On Art - Addresses and Writings

VII

Sri Aurobindo's Ideas On Art

I give here a few ideas of Sri Aurobindo on art so as to clarify the fundamental issues : —

1.Art is discovery and revelation of Beauty.

2.All is, from one point of view, beautiful] but all is not, reduced to a single level. All things can be seen as having divine beauty, but somethings have more divine beauty than others. "In the artist's vision too there can be gradations, a hierarchy of values.—Apollo's grapes deceived the birds that came to peck at them, but there was more aesthetic content in the Zeus of Phidias, a greater content of consciousness and therefore of Ananda to express and fill in the essential principle of Beauty, even though the essence of beauty may be realised perhaps with equal aesthetic perfection by either artist and in either theme."

3."Art is not only the discovery or expression of beauty, it is self-expression of consciousness under the conditions of aesthetic vision and a perfect execution."

4."There are not only aesthetic values, but life-values, mind-values, Soul-values that enter into art."

5."Three elements make up the whole of art:—I. Perfection of expressive form, discovery of beauty. 2. Revelation of the Soul and essence of things. 3. The power of creative consciousness and Ananda of which they are vehicles.

6.Art is "perfect form and discovery of beauty" — But art is not merely for Art's sake — "Art also for the Soul's sake,

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the Spirit's sake—and the expression of all that the Soul, the Spirit wants to seize through the medium of beauty."

7. Artists should always remember that like the poets they have to worship five gods, or as Sri Aurobindo says "five Suns": (1) Truth; the twin Gods (2) Delight, (3) Beauty, (4) to bring into expression a Breath of greater life (5) Soul (Expression of the Self)

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