{"id":2427,"date":"2013-07-13T01:41:33","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:41:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2427"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:41:33","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:41:33","slug":"47-on-art-the-revival-of-indian-art-vol-01-early-cultural-writings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/03-cwsa\/01-early-cultural-writings\/47-on-art-the-revival-of-indian-art-vol-01-early-cultural-writings","title":{"rendered":"-47_On Art – The Revival of Indian Art.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tThe Revival of Indian Art <\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tTHE MAIN DIFFERENCE <\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tT<\/font><\/b>HE GREATNESS<\/b> of Indian art is the greatness of all \t\t\tIndian thought and achievement. It lies in the recognition of the persistent within the transient, of the domination of \t\t\tmatter by spirit, the subordination of the insistent appearances of Prakriti to the inner reality which, in a thousand ways, the \t\t\tMighty Mother veils even while she suggests. The European
\nartist, cabined within the narrow confines of the external, is \t\t\tdominated in imagination by the body of things and the claims of the phenomenon. Western painting starts from the eye or the \t\t\timagination; its master word is either beauty or reality, and,
\naccording as he is the slave of his eye or the playfellow of his \t\t\timagination, the painter produces a photograph or a poem. But, in painting, the European imagination seldom travels beyond \t\t\tan imaginative interpretation or variation of what the physical eye has seen. Imitation is the key-word of creation, according to \t\t\tAristotle; Shakespeare advises the artist to hold up the mirror to Nature; and the Greek scientist and the English poet reflect \t\t\taccurately the mind of Europe.
\n\t\t\t<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tBut the Indian artist has been taught by his philosophy and \t\t\tthe spiritual discipline of his forefathers that the imagination is
\nonly a channel and an instrument of some source of knowledge \t\t\tand inspiration that is greater and higher; by meditation or by
\nYoga he seeks within himself that ultimate centre of knowledge \t\t\twhere there is direct and utter vision of the thing that lies hidden in the forms of man, animal, tree, river, mountain. It is this
\n\t\t\tsamyag j\u00f1āna<\/i>, this sākṣād darśana<\/i>, the utter, revealing and apocalyptic vision, that he seeks, and when he has found it, whether by patient receptivity or sudden inspiration, his whole aim is<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 464<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tto express it utterly and revealingly in line and colour. Form is only a means of expressing the spirit, and the one thought \t\t\tof the artist should be how best to render the spiritual vision. He is not bound by the forms that compose the world of gross \t\t\tmatter, though he takes them as a starting-point for his formal
\nexpression of the vision within him; if by modifying them or \t\t\tdeparting from them he can reveal that vision more completely,
\nhis freedom and his duty as an artist emancipate him from the \t\t\tobligation of the mere recorder and copyist. The ancient Asiatic
\nartists were not incapable of reproducing outward Nature with \t\t\tas perfect and vigorous an accuracy as the Europeans; but it was
\ntheir ordinary method deliberately to suppress all that might \t\t\thamper the expression of their spiritual vision.
\n\t\t\t<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tReality for its own sake, one of the most dominant notes of \t\t\tArt in Europe, Indian artistic theory would not have recognised; for we have always regarded the reality of the Europeans as an appearance; to us the true reality is that which is hidden; otherwise, there would be no need of the prophet, the philosopher,
\n the poet and the artist. It is they who see with the
\nsūksma dṛṣṭi<\/i>, \t\t\tthe inner vision, and not like the ordinary man with the eye only. \t\t\tBeauty for beauty’s sake, the other great note of European Art is recognised by us, but not in the higher work of the artist. Just as in the first ideal, the tyranny of the eye is acknowledged, so in
\nthe second the tyranny of the aesthetic imagination. The Indian \t\t\tseeks freedom, and the condition of freedom is the search for ultimate Truth. But in this search the imagination is an unsafe and \t\t\tcapricious guide; it misinterprets as often as it interprets. The
\nclaim of the eye to separate satisfaction can only be answered by \t\t\tthe response of decorative beauty; the claim of the imagination to separate satisfaction can only receive the response of fancy \t\t\tplaying with scene and legend, form and colour, idea and dream, for pure aesthetic delight; but in the interpretation of things the eye and the imagination can assert no right to command, they
