{"id":79,"date":"2013-07-13T01:25:43","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:25:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=79"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:25:43","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:25:43","slug":"57-the-revival-of-indian-art-vol-03-the-harmony-of-virtue-volume-03","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/03-the-harmony-of-virtue-volume-03\/57-the-revival-of-indian-art-vol-03-the-harmony-of-virtue-volume-03","title":{"rendered":"-57_The Revival of Indian Art.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n

\n
\nThe Revival of Indian Art<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\nTHE MAIN DIFFERENCE<\/b><\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nT<\/font>HE <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/b>greatness of Indian art is the greatness
\nof all Indian thought and achievement. It lies in the recognition
\nof the persistent within the transient, of the domination of matter
\nby spirit, the subordination of the insistent appearances of Prakriti to the inner reality which, in a thousand ways, the Mighty
\nMother veils even while she suggests. The European artist,
\ncabined within the narrow confines of the external, is dominated
\nin imagination by the body of things and the claims of the phenomenon. Western painting starts from the eye or the imagination;<\/font>
\n<\/font>its master word is either beauty or reality, and, according as he is
\nthe slave of his eye or the playfellow of his imagination, the
\npainter produces a photograph or a poem. But, in painting, the
\nEuropean imagination seldom travels beyond an imaginative
\ninterpretation or variation of what the physical eye has seen.
\nImitation is the key-word of creation, according to Aristotle; Shakespeare advises the artist to hold up the mirror to Nature; and the Greek scientist and the English poet reflect accurately
\nthe mind of Europe.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nBut the Indian artist has been taught by his philosophy and
\nthe spiritual discipline of his forefathers that the imagination is
\nonly a channel and an instrument of some source of knowledge
\nand inspiration that is greater and higher; by meditation or by
\nYoga he seeks within himself that ultimate centre of knowledge
\nwhere there is direct and utter vision of the thing that lies hidden
\nin the forms of man, animal, tree, river, mountain. It is this
\nsamyag j\u00f1āna<\/i>, this sāksād darśana<\/i>, the utter, revealing and apocalyptic vision, that he seeks, and when he has found it, whether
\nby patient receptivity or sudden inspiration, his whole aim is to
\nexpress it utterly and revealingly in line and colour. Form is only
\na means of expressing the spirit, and the one thought of the artist
\nshould be how best to render the spiritual vision. He is not bound
\nby the forms that compose the world of gross matter, though he<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 417<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\ntakes them as a starting-point for his formal expression of the
\nvision within him; if by modifying them or departing from them
\nhe can reveal that vision more completely, his freedom and his
\nduty as an artist emancipate him from the obligation of the mere
\nrecorder and copyist. The ancient Asiatic artists were not in-
\ncapable of reproducing outward Nature with as perfect and
\nvigorous an accuracy as the Europeans; but it was their ordinary
\nmethod deliberately to suppress all that might hamper the expression of their spiritual vision.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nReality for its own sake, one of the most dominant notes of
\nArt in Europe, Indian artistic theory would not have recognised;<\/font>
\n<\/font>for we have always regarded the reality of the Europeans as an
\nappearance; to us the true reality is that which is hidden; otherwise, there would be no need of the prophet, the philosopher,
\nthe poet and the artist. It is they who see with the sūksma
\ndrsti<\/i>, the inner vision, and not like the ordinary man with the eye
\nonly. Beauty for beauty’s sake, the other great note of European
\nArt is recognised by us, but not in the higher work of the artist.
