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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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.

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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III

On Beauty : Questions & Answers

Q. What is the relation between beauty, art and spirituality ? Though I thought of asking you first what is beauty I gave it up realising the difficulty of defining such undefinable terms.

A. If you like I might hazard a statement, not a definition: —"Beauty is the language of the All-pervading Delight of existence calling men to itself."

Q. Does it mean that beauty is universal ?

A. Yes, beauty is everywhere; from everything the All-Delight is calling men. Wherever man perceives beauty it is the Universal delight that is cilling him. And this delight (that he perceives as beauty) is present even in things ordinarily considered "ugly". That is to say everyone is not able to perceive beauty which is every were. One perceives the kind of beauty to which one is open. It is only the Yogin who can perceive it everywhere. Beauty and delight are inalienable in the ultimate analysis or rather experience of Reality.

Q. Does it then mean that beauty belongs to higher world than our own ?

A. It means that Reality is essentially beautiful and blissful; this Reality manifests its Beauty and Ananda on the plane of our world also, but it is no: confined to this world alone.

Beauty is also Transcendental,—it is a quality inseparable from the manifestation of :he Absolute.

Q. What you say looks like a metaphysical concept, while I want to know rather the nature of the experience of Beauty.

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A. The most general reply would be that the experience of beauty varies according to the individual.

Q. Does is not amount to saying that beauty like so many other things is relative?

A. Yes, there are gradations of the experience of beauty. And though I am not enamoured of metaphysics I must say that at times the knowledge of the metaphysical position helps one to ascertain the probable line of experience. For instance, if you accept Shankara's view of the Absolute then to you world would be an illusion. In an illusory world beauty can be merely an appearance. The Absolute of Shankara can have no such Lakshana.¹ Shankara perhaps might admit Delight—a pure white self-existent delight, but not colourful play of Delight nor beauty.

Q. Is this not again ar. intellectual speculation ?

A. Not necessarily. It can be an experience along the line of pure Monism. In the intense experience of the Brahmic Consciousness the world loses its reality.

But as I said, that is only one side of spiritual experience. On the other hand there are many seers who have spoken of the Divine Beauty. To them the Absolute is not merely Being but also Beauty. They have said रसो वै स:—" It is the Divine Himself who is the essential sap of all Delight."

If you approach the Absolute negatively you reach more and more negation, whereas if you take the positive line it leads you to more positive affirmations of itself.

Q. I was asking about the experience of beauty. Don't you think that form i; indispensable for the experience of beauty? i. e., the experience of beauty is not possible without form ?

¹characteristic

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A. On our material plane it looks as if there could be no experience of beauty without form—but that is not true of all beauty. Let us remember that beauty even on material plane is not entirely a quality of the object. The form which expresses or manifests beauty is not something apart from the beauty; formal beauty is not independent of the inner beauty.

But on planes of consciousness above the mental, form is not indispensable for the experience of beauty. Of course, our mind can distinguish between form and beauty and even speak of them as distinct things.

Q. Do the ancients speak of arts—especially plastic arts ?

A. In the Veda, the arts are spoken of by implication;— as also is beauty.

In the Ait. Brahmana in 6.27 it is said: "Human arts are an imitation of the Divine arts. It is in imitation of the Angelic works of arts that any work of art is arrived at here—for example, a clay elephant, a brazen object, a garment, a golden object, horse or mule chariot, are works of art."

Q. Some great artists, like Sj. Abanindra Nath Tagore, say that Yoga is opposed to arts because Yoga demands withdrawal of senses from the outer world whereas for art senses are the indispensable means of perceiving the outer world of Rupa (form) which is the field of art.

What is the relation between art and spirituality?

A. Art may be opposed to Yoga according to some of the old systems of Yoga in which Nature is regarded as a snare to be avoided,—an obstacle to the freedom of the soul. But it is not true of all the Yogas.—especially the Vaishnavas the old Shaiva and the Tantric paths. These Yogas

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advocated acceptance of Nature as a mould for manifesting the perfection of the Spirit. Of that manifestation beauty and art are an integral part.

Moreover, it is not true to say that the artist perceives the outer world merely-with his physical sense. As Sj. A. Tagore admits later on in his book (Bagishwari lectures.) the artist has several eyes.

For example:—

i)The ordinary physical eye.

ii)The keen, bird's eye.

iii)The mental eye.

iv)The eye of vision.