\nare only subordinate instruments and must keep their place. \t\t\tWhenever, therefore, the Indian artist put away from him his
\nhigh spiritual aim, it was to seek decorative beauty informed by \t\t\tthe play of the imagination. Here he held decorative beauty to be  
\n\t\t\t<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 465<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\this paramount aim and declined to be bound by the seen and the
\nfamiliar. If by other lines than the natural, by subtler or richer \t\t\tmethods than those of outward Nature, our old masters could
\ngain in decorative suggestion and beauty, they held themselves \t\t\tfree to follow their inspiration. Here, too, they often deliberately
\nchanged and suppressed in order to get their desired effect. If \t\t\tthey had been asked to deny themselves this artistic gain for the sake of satisfying the memory in the physical eye, they would \t\t\thave held the objector to be the
\n\t\t\tbond-slave of an unmeaning
\nsuperstition. <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tWe of today have been overpowered by the European tradition as interpreted by the English, the least artistic of civilised \t\t\tnations. We have therefore come to make on a picture the same
\ndemand as on a photograph, -the reproduction of the thing \t\t\tas the eye sees it, not even as the retrospective mind or the
\nimagination sees it, exact resemblance to the beings or objects \t\t\twe know, or, if anything more, then a refinement on Nature in
\nthe direction of greater picturesqueness and prettiness and the \t\t\tsatisfaction of the lower and more external sense of beauty. The
\nconception that Art exists not to copy, but for the sake of a \t\t\tdeeper truth and vision, and we must seek in it not the object
\nbut God in the object, not things but the soul of things, seems \t\t\tto have vanished for a while from the Indian consciousness.
\n<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tAnother obstacle to the appreciation of great art, to which \t\t\teven those Indians who are not dominated by European ideas
\nare liable, is the exaggerated respect for the symbols and traditions which our art or literature has used at a certain stage of development. I am accustomed for instance to a particular \t\t\tway of representing Shiva or Kali and I refuse to have any other.
\nBut the artist has nothing to do with my prejudices. He has to \t\t\trepresent the essential truth of Shiva or Kali, that which makes
\ntheir Shivahood or Kalihood, and he is under no obligation to \t\t\tcopy the vision of others. If he has seen another vision of Shiva or Kali, it is that vision to which he must be faithful. The curious
\n\t\t\tdiscussion which arose recently as to the propriety or otherwise of
\n\t\t\trepresenting the gods without beard or moustache, is an instance of this literalism which is a survival of the enslavement  
\n\t\t\t<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 466<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t to form and rule characteristic of the eighteenth century. The
\nliteralist cannot see that it is not the moustache or beard or \t\t\tthe symbol which makes the godhead, but the divine greatness,
\nimmortal strength, beauty, youth, purity or peace within. It is \t\t\tthat godhead which the artist must draw and paint, and in the
\n\t\t\t \t\t\tforms he chooses he is bound only by the vision in
\ndhyana<\/i>. Whether his interpretation will gain an abiding place in the \t\t\tthought and imagination of the race, depends on its power to
\nawake the deeper vision in the race. All that we can demand \t\t\tis that it shall be a real God, a real Shiva, a real Kali, and
\nnot a freak of his imagination or an outcome of some passing
\n˙  <\/i> saṁskāra <\/i>of his education or artistic upbringing. He must go \t\t\tto the fountainhead of knowledge within himself or his claim to freedom does not stand. It has already been said that the \t\t\tcondition of freedom is the search for truth, and the artist must
\nnot allow his imagination to take the place of the higher quality. \t\t\t<\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tIndian Art demands of the artist the power of communion
\nwith the soul of things, the sense of spiritual taking precedence \t\t\tof the sense of material beauty, and fidelity to the deeper vision
\nwithin; of the lover of art it demands the power to see the \t\t\tspirit in things, the openness of mind to follow a developing
\ntradition, and the sattwic passivity, discharged of prejudgments, \t\t\twhich opens luminously to the secret intention of the picture
\nand is patient to wait until it attains a perfect and profound \t\t\tdivination.  
\n\t\t\t<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 467<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Revival of Indian Art   THE MAIN DIFFERENCE   THE GREATNESS of Indian art is the greatness of all Indian thought and achievement. It…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-01-early-cultural-writings","wpcat-49-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2427\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}