\nJust as in the first ideal, the tyranny of the eye is acknowledged,
\nso in the second is the tyranny of the aesthetic imagination. The
\nIndian seeks freedom, and the condition of freedom is the search
\nfor ultimate Truth. But in this search the imagination is an unsafe and
\ncapricious guide; it misinterprets as often as it interprets. The claim of the eye to separate satisfaction can only be
\nanswered by the response of decorative beauty; the claim of the
\nimagination to separate satisfaction can only receive the response of fancy playing with scene and legend, form and colour,
\nidea and dream, for pure aesthetic delight; but in the interpretation of things the eye and the imagination can assert no right to
\ncommand, they are only subordinate instruments and must
\nkeep their place. Whenever, therefore, the Indian artist put away
\nfrom him his high spiritual aim, it was to seek decorative beauty
\ninformed by the play of the imagination. Here he held decorative
\nbeauty to be his paramount aim and declined to be bound by the
\nseen and the familiar. If by other lines than the natural, by
\nsubtler or richer methods than those of outward Nature, our old
\nmasters could gain in decorative suggestion and beauty, they
\nheld themselves free to follow their inspiration. Here, too, they<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 418<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\noften deliberately changed and suppressed in order to get their
\ndesired effect. If they had been asked to deny themselves this
\nartistic gain for the sake of satisfying the memory in the physical eye, they would have held the objector to be the bondslave of an
\nunmeaning superstition.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nWe of today have been overpowered by the European tradition as interpreted by the English, the least artistic of civilised
\nnations. We have therefore come to make on a picture the same
\ndemand as on a photograph, \u2014 the reproduction of the thing as
\nthe eye sees it, not even as the retrospective mind or the imagination sees it, exact resemblance to the beings or objects we know,
\nor, if anything more, then a refinement on Nature in the direction of greater picturesqueness and prettiness and the satisfaction
\nof the lower and more external sense of beauty. The conception
\nthat Art exists not to copy, but for the sake of a deeper truth and
\nvision, and we must seek in it not the object but God in the object,
\nnot things but the soul of things, seems to have vanished for a
\nwhile from the Indian consciousness.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nAnother obstacle to the appreciation of great art, to which
\neven 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
\ndevelopment. I am accustomed for instance to a particular way
\nof representing Shiva or Kali and I refuse to have any other. But the artist has
\nnothing to do with my prejudices. He has to represent the essential truth of Shiva or Kali, that which makes
\ntheir Shivahood or Kalihood, and he is under no obligation to
\ncopy the vision of others. If he has seen another vision of Shiva
\nor Kali, it is that vision to which he must be faithful. The curious
\ndiscussion which arose recently as to the propriety or otherwise
\nof representing the Gods without beard or moustache, is an instance of this literalism which is a survival of the enslavement to
\nform and rule characteristic of the eighteenth century. The
\nliteralist cannot see that it is not the moustache or beard or the
\nsymbol which makes the godhead, but the divine greatness,
\nimmortal strength, beauty, youth, purity or peace within. It is
\nthat godhead which the artist must draw and paint, and in the
\nforms he chooses he is bound only by the vision in dhyāna<\/i>.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 419<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nWhether his interpretation will gain an abiding place in the
\nthought and imagination of the race, depends on its power to
\nawake the deeper vision in the race. All that we can demand is
\nthat it shall be a real God, a real Shiva, a real Kali, and not a
\nfreak of his imagination or an outcome of some passing samskāra<\/i> of his education or artistic upbringing. He must go to the
\nfountain-head of knowledge within himself or his claim to freedom does not stand. It has already been said that the condition
\nof freedom is the search for truth, and the artist must not allow
\nhis imagination to take the place of the higher quality.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nIndian Art demands of the artist the power of communion
\nwith the soul of things, the sense of spiritual taking precedence of
\nthe sense of material beauty, and fidelity to the deeper vision
\nwithin, of the lover of art it demands the power to see the spirit
\nin things, the openness of mind to follow a developing tradition,
\nand the sattwic passivity, discharged of prejudgments, which
\nopens luminously to the secret intention of the picture and is
\npatient to wait until it attains a perfect and profound divination.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 420<\/font><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\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 lies…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-03-the-harmony-of-virtue-volume-03","wpcat-4-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79","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=79"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}