the rise in visual arts residencies attests to it. But for many hailing from conflict-stricken countries, the very act of crossing a border can be a daunting task. Sometimes, their works are allowed to travel while they are not. Sometimes, others less tethered have to travel for them. This has led to another brand of creativity, though, with more collaborations being done virtually and more platforms for art and discourse being formed online. One only hopes that immobility eventually becomes a matter of choice rather than of course.

Published in Dawn, EOS, August 6th, 2017