On Art - Addresses and Writings

  On Art


II

On Modern Art : Questions & Answers*

Q. The question of Modernist art which began in Europe and is now almost all over the world has been a great puzzle to me: So many claims have been advanced about its achieve' ments in the superlative degree that at times I wonder if my aesthetic faculty is really at fault, because I cannot bring myself round, to appreciate it.


A. You can include in the field all arts—fine as well as plastic, for, behind all Modernist art is working an identical impulse and motive and the same creative force.


Q. But can you tell me the nature of that art-impulse ? I have seen so many modernist works and have been completely mystified. I will also confide to you that I was very much surprised the other day to find Tagore's crude paintings being hailed as great masterpieces by really great artists and art'-critics. Do you think there ever can be some standard of art-values or will it always remain a field of mere personal likes and dislikes ?


A. In spite of earnest desire and efforts of some leaders there have been unfortunately, up to now, no universal art-values.

Tagore's art should not be taken apart from the general modernist movement. In order to evaluate this art you have to follow its evolution in Europe—especially in


*From Sri Aurobindo Mandir annual, 1944.


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France,—during the last century Appearances are deceptive, and behind these seemingly crude works there may be genuine seeking for new ways in art-expression.


Q. Art is eminently a field of forms and if you do not take count of the form you might as well drop art altogether. I am interested in the evolution of modernist art if that can make me understand and appreciate it. With their machine-like designs, patterns and schemes, their two-headed men and human faces with three eyes in two dimensions I am quite unable to find my bearings!


A. Modernist art began with an effort to break with the tradition of art in Europe, firstly because the old ideas and methods had probably exhausted all their possibilities and also because personality of the artist began to claim the right of an individual expression. Besides, such problems of technique presented themselves to the artist as had not attracted the attention of old artists.


Q. You do not mean to say that all tradition in art is useless ? Tradition at least supplies a wide, impersonal basis of technique based on past experience to the budding artist. It sets a high standard before him.


A. It is also valuable as a discipline and can, if rightly used, become a source of strength. Tradition is like a road that should lead the artist beyond itself to new discoveries,— but it should not become a bar or a boundary.


Q. What are the aims of the Modernist movement in plastic arts ?


A. Its aims are :


(i) Simplicity or rather simplification of the forms of nature.


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(ii)Reduction of details of forms, therefore, to a secondary place.

(iii)To set up special value for colour by trying to arrive at a new plane—a plane of colour of each object.


Q. Who set about achieving these aims ? Was it Courbet or Monet ?


A. Courbet was a half naturalist, but he gave up the idea of imitation of Nature as the sole aim of art. Monet who followed him stood for Nature, not as she is in the studio, but as she is in the open. He introduced the new way of treating light—the strong contrasts of tones and colours. Both of them may be said to have begun the departure. But it was the genius of Cezanne, the great pioneer that ushered in the new era. He effected a complete break with the art tradition of his times. In fact the need for a new departure in plastic arts was being felt since the end of the 18th century. For inslance, nobody before these artists would think of painting the "peasants" because popular ideas was that they are "ugly"! These artists showed that nothing is ugly in itself. Art before Cezanne was considered an adornment of civilised life, at best it was a means of evoking purely emotional reaction. Naturalism and a kind of Realism were both tried and their possibilities seem to have been exhausted. Romanticism of De la Croix brought in only a temporary relief.


Q. But now in place of ordinary emotions they have brought in what is called " aesthetic emotion " as a necessary reaction to a work of art. It is said that art is essentially made up only of formal elements and that the subject' matter has nothing to do with art. The alphabets of beauty are the point, line, angle, cone, square, curve, mass, volume position, magnitudes, dimensions, perspective.


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A. Do you mean to say that aesthetic emotion is something that exists apart from the whole of life—for itself and by itself? Although I grant that form has a great place in art I can't admit that form has nothing to do with the content and that from the artistic point of view the greatest masterpiece is equal to any well-executed, cleverly painted landscape.