And this inner faculty of seeing is closely connected with Yoga. So that Yoga instead of crippling the art-faculties should on the contrary develop, stimulate and enhance them.

Q. I was in fact, struck by Sj. A. Tagore's unconscious support and tribute to Yoga, for, later on he quotes Kabir's idea of Sahaja-samadhi and advocates it as the ideal condition for the artist!

In that song Kabir speaks of keeping the doors of his senses open and perceiving through them the delight of Divine Beauty everywhere—in all forms.

A. But Kabir did not get the vision of this all-pervading Divine Beauty by merely keeping his senses open to the outer world. For, in that case all should have that perception because all men keep their senses open to the world of forms.

Nor could Kabir have perceived or seen this beauty with his physical eye only, because the beauty he speaks of is evidently not objective. That experience must have

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been the result of long period of spiritual discipline or Yoga. The vision of the All-beautiful must have come to Kabir first in his inner consciousness i.e., as an inner realisation. And then the experience must have become strong enough to influence his outer senses. So that even the physical senses were able to participate in the same vision. No one can say that Kabir was not a Yogi.

Q- The question: "If beauty is everywhere, as you say, then why does not everybody perceive it?" still remains in my mind.

A. The devotee sees the Divine Beauty because he seeks the Divine as the All-beautiful {Bhuvana Sundara); he seeks Him as the " treasure of all Beauty" (Nikhila Saundarya Nidhi); as the " ambrosial ocean of the essence of all Beauty (Akhilarasāmrita sindhu) as the Vaishnavas say.

And this vision does not come merely by wanting it. It usually comes when one is prepared to pay for it by giving up all the cravings of the senses and the impulses and desires of the vital.

Thus the spiritual seeker, the poet and the artist all seek the same Reality, and at times by very similar methods.

Q. Does the Yogi then perceive the same Beauty everywhere irrespective of the outer form ? i. e. Is the beauty he per' ceives uniform ?

A. There is an experience in which all things—whether ordinarily considered ugly or beautiful—are equally beautiful because in everything it is the Divine Presence that equally animates the form. But as Sri Aurobindo puts in one of his letters "In the Yogin's vision of universal beauty, all becomes beautiful, but all is not reduced to a single level. There are gradations in his All-beauty......

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All is Divine but some things are more Divine than others. In the artist's vision too there can be gradations, a hierarchy of values. " There is, you can say, an art that pleases, an art that satisfies ambition, an art that succeeds, an art that is useful and an art that touches the Divine etc.

Q. Do the ancient texts speak of the process of art-creation ?

A. Yes, they do. And what they say establishes a close connection between art and spirituality. The Shukra-nitisāra lays down that the artist must be a man who can meditate. He must do his work—Dhyātwā kuryāt—"after meditation upon it." So that art was expected to be the result of an inner concentration. The work of art must first be realised within the consciousness of the artist, held before his inner eye and at last projected outwards through perfect mastery over the material by refined and trained instrumentality of the senses. In Europe also the ideal and method of art was similar in the beginning,

Q. I do not quite understand why an artist, say, a painter or a sculptor, should be expected to meditate.

A. The idea seems a little strange to the modernist mind but as a matter of fact I believe the process is familiar in the great artists all over the world. Perhaps the ancient Indians studied the process and arrived at a correct understanding of it.

For instance, if the artist wants to represent a God in sculpture or painting, he has at first to visualise the form of the God in an inner vision and then only to paint or sculpt it.

At times he may arrive at the form by coming in contact with the higher worlds of being or planes of consciousness. In that case the artist brings back the memory of the forms

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and reproduces them here in the material world. In some cases some superhuman agency—a higher being for instance, uses the artist as a medium for its self-expression.

A work of art may be revealed to the artist even in dream.

Q. Does this happen to the Indian artist or is it common to all artists?

A. Ancient Greek artists, it is said, experienced the feeling of exuberation and exaltation during periods of creative activity. There is evidence that all great artists had contact with a higher world of which most of them were occasionally or always conscious.

Q. Granting that the artist must create according to his inner vision, I don't understand why he should be asked to meditate on forms according to fixed formula or Dhyan Mantras, as is prescribed in ancient Indian texts.

A. I quite agree with you. Perhaps, in old times, the ordinary artist was not so conscious of his aim and method as the artist of to-day and so definite formulas had to be prescribed for him to habituate him to look inward and to fix the tradition.

