Mythogenesis, according to Joseph Campbell, takes place when a human society encounters events or conditions never experienced before. In this day and age, however, it is extremely unlikely that a human society anywhere on earth could be exposed to such events and conditions. Even an arrival of aliens would be interpreted within the existing structures: the visitors from space would be seen as benevolent saviours (this has already happened to the imaginary aliens) or agents of the forces of darkness, depending on their attitude towards the human race.

“Communities that once were comfortable in their consciousness of their own mythologically guaranteed godliness find, abruptly, that they are devils in the eyes of their neighbours,” says Campbell. “Evidently some mythology of a broader, deeper kind than anything envisioned anywhere in the past is now required… … … far more fluid, more sophisticated, than the separate visions of the local traditions, wherein those mythologies themselves will be known to be but the masks of a larger … … … ‘timeless schema’ that is no schema. (The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology)” In other words, an unprecedented situation has arisen whereby mankind has enough information and means of communication to see itself as a whole, facing the mystery of being, and thus needs to produce a common mythic response to its challenge. The means to do this, Campbell tells us, are already at hand, in museums, galleries, literature and music, and in other places. They need to be released from their old parochial allegiances and assembled into a new meaningful universal structure which could be seen as clearly from Calcutta as it could be from New York or Novosibirsk.

If the means for creating new myths which would be meaningful from New York to Novosibirsk are to be found in museums, galleries, literature and music, it is clear that their makers must be artists.

The image above shows part of a structure conceived and orchestrated by an artist following Campbell’s ideas and realised by a large number of artists working together under his baton. It is certainly just as visible from Calcutta as it is from Copenhagen. In fact, but for the caption, your eyes would have noted it briefly and passed on to other attractions without a pause, so familiar it looks. A barely registered thought would flash in your mind: “Which war, which city? Baghdad, Beirut, the World Trade Centre?” But the caption makes you stop and look better – and you know which war and which city. It seems hard to believe that the destruction of that mighty building will not be in the news and that no airline flies there.