Q. That is to say one must not try to see anything beyond mass, volume, position, colour, arrangements; "sense of composition is the soul of geometry of beauty''. It is said that structure and design are essential to art. These elements are analyzable, there is nothing mystical about them. For instance, take the "Transfiguration" by Raphael. A great critic says that the religious background of this painting is not its essential part, it is an overtone, it has nothing to do with the pure "aesthetic emotion". It is the disposition of masses, the composition of the picture, the design and the colour-scheme that give rise to pure aesthetic emotion.


A. Do you mean to say that Raphael while painting the picture kept the masses and colour-scheme before his vision ? If art is a means of expressing the vision of the artist, then the content of art has a definite relation to form as well as art. Besides, how are you going to isolate the aesthetic emotion from the rest of life? Aesthetics have something to do with beauty, and beauty (as I said in "Question and Answer" III) is not merely formal. If you maintain that the onlooker is not concerned with the vision of the artist but merely with the aesthetic reactions in his own consciousness to a work of art, you entirely m-'cs the purpose of art which is to convey to the onlooker without alteration,—or with as little alteration as possible,—the experience of the artist. Sri Aurobindo rightly says : "All Art starts from the sensuous and sensible or takes it as a continual point of reference or at the lowest uses it as


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a symbol and a fount of images, even when it soars. But equally all art worth name must go beyond the visible, must reveal, must show something that is hidden and in its total effect not reproduce but create". Formal elements have a place—and an important place in art,—but there are other things also. The effort of the modernists to reduce creative art to a manipulation of technique completely ignores the true origin and function of art and is therefore bound to fail.


Q. I was surprised to find that these Modernist European artists who excelled in representing Nature produced such unnatural ugliness.


A. The reason, as I told you, is that naturalism had come to a halt. People began to find that the highest aim of art is neither representation nor successful imitation of Nature, because such art can carry man only where he already is (i. e., on the ordinary physical plane); true art must be revelation of undiscovered harmony and unity. Cezanne refused to copy nature. He was not satisfied even with impressionism.


Q. What is Impressionism ?


A. The whole outlook of European mind in those days—as even now—was strongly influenced by scientific ideas. The stress was on finding out of objective truth of the world—to banish as completely as possible the subjective element from all branches of human culture. Naturalism and Realism were already there, but failed to do the job. The stress in art was to select from Nature and record. The Impressionist wants to transfer to the canvas the image received by the retina. He wants neither to make any comments, nor draw any conclusions. He thinks that is foreign to the purpose of art. He does not care about composition nor about decoration.



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Q. It is rather difficult, I should think.


A. It is very unnatural and most uncommon because man cannot completely neutralise the working of his memory and his intellect. The result of this attitude was that they began to see and study the superficial view of objects more accurately than people in the past had done and the result was a tendency to simplify forms. They sacrifice line to gain unity of visual impression. There is no precise shape or relationship of parts and the whole. Their main purpose is to create a general impression. For example, they want to represent the entire field of grass,—not the outline or detail of each blade of grass; they would rather paint the crowd and ignore the individual; they would want to convey the atmosphere of winter without its detail. Instead of a tree they would like to give the essence of forest life, instead of man, masculine strength, and so on. The Impressionist wants to reproduce the impression of the object or its atmosphere—not the object itself. Some critics find that Impressionism lacks structure—their com-complaint may be said to be that it produces only an atmosphere—no substance.


Q. Did Cezanne have any theory of art?


A. He had problems to solve but no theories. Even if genius accepts theories it is not limited by them. Great artists follow their own genius and vision. They hardly go to absurdities which inevitably follow the logical application of theories. You will be surprised to know that this greatest pioneer among modern artists not only had no theory of his own but was slow and had a very labours method of work. And still more surprising is the fact that he did not know drawing and was not able to draw the human form. An example of his perseverance, patience and at the same time slowness is afforded by the fact that


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he took one hundred and fifteen sittings of a friend of his for making his portrait and at last gave it up in despair only remarking that he was "not dissatisfied with the shirt-collars"!


