On Art - Addresses and Writings

Inaugural Address at Art Exhibition

At the Inauguration of the Exhibition of Paintings and Photographs of the artists belonging to Sri Aurobindo's Ashram and the International University Centre, Pondicherry at the Jehhangir Art Gallery, Bombay, on 2nd May 1955. Presided by Sir. C. V. Mehba.

Page 72

---

It gives me great pleasure to invite you to open this small exhibition of paintings and photographs of the artists of Sri Aurobindo's Ashram and the International University centre at Pondicherry. It is not claimed that these works are masterpieces or that the artists are great masters. Nevertheless, we have thought it fit to make an exhibition because artistic activity represents one side of Sri Aurobindo's integral view of life. One may be able to get a view of the Yoga of Sri Aurobindo from these works.

It was for a long time supposed by many that Sri Aurobindo's Ashram is a place where people live in an ivory tower, practise some kind of Yoga in splendid isolation, enjoying a lotus-eater's idle existence. If there was spiritual experience or enlightenment it was perhaps imaginary and had very little use for the ordinary mortal. How far these notions were from the truth may be seen from this output exhibited here which is only a small part of the total output of paintings.

It may be mentioned here that many other activities besides art and photography find place in Sri Aurobindo's Ashram because his philosophy is one of fulfilment of the earthly life of man by the descent of the Divine consciousness. He has shown in his masterpiece, the Life Divine, that the opposition between Spirit and Matter is only apparent and that Matter holds within itself all the potentialities of manifesting the Spirit. From a study of universal evolutionary movement it is evident that there has been an evolution of consciousness simultaneously with the evolution of the outer form. From the apparent Inconscient that was in the beginning-if ever there was a beginning,— organised Matter has evolved; from Matter, life; from life, Mind. Man represents this mental consciousness. But mind is not the last, though at present it is the highest term of this evolutionary movement. Man is, therefore, a transitional being.

Page 73

---

The destiny of Man is to ascend beyond Mind to a Higher. Consciousness, to a new principle of being, to a greater Reality. That Higher Consciousness is spontaneously perfect. It is man's ascent to it and its descent into Man that can eliminate the fundamental ignorance of the Mind and fulfil man's seeking for perfection of individual and collective life.

This upward movement of consciousness is the real sense of man's religious, philosophical and artistic efforts throughout the ages. It has been seen that man is endowed with an organisation of psychological, vital and physical faculties which enables him to make this upward ascent and succeed in it, however partially. The effort to evoke these faculties into action, to develop them with a view to reach the Higher Consciousness is called Yoga. It is the effort of the human being to unite himself with the Divine.

The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo, like that of the Gita,-accepts life in a double sense: in the first case, it uses life as a field for training the various faculties to reach the Divine; secondly, after having reached the Higher Consciousness it uses life as a field for the expression of the Divine. This spiritual attainment enriches life, makes it more and more the embodiment of the Divine.

In this respect Sri Aurobindo's Yoga differs from other systems that follow rejection of life and escape into Nirvana, or. merging into the Infinite as their goal. His is the Yoga of transformation of human nature and of man's fulfilment here on earth.

What outwardly appeared as a withdrawal or retreat on his part was only a temporary phase, necessary as a preparation for the work. Prof. Toynbee in his Study of History speaks of "Retreat and Return" of the great souls like Buddha and Christ who have moulded the course of human cultures. His Retreat was a temporary withdrawal with a view to a powerful

Page 74

---

return upon life in order to transform it. Sri Aurobindo's Yoga accepts the whole of life including aesthetic activity. About the latter Sri Aurobindo writes:

"The day when we get back to the ancient worship of delight and beauty, will be our day of salvation, for without these things there can be neither an assured nobility and sweetness in poetry and art, nor a satisfied fullness of life nor a harmonious perfection of the spirit" (Future Poetry)

He adds further "Delight is the soul of existence, beauty the intense impression, the concentrated form of delight." (F. P.)

But even apart from its inclusion in field of spirituality art has a special affinity to Yoga, to spiritual life. The great painters of Ajanta were Buddhist monks who retreated into the caves for periods of meditation. The intimate relation between Art and spirituality is due to their having the same goal. In ancient times art, religion, spirituality and even poetry were all sister-activities. The God whom religion worshipped was perhaps too far for the ordinary man to know. But the artist brought God in divine forms nearer to the common man. The artist created these divine forms mainly by "looking within" himself and then projecting the vision in outer forms. The Reality which the spiritual seeker endeavours to reach through, strenuous efforts of concentration and other methods, the artist attains by the exercise of his aesthetic and creative faculties. It must be remembered that the ultimate Reality is not merely Truth but is also Beauty. The artist can reach the Divine as Beauty.