But to-day we need not remain bound to these formulas. There is no reason why art should go on repeating the same forms in order to express the higher Reality of the worlds above mind. For instance, Shiva and Ganesh need not have their steriotyped forms. As an illustration take the paintings of Shiva by the great artist Nandalal Bose in which the traditional rules of technique have not been strictly adhered to. And yet the work does not seem to be less authentic on that account. The artist of today must be free to have his own vision and create accordingly.

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Q. From what you say it seems that the forms created by the artist pre-exist somewhere in the subtle worlds?

A. Most of them do. Only, it does not follow that these forms are always bound to correspond to the ones created here.

Q. You said that form is not indispensable for the experience of beauty while I have heard artists say that form is indis-pensable for creation.

A. You are confusing two things,—Experience of beauty and artistic creation. To creation form is indispensable: there can be no creation without form. But that is not true of all experience of beauty.

Q. Speaking of art-creation I am reminded of the modernist trend which considers the expression of the artist's personality as the chief and the highest aim of art. It is this expression of personality they say that gives each art-creation its special value, its uniqueness.

A. To the greatest and true artist art is not a means of expressing his personality but his inspiration. As the Mother says (in "Words of the Mother") True artists look upon art "as a means of expressing their relation with the Divine".

Q. Do you then think that the personality of the artist is some' thing superficial and shallow and that what really matters is the inspiration that comes down through him from above —his personality being only a channel—a thing of no value whatever ?

A. That would be perhaps too trenchant a way of putting it. For, after all, it is the personality of the artist that receives the inspiration and in most cases it has to rise higher than ordinary man in order to receive it,

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A great work of art, it must be noted, bears the stamp of its creator. Even in the same field of work each great artist leaves his own stamp on his work. For example, take the Greek dramatist Sophocles, Euripides and Aeschylus or the French trio. Voltaire, Racine, Corneille —you will find the distinguishing stamp of each on his work.

A soul expressing the eternal spirit of Truth and Beauty through some of the infinite variations of beauty, with the word for its instrument, that is, after all, what the poet is and it is to a similar soul in us seeking the same spirit and responding to it that he makes his appeal...It is the impersonal sprit of Truth and Beauty that is seeking to express itself through personality and it is that which finds its own word and seems itself to create in highest moments of inspiration.

—(From Sri Aurobindo's "The Future Poetry")

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IV

On Picasso : An Address

There are so many critics who have given their views on Picasso's art and they are all so different. I give only two :

1."It is non-sense to pretend that no introduction is needed, that the pictures can be left to speak for themselves." —"Picasso." by Anthony Bertram

2. "There are paintings (of Picasso) that have no discoverable organization at all."—"Meaning of Art"

Herbert Read

I. Picasso Art Periods

We shall examine briefly the technical side of Picasso's painting so that we may be able to judge and understand some of his ideas.

The first period may be called the Negro period (1906-1910). During this period, his work was influenced by Moorish sculpture in Spain and old fetish of the Negros. He adopted heavy proportions and titanic images from them. He had of course given up the current conception of aesthetic beauty.

In his "Les Demoiselles de Avions" one sees this influence and it has gone on increasing in other pictures. He also adopted the colour schemes suggested by the masks used by the Negros. Thus began what might be called the period of "dislocation" and "distortion". The effort was to create "a form which would be abstract,"—a form unrelated to humanity or even to this material world. He has painted "Peasant woman" in which

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there is clear influence of Egyptian statues. It appears a figure carved rather than painted.

Then from 1909-1911 is called the period of "analytical Cubism". During this period the human anatomy is subjected to amputations. He even gave a go by to colour during this period. He tried to break up forms into parts and then create a new one according to his sweet will.

From 1912-1921 is called the period of "synthetic Cubism" During this period., he has taken the support of forms of Nature but only as a scaffolding. He wants to get rid of what seems to him redundant or unnecessary in the natural forms during this period. He wants to bring out the "Reality", as the artist perceives it,—in his own forms. According to him, "Cubism is a language". One can concede it; but then the question is: Is it a language of beauty?

It was during this period that he resorted to "Collage" —in order, perhaps, to prevent his art from becoming entirely unreal. It is surprising that in spite of this variety of attempts, the subject matter of his art—the number of objects drawn from life, is limited: Guitar, Violin, Brandy-Bottles, articles generally found in a wine-shop in poor locality. Could this be taken as his representation of the environment in his art or as an indication of his being away from the broad stream of life? It is true that after this period, the broad stream of life did enter with force in his art-creation and gave us "Guirnica".