Q. Strange! Isn't it? And yet how did he manage to do his work ?


A. All masters work with inspired consciousness. Cezanne's mind was seized by the problem of how to render solid volume and materiality of objects and forms. Impressionism did not offer him any solution of this problem and so it could not satisfy him though he accepted their perception of colour-values and of surface under light. He believed that mass, volume and density were not to be ignored in painting. Working at his problem Cezanne found simple geometrical forms in all Nature. "All forms in Nature" he said "can be reduced to the sphere, the cone and the cylinder". He, therefore, arranged his landscapes in harmony with his sensibility to form and colour. There is strength, simplicity and rhythm of lines and spaces in his work. He attempted to render form by colour—(almost entirely)—ignoring the line. He was keen on conveying the illusive sensation of an object, such as the warmth of colour of a fruit.


Q. If he was so slow, how could he make his living from art?


A. Fortunately he had not to depend upon his art for his maintenance; otherwise he would have starved. It was his passion. He did not care even to keep his paintings carefully. At times he left them in the fields where he worked at his problems especially if he found that the painting showed no solution of the problems.


Q. Was he able to solve his problems?


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A. He was able to indicate the solutions. But his work might have remained incomplete but for two great geniuses who followed in his wake and were able to show the possibilities of Cezanne's new approach to art. They were : Van Gogh and Gauguin.


Q. What is their contribution to modern art ?


A. I would like to tell you at length the tragic life-story of Van Gogh, but it would be too long. Like Cezanne he took to art without any training. He was very impulsive and of an intensely religious temperament. He found that his religious service as a priest did not hinder but helped his art pursuit. He brought in novelty of subject-matter, for he saw heroism in labouring man and woman and wanted to paint "the epic of humble life". He tried to train himself but he could not follow the conventional method which he found "lifeless and top-heavy". He believed that volume was more important than outline. In his paintings he worked with short deliberate strokes of colour—grey, brown, black,—he did not care for light and shade. His life was cut short at 37 by suicide.


Q. What about Qauguin?


A. He was a banker by profession but the pursuit of life's mystery fascinated him. That pursuit led him to Tahiti in Polynesia among the aboriginals. He was interested in dark, primitive instincts and vibrations which he thought were at the root of life's mystery. His colour studies are marvellous. You should see his "Three Tahitians".


Q. Did Qauguin have a theory of his own ?


A. Not exactly a theory but he had unconventional and new ideas on art. For instance, he believed that "Nature may be violated and brought by a sublime deformation to a permanent beauty."


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Q. Does it not look like justification of multi-limbs and other symbolism of Indian art wherein universal powers are embodied in artistic forms in which nature seems success' fully violated and brought to sublime beauty ?


A. A modernist artist tries to go beyond nature in his colours, forms etc. because he wants to represent beauty—in strong colours and shapes—which is in his mind,—beauty which abstract formations, lines and colours evoke in his own mind. "It is true that an artist may express what he has to say in what is called significant form—not the natural one—but then it must be a truth he has seen which may be the truth of heaven or truth of hell or an immediate truth behind things terrestrial or any other, but is never an external truth of the earth". (Sri Aurobindo)


The artist in ancient India was directed to look within himself to arrive at his form. The modernist in rendering the beauty of forms depends more often on analytic methods—observation of nature—which has certainly contributed to a great advance in technique, whereas the ancients depended upon tradition and synthetic vision of the artist.


Gauguin also held that "in the creation of a picture the eye is not to play a more important part than feeling or reason".


