|
The Revival of Indian Art
THE MAIN DIFFERENCE
THE
greatness of Indian art is the greatness
of all Indian thought and achievement. It lies in the recognition
of the persistent within the transient, of the domination of matter
by spirit, the subordination of the insistent appearances of Prakriti to the inner reality which, in a thousand ways, the Mighty
Mother veils even while she suggests. The European artist,
cabined within the narrow confines of the external, is dominated
in imagination by the body of things and the claims of the phenomenon. Western painting starts from the eye or the imagination;
its master word is either beauty or reality, and, according as he is
the slave of his eye or the playfellow of his imagination, the
painter produces a photograph or a poem. But, in painting, the
European imagination seldom travels beyond an imaginative
interpretation or variation of what the physical eye has seen.
Imitation 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
the mind of Europe.
But the Indian artist has been taught by his philosophy and
the spiritual discipline of his forefathers that the imagination is
only a channel and an instrument of some source of knowledge
and inspiration that is greater and higher; by meditation or by
Yoga he seeks within himself that ultimate centre of knowledge
where there is direct and utter vision of the thing that lies hidden
in the forms of man, animal, tree, river, mountain. It is this
samyag jñāna, this sāksād darśana, 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 to
express it utterly and revealingly in line and colour. Form is only
a means of expressing the spirit, and the one thought of the artist
should be how best to render the spiritual vision. He is not bound
by the forms that compose the world of gross matter, though he
Page – 417
takes them as a starting-point for his formal expression of the
vision within him; if by modifying them or departing from them
he can reveal that vision more completely, his freedom and his
duty as an artist emancipate him from the obligation of the mere
recorder and copyist. The ancient Asiatic artists were not in-
capable of reproducing outward Nature with as perfect and
vigorous an accuracy as the Europeans; but it was their ordinary
method deliberately to suppress all that might hamper the expression of their spiritual vision.
Reality for its own sake, one of the most dominant notes of
Art 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,
the poet and the artist. It is they who see with the sūksma
drsti, the inner vision, and not like the ordinary man with the eye
only. Beauty 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 the second is the tyranny of the aesthetic imagination. The
Indian seeks freedom, and the condition of freedom is the search
for ultimate Truth. But in this search the imagination is an unsafe and
capricious guide; it misinterprets as often as it interprets. The claim of the eye to separate satisfaction can only be
answered by the response of decorative beauty; the claim of the
imagination to separate satisfaction can only receive the response of fancy playing 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 are only subordinate instruments and must
keep their place. Whenever, therefore, the Indian artist put away
from him his high spiritual aim, it was to seek decorative beauty
informed by the play of the imagination. Here he held decorative
beauty to be his paramount aim and declined to be bound by the
seen and the familiar. If by other lines than the natural, by
subtler or richer methods than those of outward Nature, our old
masters could gain in decorative suggestion and beauty, they
held themselves free to follow their inspiration. Here, too, they
Page – 418
often deliberately changed and suppressed in order to get their
desired effect. If they had been asked to deny themselves this
artistic gain for the sake of satisfying the memory in the physical eye, they would have held the objector to be the bondslave of an
unmeaning superstition.
We of today have been overpowered by the European tradition as interpreted by the English, the least artistic of civilised
nations. We have therefore come to make on a picture the same
demand as on a photograph, — the reproduction of the thing as
the eye sees it, not even as the retrospective mind or the imagination sees it, exact resemblance to the beings or objects we know,
or, if anything more, then a refinement on Nature in the direction of greater picturesqueness and prettiness and the satisfaction
of the lower and more external sense of beauty. The conception
that Art exists not to copy, but for the sake of a deeper truth and
vision, and we must seek in it not the object but God in the object,
not things but the soul of things, seems to have vanished for a
while from the Indian consciousness.
Another obstacle to the appreciation of great art, to which
even those Indians who are not dominated by European ideas
are 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 way
of representing Shiva or Kali and I refuse to have any other. But the artist has
nothing to do with my prejudices. He has to represent the essential truth of Shiva or Kali, that which makes
their Shivahood or Kalihood, and he is under no obligation to
copy 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
discussion which arose recently as to the propriety or otherwise
of representing the Gods without beard or moustache, is an instance of this literalism which is a survival of the enslavement to
form and rule characteristic of the eighteenth century. The
literalist cannot see that it is not the moustache or beard or the
symbol which makes the godhead, but the divine greatness,
immortal strength, beauty, youth, purity or peace within. It is
that godhead which the artist must draw and paint, and in the
forms he chooses he is bound only by the vision in dhyāna.
Page – 419
Whether his interpretation will gain an abiding place in the
thought and imagination of the race, depends on its power to
awake the deeper vision in the race. All that we can demand is
that it shall be a real God, a real Shiva, a real Kali, and not a
freak of his imagination or an outcome of some passing samskāra of his education or artistic upbringing. He must go to the
fountain-head of knowledge within himself or his claim to freedom does not stand. It has already been said that the condition
of freedom is the search for truth, and the artist must not allow
his imagination to take the place of the higher quality.
Indian Art demands of the artist the power of communion
with the soul of things, the sense of spiritual taking precedence of
the sense of material beauty, and fidelity to the deeper vision
within, of the lover of art it demands the power to see the spirit
in things, the openness of mind to follow a developing tradition,
and the sattwic passivity, discharged of prejudgments, which
opens luminously to the secret intention of the picture and is
patient to wait until it attains a perfect and profound divination.
Page – 420
HOME
|