The Mother, now carrying out the mission of Sri Aurobindo in the Ashram at Pondicherry, herself a great artist, says :-

"If you want art to be the true and highest art, it must be the expression of a divine world brought down into the material world" (Words of the Mother)

Page 75

---

While showing the relation between art and Yoga she says :-

"Art is not very different from Yoga, if the artists consider their work an offering to the Divine and try to express by it their relation with the Divine. The discipline of art, has at its centre the same principle as the discipline of Yoga. In both the aim is to become more and more conscious; in both you have to learn to see and feel something that is beyond the ordinary vision and feeling, to go within and bring out from there deeper things. Painters have to follow a discipline for the growth of the consciousness of their eyes, which is itself almost a Yoga. If they are true artists and try to see beyond and use their art for the expression of the inner world, they grow in consciousness by this concentration, which is no other than the consciousness given by Yoga" (Words of the Mother)

She defines the highest function of art when she says :-

"True art is intended to express the beautiful. This manifestation of beauty and harmony is part of the divine manifestation upon earth, perhaps even its greatest part."

Modern is the period of utter confusion so far as arts are concerned. It is symptomatic of the age in which we live after two world wars when values of life seem to be undergoing radical changes. Art in Europe made great progress in the last century; the artist has, at last, succeeded in liberating himself from tradition and is now trying to find a new purpose and a new way. But to-day he is neither sure of his ground, nor of the direction. Modern art has evoked new psychological forces into play and it seems, for the moment at least, that they dominate the whole field of art. From natural Realism to sense-impression, "pure sensation", "abstract form", "cubism", "fauvism", there is a movement from the external Nature to the subjective expression of the artist. "Reality is in fact subjectivity" (Herbert Read). From "perceptive experience" the artist has gone to "conceptive experience" and

Page 76

---

now he is trying to create altoge thernew forms from his own consciousness.

The demand to-day is for freedom with regard to subject matter and the method or the technique. There is demand for newness,—shall I say novelty?—, there is demand for the expression of the artist's personality. The artist wants to give individual interpretation of his experience. In India there is, perhaps a long standing fear and inferiority complex in the minds of our artists that unless they run with the current fashion they will be called unprogressive and old fashioned; for, we must remember that there are fashions in arts as there are in society.

Now, it is true that freedom properly exercised leads to personality, but unrestrained expression of any part of our being is not art.* Besides, newness need not always be the result of originality, nor of genius. Novelty and change should not be confused with progress. Nandalal Bose the great Indian artist said; "Too much emphasis on individuality may lead to eccentricity."

India that had remained stagnant for about a century and more in her artistic activity was dragged in by British domination to follow European standards in her arts. At one time it was even seriously argued that India had no art because her art followed different aims and methods from those of European, or Greek art. Even to day this false notion is not altogether removed from the minds of some critics. Mr. Nirod Baran Roy Chowdhury in a news paper intended for foreign circulation actually gave out, sometime back, that India never had any art of her own! He also asserted that "so far as modern art is concerned Bombay and Calcutta are as good as suburbs of Paris". He might be glad about his unique discovery and may feel proud of India being a suburb of Paris in her modern art.

* "all expression is not art" Herbert Read.

Page 77

---

But to us it appears hardly a matter of pride or glory. Even if India enters the world of art in the strength (or weakness?) of her imitation and adaptation, it would hardly save her from the general downward trend that has overtaken European art. It is Herbert Read who says—"in the world of art to-day a bitter wind is blowing". James Laver in his book "French Painting in the 19th Century", says: "For the last generation aesthetic critics have been pursuing the will of the wisp of pure art, pure painting, pure poetry etc., until the ideal poem has come to seem a meaningless pattern of words and ideal painting a pattern of meaningless shapes." If India loses her soul, her unique vision of life and art, what matters it if she gained the whole world?

Mr. Mulk Raj Anand the other day while opening Mr. Khatau's exhibition declared that he was a "modernist" and added by way of correction that he was an "Indian Modernist". I believe what he wanted to stress was that Indian Painters must create from the soul-centre. I may be permitted to point out that there are at least three "Indian modelers" in the field of painting The late Abanindra Nath Tagore, Sj. Nandalal Bose and Late Goganendranath Tagore. It is a wrong belief that Nandalal belongs to the socalled "Shantiniketan school" or to "the Indian national school" of painting, Abanindra Nath and Nandlal do not represent a "school" but a "movement". None of the three has been a conventionalist or a revivalist. Each has freely experimented with all techniques and media, Indian as well as foreign, and in each field they have created forms of beauty. Perhaps it is not known to the artists and art critics that Nandlal Bose has done Buddhist paintings in Ceylon and has worked in the Kirti—Mandir at Baroda. Very few know that he decorated two pandals of the Indian National Congress with local simple colours with great success. They have not neglected the folk-arts and tempera of earth-colours.