Q. How did cubism come?


A. You know that Cezanne wanted to convey solidity of objects in painting and that he found simple geometrical forms everywhere in nature. Cube was one of them. Other artists seized this form and thought that they had in the cube the primary expressive element which they had been looking for and they tried to work out its relation to colour, light and shade. By reducing reality to this simple


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basic form they believed that they got essentials of structure instead of accidents of appearance. To some painters cubism supplied the element of solidity and of design in nature. First they imitated the cubic surface and analysed natural objects into a number of cubes well-arranged. Thus they thought one could construct the picture independently of the distracting variety of nature. An artist can work with these materials like a builder.


Q. But far from objectivism, it looks a very subjective process. It is by the mind that one projects these cubes in natural forms, is it not ?


A. Certainly. And the result is a highly intellectual art which is based on analysis of objects into certain conceptual forms. For instance, conceptual cubism tended to create what is now called "Abstract Art". Imitative cubism gave rise to a certain decorative movement in modernist art.


Q. Are there other schools of Modernist art that claim to derive from Cezanne ?


A. Numerous; and to some of them even Cezanne is quite old-fashioned! There is Pointillism. Post-impressionism, Fauvism, Surrealism, etc. to name only a few.


Q. What is Pointillism ?


A. It is a name for a movement of art which adopted a special method of painting. It consisted in portraying forms by an infinite number of small juxta-posed points of different colours which blend into harmony because the eye re-composes them according to the laws of light. These forms preserve their clarity of outline. Seurat was the founder of this school and one of the most successful painters.


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Q. And Fauvism? and Post-impressionism?


A. Those artists who stood for a return to pure instincts alone in art took upon themselves the name of "Fauves" meaning "wild beasts". They exploited the colour-value of Cezanne, Van Gagh and Gauguin and tried to render form by aggressive colour only and gave organised deformations. This art degenerated into plebian art.


After the Impressionists there came those artists who wanted to paint not the changing appearance of a place, a street or a landscape but its permanent character. Even in portrait-painting they tried to carry out the same idea— i. e., draw not the outward features or changing mood but the character of the person as seen by the artist.


Q. Cezanne and the triumph of technique which followed immediately after him seem to be quite different from the chaotic modernism of our times.


A. Quite so. But it is the natural result of advance along a line of technical perfection in rendering form from the outside. To the modernist Nature in herself is neither important nor interesting. She is like a grand repertoire of infinite forms, designs and colours. The artist may keep what he likes or requires from them and reject or omit what he does not require. He may, like the Surrealists in literature, try to penetrate the inmost reality of man by plunging into the sub-conscient, giving forms to his primitive instincts, dreamworlds and disconnected impulses from the realm of the abnormal.


Q. And yet it is clear that the modernists are in dead earnest about their mission. I wonder why they don't score a great success in their endeavour.


A. We can give them unstinted praise for their sincerity and faith in their mission. Modernist art has got two valuable


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qualities from them: Broadness and freedom. And whether we like or understand their art or not, they are men who are prepared to sacrifice and suffer for their ideal and are entitled to our praise on that account at least.


But if the modernist is searching for the Truth of life, the Reality behind all life, and if he wishes to express it in his art-creation then the path he is pursuing seems bound to lead him to failure.


Q. Why do you think so ?


A. Because modernist art is too intellectual and analytical —each school is more or less directly under a dogmatic theory of art. It therefore, often lacks the truth of life and is often devoid of vision. Analysis is not the final secret of art. Sometimes it is said in justification of this art that it represents life. Perhaps yes, but what kind of life?—Life of dark primitive instincts, half-articulate impulses, nervous excitements and sensations. Man thus seen is very near the animal.


The ancients also represented life and the modernists try to dismiss their work as unreal simply because the life represented by them is not familiar to them. If the ancients expressed in their art an inner experience of an aspect of the cosmic Reality the modernists think it unreal —at any rate, less real than representation of physical nature or an action in life, or of nature remoulded according to the idea of the artist.


