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PICTORIAL FACTORS OF JAIN MINIATURES VIEWED IN MODERN CONTEXT
Jain Education International
O. D. Upadhya
Instrumentalism :
The art-historian's view (of art as style) would refer Jainminiatures as a kind of 'Folk-style'. Thus Dr. Shivrammurti aptly puts Jain-miniatures as a Prakrita style of art. Accepting this view it seems obvious that this accentuation on a Folk-style-formula' by these miniaturists could easily find a direct relation with Mahavira's idea of teaching in Prakrita rather than in any other language for the benefit of the commonfolk. The Jain-miniaturists were great aesthetes also, having a very comprehensive outlook on art, and were capable of bringing down their great synthesis of iconography, pictorial space, surface breaking and foreign influences to the taste of the common folk. This aesthete's trend in modern context, is upheld by one of the most influencial art-critics of to-day Clement Greenberg, who says, 'things that purport to be art, do not exist, do not function as art until they are experienced through taste.'2 This functionalism has a direct descendant in modern era's most successful art-form of mid sixties - POP ART. These pop-artists have two very clear-cut principles in their creative configrations: The first is, 'most pop art is essentially embelmatic in its conjunction of word and image.3 And the other one is given by one of the most popular of pop-artists - Tom Wesselmann, "Advertising images excite me mainly because of what I can make from them.4 Now
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