On Art - Addresses and Writings

I*

Address to Sir J. J. School of Arts, Bombay

I HAVE been overcome these two days by the world of art rushing upon me here from all sides. My visit to your school and to Art Exhibition that is now on at the Jehangir Art Gallery has let loose forms of beauty from all over the world—not only from the present, but from the long forgotten past. Forms have rushed from Greece, from Italy of the Renaissance, from France of the 19th Century, from the East; memory has awakened sleeping forms of China, Japan and India. From this drab world of everyday I am transported to another world—a world of beauty—beauty which is the highest attribute of the Supreme. This is the great service that art renders to man,— this lifting of his ordinary consciousness from amidst the ugliness of this world to a world of beauty. It makes him feel the beauty even in the midst of ordinary life: Art thus elevates the Soul of Man.

Seen from this point of view the function of the artist is very high—indeed, it can even be the highest, if he can rise to it.

When I saw you sitting in the Gallery and copying the master-pieces of Greek Sculpture I wondered how many of you were conscious of the connection of art with life. Appolo Belvedre is not merely an image done by some one off-hand. It is a product—a ripe product of Greek Culture which has given Europe its cultural forms. The Greeks had a very intensive cultural life,—they created philosophy, sciences and arts. They had their own conception of perfection which

* An address to the students and staff of J. J School of Arts, Bombay. Mr. Gondhlekar, Dean, presided. January 8, 1954.

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found expression in their arts. Their idea of perfection was that of a human perfection in which the intellect, the aesthetic sense and the body—all the three—found a harmonious development. Apollo is the embodiment of that perfection in Sculpture. So, while you work with your hands and eyes your mind should envisage the life of the people who created this art-form. True art is founded upon life, it is not an isolated product existing by itself. Art is the outflovvering of the cultural life of man.

There are people who divide art into its so-called components and they want to persuade us that art is nothing more than grammar of aesthetics. Art has to deal with volumes, lines, colours, arrangement, composition etc., and the man interested in art has not to bother himself about the subject-matter,—which in any case, is immaterial, but about these elements and he must see whether they satisfy his aesthetic sense. Art according to them has nothing to do with the subjective state. It would then come to mean that art is mere technique, it is mastery of the technique, manipulation of the material and mastery over the medium. But though technique may be very important and even indispensable in art, let us remember that technique is not art. It may give one mastery and make him clever—but that is not being an artist. One does not write poetry to make use of words or to learn grammar. One can't approach a work of art to appreciate its technique, merely lines and volumes and colours and balancing of elements—though they may satisfy the outer sense.

Art demands in the artist not merely the analytical faculty but the power of synthesis. Art has to be organic if it is to be living. Tagore has noted in his reminiscences how he felt shocked at the sight of a bone of human hand which the teacher of anatomy brought to the class one day. The hand disconnected from a living or a dead body seemed to him utterly irrelevant,—almost meaningless. Art must have that organic

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nature. This organic nature comes in Art if the artist is interested in life. You see life all around you, in the streets, in towns, in cities, in fields, in factories, in village all over you see life. You also see movements, you see various natural objects and then the grand phenomena of nature,—the sea, the sky, the forest, flowers. The artist may be interested in the infinitely multitudinous forms and colours of life. He may have felt or seen some significance, some meaning in the forms or in the movements. He may have seen a Reality through the forms. There are so many possible experiences and interpretations of experiences for the artist. Because his sensibility is refined, the artist gets impressions which the ordinary man is unable to get.

In ancient times art and religion were two sister-activities of the human spirit, because their originating impulse was the same. Religion affirmed a Supra-sensual, a Supra-intellectual Reality as the cause and goal of human life. Art reached out to that Supra-sensual, Supra-intellectual Reality through its search and brought it in expression, in forms. Art could thus render the Invisible visibe, it could bring down something of the supra-sensual and make i~ available to the sense. This was and can be the greatest service of Art to man,—to make tangible the Intangible.

The question very often is put: What has Yoga, or Spirituality, to do with Art? If Yoga enables the human being to attain to a consciousness higher than mind, then Art which can do the same work is naturally connected with it. Art embodies in its forms higher than human consciousness and thus tends to fix it here on the physical plane of consciousness.

This work art can do, if the artist has something to express in his forms. Has he seen, or felt beauty which he alone can express in form? For art is search for beauty. It is very difficult to define certain things even though something in us knows them intuitively. Beauty is such an indefinable thing.

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Beauty may be said to be the highest attribute of the Divine Reality in which the inherent harmony and self-existent delight of that Reality find expression. This Reality that is ultimate has its highest peak—but it is not of one order. There are several orders of that Reality,—there is one expression of beauty on the physical plane, there is another on the vital plane,— and so on. From these various orders beauty can be expressed in art-forms. Beauty is, in fact, an attribute of that self-existent Perfection which grips both the Soul and the sense or rather the soul by the sense, simultaneously. Art is the expression of universal Ananda—delight,—which is at the basis of the Cosmos.

In the development of art in mankind East has contributed her share. But the art-ideals of the East are not understood by many even among those who claim to follow them. In the Vishnu Dharmottar Purana the six limbs—(Shadanga) of the art of painting are enumerated showing that Indian Art must have reached a high standard of development before the canons of art could be formulated. We have no time to go into these six limbs. But I will take only one, Sādṛśya. Many people mistake "Sādṛśya" by making it mean "Resemblance" or "Similarity" of the outer characteristics of the painting and the object painted. Sādṛśya is not this external! 'Resemblance'. It is "Correspondence". That is to say, the painting must "correspond" to the inner purpose, the inner objective of the artist. The impulse to create tends to take a form in the inner being of the artist. He must, after getting the impulse to create, wait and allow a certain inner saturation to be reached before beginning to create his form. He must not allow each random suggestion, restless fancy, eager, hasty impatience, or emotion to carry him and create forms in that restless state. In fact, it is while imposing this kind of control on himself that the artist learns discipline so essential to true creation. It is not that one should only paint from within, one may find his subject matter

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in the street, in Nature and turn it into a work of art. But one may equally find it somewhere else. The Indian method in all these cases is¹ " Dhyātwā Kuryāt". "One must create after concentration." If there was failure in painting a portrait it was not ascribed to want of observation or faithful imitation, but to "śithilā Samādhi'''—"a lack or looseness of Concentration"—want of identification.

To-day the cry is for "new" forms in art, freedom to create new forms, preferably with the intellect. This idea of creating new forms is not new to Eastern art. In India this right has already been conceded long ago. You have only to look at authentic Indian painting or sculpture to convince yourself of the truth of what I say. While granting this right they only put one condition: Create "new" forms, but create beauty, create forms with beauty.

Many of you have come here to follow art as a "profession"; in fact, there is a section devoted to "Commercial" art. It is something that has got a place in this materialistic, commercial age in which we live. But let me tell you true art is not a profession, it is a flame. It is the Soul's search for beauty, a passion that would not allow you to rest -ontent without seeing the face of the Ineffable. It is when that flame is awakened in the heart that the artist finds himself strong to spurn ease and wealth and make of his life an adventure. When the Soul is aflame with that passion for beauty then the artist is able to withstand poverty, indifference, misunderstanding, ridicule. That flame purifies the whole nature of the true Artist and makes him worthy of seeing and creating Beauty here. Be votaries of true art, and aspire to create forms of beauty and art will lead you to the doors of the Supreme where you will find that Truth and Beauty are one,—in fact there Beauty is the divine aspect of Truth.

¹ध्यात्वा कुर्यात्

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