Q. It may be said in their defence that they try to paint what they actually see.


A. Yes, but the point is whether they see anything except what the retina shows. Do we expect an artist to paint the world merely as he sees it with his retina—perhaps with a more vigilant power of careful observation—which


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means, as you and I also see it, or as he sees it, with some other power of a transforming vision ?


Q. You can't say that the modernist has not been trying to give us the art according to His transforming vision ! Only you and I do not and cannot understand him.


A. As an eminent art-critic says of the modernist, "Each seeks to invent an artistic esperanto unmistakably his and his alone" (A. K. Coomaraswamy).


The result is artistic bareness. Each is trying to work out an intellectual theory or follow some mental idea, not expressing his vision or inspiration. If it was that, our inmost soul would respond to it with a spontaneous understanding and sympathy. An Egyptian Statue, or a winged Assyrian Bull, may strike your outer sense as unusual and even queer, but it does not shock you as a line drawing of a man with three eyes set in two different planes does in a work of Picasso; and remember Picasso is a very great artist!


Q. But you cant say that he is not sincerely trying to get at the Reality?


A. The impulse behind these erring efforts of the modernists has been very well described in a letter by Sri Aurobindo. He says with his usual profundity, "The idea (of the modernist) is to get rid of all over-expression, of language for the sake of language, of form for the sake of form because all that veils the thing in itself, dresses it up, prevents it from coming out in the seizing nudity of its truth, the power of its intrinsic appeal. There is a sort of mysticism here that wants to express the inexpressible, the concealed, the invisible; reduce expression to its barest bareness and you get nearer the inexpressible. It is the same impulse that pervades the recent endeavour of art.



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Form hides, not expresses the reality: let us suppress the concealing form and express the reality by its appropriate geometrical figure and you have cubism, or, since that is too much, suppress exactitude of form and replace it by more significant forms that indicate rather than conceal the truth—so you get "abstract" painting, or, what is within reveals itself in dreams, not in waking phenomena; let us have in poetry or painting the figures, vision, sequences, design of dream and you have Surrealist art and poetry".


Q. So, there is justification for the modernist art!


A. Not exactly justification but an explanation. Do not think that the modernist succeeds in unravelling the mystery or in arriving at the Reality.


As all art reflects the spirit of the times, the modernist too reflects the modernist spirit in his work.


Q. What is that modernist spirit as reflected in the actual works of art ?


A. I admit they are sincere in their search for the world of beauty and harmony, but in their groping efforts they seem to stumble upon the underworld of vital beings, or even upon some lower—PAISHACHIC-world-very rarely upon the heavenly garden of Indra where one meets the Gods in their glorious forms and splendour and where even the trees and flowers breathe a beauty all their own.


To be frank, I am afraid there may intervene an all-round decadence, unless this period turns out to be an interval before the new art-world is found. As it is, it seems to be a period of decadence trying hard to become interesting. Or, to put it differently, the mind of the modernist artist seems to be trying to become original by extravagance.


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After the first world-war the modern mind has become very restless, hysterical, interested in the abnormal and it is this condition which we see reflected in the modernist art. It is broken up into various theories, and into ideological groups. It is so very far from the ancient Greek or Indian art which seem to have a wide background of peace and harmony and a spontaneous delight of creation. What I mean is that the modernist art is not calm and self-contained in its perception or sure of its grasp or attainment of the reality. They, therefore, try analysis of form, light, colour, volume etc. in order to arrive at the Reality. But the process is foredoomed to failure. All modernist triumphs in art are mainly triumphs of technique which at best are of secondary importance. They seem to confine Nature to external nature only, and man's inner nature to primitiveness. They get such an obsession of certain primitive impulses like the sex,—in representing which they often become vulgar.