Page 78

---

Consider only the mythological series of Nandlal and his unconventional portrayal of Shiva and you will understand how elastic his creative genius has been. He adopted the Egyptian style and depicted Gandhiji's march to freedom. Abanindra Nath has worked with oil and water adopting the European, Indian, Chinese, Japanese or any style that suited his genius and appealed to him. Goganendra Nath is avowedly modern in his open acceptance of "cubism" and yet he is original in his application, interpretation and the use of his imaginative power. We feel that these great artists have assimilated the techniques they have adopted and the free spirit of the artists seems to be at work.

The two elements of fundamental importance which the modernist art movement has contributed to the world of art are: 1. Freedom of the artist to create in the light of his own spirit and 2. Directness in the method of expression or technique. These the Indian artist can very well accept and follow. He can learn the power and place of colour, the strength of light and other techniques from it. But for the rest, he must look within to his own soul, to his culture and to intuition of the future.

An example of how this is possible might make my point clear. India accepted " Democracy " from the modern world as the goal of her political life. But India evolved a technique of her own in securing her freedom. A similar effort is quite conceivable and possible in the field of Art. It is not that we have to confine ourselves to a narrow "nationalistic" or "cultural" out-look in arts. We must not act in the spirit of national pride or egoism in the ennobling pursuit of art. We have to approach it in the spirit of service, to offer it at the alter of the inner soul that is within us. The ideals of Indian art are of immense value to the world of art to-day. It should be the privilege of Indian artist to contribute to world art. Let the Indian artist have confidence in himself and in the Bharat-

Page 79

---

Shakti, the soul of the race that gave to the world Ajanta and Ellora.

In the Ashram at Pondicherry each artist is left entirely free to follow his own natural bent. The only thing in common is the spiritual motive and the general attitude of making art an avenue to reach the Divine. These paintings were done in the spirit of offering to the Divine so that the artist may grow into the truth of himself and bring something of the Higher consciousness and Truth in the forms of art, some ray of the Divine Beauty. How far this has been achieved is not for me to say.

The general tendency in modernist art is towards subjectivity in art-experssion. It is pertinent to point out that there is a subjectivity that is true and also one that is false or half true. This false subjectivity is the egoistic personality of the artist, his surface being, the out-ward-turned vital self interested in life and satisfaction of impulses and desires. Art, through Katharsis-purification-, can change this natural ignorant personality and awaken the true soul, the divine spark that is within all. But, if the artist gets entangled in this false subjectivity he descends-as some of the modern artists have-in his consciousness into the subconscient, the realms of the lower vital from where, in the language of Sri Aurobindo-;

Impure, sadistic, with grimacing mouths,

Grey foul inventions, gruesome and macabre,

Come televisioned from the gulfs of Night.

The craft ingenius in monstrosity,

Impatient of all natural shape and poise,

A gape of nude exaggerated lines,

Gives caricature a stark reality,

And art-parades of weird distorted forms,

And gorgoyle masks obsence and terrible

Trample to torment postures torn sense.

Page 80

---

A new aesthesis of inferno's art

That trained the mind to love what the soul hates"—

It is the contact of these lower levels of consciousness that gives to the artist random shapes, uncontrolled by any higher vision. The true subjectivity trains the artist to dive deep into his inner being and touch the true soul, "the Madhvadam Purusham " — " the eater of the honey of delight of existence ". It makes the artist look upward towards higher levels of Intuition, Inspiration and Revelation from which all great art has come down to man. The need of the hour is that the artist should awaken in him this true subjectivity and raise the level of his creation from ordinary vital interests, sensations, impressions, and mental theories to Intuitive consciousness.

Art and beauty are not of one level. There is a hierarchy in the levels of creation; from each level the artist can create great art. The attempt of the artist must be to raise the level of his creation to higher and higher planes till he reaches the doors of Divine Beauty.

Lest it may be thought that this is a mystic ideal, a speciality of the Indian temperament, I give here a few quotations from A. E. the great Irish Poet. He asks the poet and the artists " Are we alone ".^? " Are we secure from intrusion ?" And then he asks the artists : " Are you not tired of surfaces ?" There is a form that comes to you and says " I come from the land of immortal youth."

" These forms inhabited Shelly's luminous cloudland and they were the models in the Pheidian heart, and they have been with artist, poet and musician since the beginning of the world, and they will be with us until we grow into their beauty and learn from them how to fulfil human destiny, accomplish our labour which is to make this world into likeness of the kingdom of light" (Candle of Visim).

Page 81