________________
THE PHILOSOPHY OF INDIAN ART.
The religious art of India has thus been free to draw ngon all life for the materials of a divine symbolism, for no part of life has been regarded, sa intrinsically profane or secular. Human love is an intimation of the the love of God: and physical phenomena heing but the symbols of spiritual reality, the religious artist has not shrunk even from sex-symbolism in his sacred art. Surely there is a great parity, and by no means the reverse, in this capacity the Divine in all things, and all things in the Divine. All life is a sacrament and there is no part of it that may not symbolize eternal and indbite realities
There is no thought in the philosophy of Indian art of Art for Art's sake. Life not to be represented for its own wake, for the mere giving of pleasure or display of skill, but for the sake of the Divine Ides expressed through it. Thus Sukracharya, lays down
It is always commendable for the artist to draw the images of gods. To make human figures is wrong or even impious. Even a miss hapen image of God is always better than an image of man, however beautiful,
The doctrine thus so sternly stated noans in other words, that imitation and portraiture are lesser aime than the representation of ideal and symbolic forms; the aim of the highest art anust be the intimation of the Divinity behind all form, rather than the imita tion of the form itself. One may thus depict the sport of Krishna with the (opis, but must be in a spirit of religious idealism, not for the mere sake of the sensuous imgery itself.
Just as they are, for seeing
comes of it?
The same principles are applied in the, case of literary art. Thus we read in the Bhakta Kalpadruma of Pratapa
Sinha :
The poem, or any composition with all the graces possible of style that doth not tell of the acts of the Holy One, is altogether fruit
loss and most base.
The whole idea of Art for Art's sake is repagnant to the Indian concep tion of the meaning of life. Nor has Indian art lost by this; for if it has thus first sought the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, surely all else has been added to it. The art that is Art, for Art's sake proves tasteless and insipid to those who have once realised the significano
Translation by G. 4. Grierson, J. R. A. S. 1908.
KARMAYOGIN
of art as a manifestation of divinity. Not long ag I witnessed the beautiful dancing a famous dancer la London Music Hall, and found that the impres ainn left could be summed up in saying that however beautiful, it had no meaning, it was not realgious.
How strangely this art philosophy contrasts with that characteristic of the modern West' and so clearly set forth (at its best) in Browning's poem.
But why not do as well as say,paint these
If
the
careless what
God's works-paint anyone... ......Have you noticed, now,
Yon cullion's hanging face? A bit of You chalk
And trust me but you should though How much more
If I drew higher things with the same truth!
That were to take the Prior's pulpitplace.
Interpret God to all of you! For such realists this last is not the the function of art; but to us it seems. that the very essential function of art is vory to interpret God to all of you.'
Burne Jones, almost aloue amongst artists of the modern West, neeme to have understood art as we in India understand it. To a critic who named na a drawback in the work of a certain art ist, that his pictures looked as if he had done them only out of his head, Burne Jones replied, 'The place where I think pictures ought to come from."
Of impressionism as understood in the West, and the claim that breadth is gain ed by lack of finish, Burne Jones spoke ns an Eastern artist might have done. Breadth could be got "by beautiful finish and bright clear colour well-matched, rather thau by muzzy. They (the Impressionists) do make atmosphere, but they don't make anything else: don't make beauty, they don't make design, they don't make iden, they don't make anything but atmosphere and I don't think that's enough-1 don't think it's very much of roalimu he spoke thun i
they
Realiam
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Direct transcript from Nature! I suppose by the time the photographie artist can give us all the colours as correctly as the shapes, people will begin to fud out that the realism they talk about isn't art at all but science: interesting but, as a scientific but
nothing thors scripts
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At another time he said, you so it 1 then things of the soul that are re.. ..the only real things in the universe. Of the religiousnous of art he said: That was an awful thought of Bu kin', that artists paint God for the world. There's a lump of greasy pigment at the end of Michel Angelo's hog-bristle brush, and by the time it has been laid on the stucco, there is sotuething Chere that all men with eyou rvicognise as divine. Think of is the power
what it means It
of bringing God into the worldmaking God manifest
The object of art mina beer to please or to exalt T'an't see any other reason for it at all. One in a pretty reason, the other a noble
one.
Of Expression' in imaginative pictures he said :
Of course my faces have no expression in the sense in which people use the word. How should they have any? They are portraits of people in paroxysms-parox. yans of terror, hatred, benevol ence, desire, avarice, venera'ion and all the passions' and erotions that Le Brun and that kind of person and so magnifique in Raphael's later work.. .....The only expression allowable in great. portraiture is the expression of character and moral quality, unt of anything temporary, heting. accidental. Apart from portrai ture you don't want even so iduch, or very seldom in fact you want only types, symbols, sugations, The moment you give what people call expression, you despy th typical characters of heads and degrade them into portrait which stand for nothing.
based on
Cominon criticism of Indian art is on a supposed or roul limitation of technical attainment in, repreentation, especially of the figure. In part, it, my
answered that little is known in the West of the red achievement of Judian art, that this iden may be allow. I
to die a natural death in the course of time; aud in part that technical attain ment is only a fan end Thero is an order of-importance in the things
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