Q. But you do not mean to say that the ancients were puritans or that sex was taboo in their arts ?


A. Far from that. They had a more balanced view about the sex and about its place in life. They expressed their preception of the truth behind the crude sex impulse, sometimes in the form of satyrs. But they did not believe that the most primitive form of erotic impulse was the most fundamental Reality of Life or was its most beautiful aspect. Some of the ancients expressed their perception in the artistic form of Shiva and Shakti depicting deep and abiding soul-relationship—not the commonplace of husband and wife, or lover and beloved with their attractions, kisses and embraces. That perception culminated in the form of Ardhanariswar


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Q. Do you not hope or wish that some day art should become a great uniting force, some thing like a universal language?


A. Much as I would wish it, I am afraid the modernist art is far too self-conscious and limited by its theories to be able to give us a universal art-language. Also when it would come, I think, it would not be an easy language. Most people when they speak of a universal language imply that it would be understood correctly by everybody. I am not so optimistic. For I believe that one who would understand such universal language of arts must outgrow the limitations of race, time and country and must have a consciousness capable of unity with humanity in all its stages of development. It would require a large and generous heart, catholic tastes and freedom from all preference and prejudice and universal impartiality in the mind.


Q. But don't you think that the times might bring about a development in that direction ?


A. It is quite possible,—especially because the rapid transport is now removing the many old physical barriers and increasing the possibilities of contacts between man and man to such an extent that it would not be surprising if cultural isolation and natural prejudices would give way before long and the conscience of the intelligential—the leaders of every nation—would beat in unison with the whole humanity. The car, the aeroplane, the steamer and factories are—apart from commercialising him—tending to unite man physically. On whether man will use these opportunities for increasing human unity or disrupting nations will depend the future of mankind.


Q. These are all instruments that may be used either for good or for evil—I do not see how they—


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A. I don't say they are being used for the good of the mankind. But I maintain that the awakened conscience of humanity—even if active in its leaders—can use these as unifying forces.


Q. Will then art become uniform—everywhere the same ?


A. Not at all. It would be very dull to have no variety in art-expression. I should think rather that art would vary according to the nature of materials available, local conditions, cultural and artistic environment. As one critic asks pertinently "Can we imagine Srirangapattam on the bank of the Seine? " Even when the subject is the same the variation in art-expression is bound to be there, e.g. the expression of Nirvana of Buddha in Indian and Chinese arts.


Q, Many art critics and artists today believe and work with the idea that popular art—art that appeals to the average man is the only true art.


A. Tolstoi started that idea branding other arts as artificial and parasitical. There is no objection to some art being for all but to limit all art or the highest art to popular art, or to say that what is not appreciated by the crowd, the average man, is not art, is to misunderstand the highest function of art (which is spiritual). Besides this modernist tendencies of erotic folly and subconscious impulses together with the craze for making art popular tend to its vulgarisation and decadence. For, you will also admit that the artist's purpose is not merely to convey or awaken emotion or imitate or represent Nature or reduplication of the actual, but to reveal to us in stone or colour "what nature is, what man is, what God is" Sri Aurobindo


Q. I can understand an artist trying to paint landscape, flowers, still-life, mountains, rivers, seas, lakes,


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birds, beasts and all the play of life and relation and action and reaction of heart- But how is he going to tell us what nature is or what God is ?


A. Let the true artist come and he will find a way to tell you these things. Look at Italian artistic efflorescence—the world of Architecture, Sculpture and painting it has given, or at another world of Ajanta and Ellora. What a vision, what power and what work! Consider any Nataraja and you will have an idea of the artist's revelation.


Q. But is not all that something merely imaginary and unreal ?


A. You again forget the true function of art: it is search and finding of a perfect or an ideal rhythm. Life actual at its best is a broken rhythm. To show the perfect rhythm and to indicate how the imperfect rhythm of actual life is related to the perfect rhythm of ideal life, "to be able to suggest the unconquerable Divine force, in men and in the world; to show the Divine nature in its calm, wideness, greatness, attractiveness, to breathe it into man's soul and mould man into an image of the Infinite".—(Sri Aurobindo) That is also a high purpose and spiritual utility of art.


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