Some of his paintings—notably his "Mendolene",—he has done with papers and gum and nails, and a critic is constrained to say "It is neither painting nor image—nor sculpure. It is childish as a piece of carpentry." It is such works that create suspicion about all modern works of art. Picasso has also tried, besides Cubism, symbolism. "Mino Tauro Machi" and "Guirnica" both are symbolic paintings. He has himself said that the latter was created in order to express the tragedy,

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cruelty and inhuman elements of life which he felt when the Germans destroyed a Spanish village by aerial bombardment.It is "Brutality and darkness" that he has symbolised in the "Bull". "Guirnica" is regarded as one of the greatest works of Picasso. But there are contrary opinions about it among the critics. While some consider it great others think that it does not do justice to the great theme. His "Butterfly-hunter" is also a symbolic picture. He himself is the hunter and he is trying to find out the solution of the riddle of life. But the picture would hardly suggest this.

II. Picasso's Ideas on Art

Picasso has expressed his own ideas on art twice I. in 1923 and II. in 1935. It was in Spanish that he made his statement to Matins de Zayas which contains the following points. ("Art"—New York—May 1923 "Picasso speaks")

1.Nowdays one speaks of the need of research in art I don't accept that idea. The chief work of art is not to make research but to express what one has found. When I paint I want to show what I have found.

2.Art is not truth—art is such an untruth which makes us realise the Truth-it makes us realise the power of understanding Truth which is given to us. The Artist has so to represent his falsehood that it makes the onlooker realise the Truth.

3.When art tries to seek, then it commits mistakes. Such people try to paint the invisible i.e. something that cannot be painted.

4.Art and Nature can never be one. We represent in Art what Nature is not.

5.From the point of view of Art, there are no distinctions between mental or suprasensual or actual, or sensible forms.

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Only forms exist. These forms are only falsehoods that give us some conviction of Reality. There is no doubt that such lies are necessary for our mental life. By them, we attain the aesthetic point of view of life.

6.People complain that they do not understand Cubism. But Cubism is based upon other paintings. What does it matter if people do not understand it? I don't know English, but that does not mean that the English language does not exist. I do not understand it, it is nobody's fault."

7.I don't believe in the envolution of the artist. I don't believe that there is past and future in art. The art that is not in the present, the art that is not alive, one need not even think about it. Art does not evolve, there is change in 'ideas of men' and consequently, there is change in the method—style of expression. The artist standing between two mirrors sees his own reflection one by one. The reflections in the one people call "past" and those in the other, they call '"future". They do not see that it is one picture in different levels. The variation, the change that takes place in art cannot be called its "evolution" !

8.I have never made experiments, whenever I had to say something I have represented it in the manner in which it must be put. The style may differ according to different motives, but that does mean there is "evolution" !

9."There is no art of Transition."

10."Cubism is not art in its primary condition, it is an art that expresses forms. Once a form is created, it lives its own life"

The interview in 1935 was given to Christian Zervos:

"Cahier d'art" 1935 Vol, 10. No. 10.

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1."It is my misfortune and probably my delight to use things as my passions tell me...I put all the things I like into my picture. The things—so much the worse for them; they just have to put up with it"

2.I often ponder on a light and a dark when I have put them into a picture; I try hard to break them up by interpolating a colour that will create a different effect.

3.A picture is not thought out and settled beforehand. While it is being done it changes, as one's thoughts change and when it is finished it still goes on changing according to the state of mind of whoever is looking at it.

4.I want to get to a stage where nobody can tell how a picture of mine is done. What is the point of that; simply, that I want nothing but emotion to be given off by it.

5.When I begin a picture, there is somebody who works with me. Towards the end, I get the impression that I have been working alone.

When you begin a picture, you often make some pretty discoveries. You must be on guard against these. Destroy the thing, do it over several times. In each destroying of a beautiful discovery, the artist really does not suppress it, but rather transforms it, condenses it, makes it more substantial.

6.Abstract art is only painting. There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterwards you remove all traces of reality. Whether he likes it or not, man is the instrument of Nature. It forces on him its character and appearance. In my Dinard picture and in my "pour ville" pictures I expressed very much the same vision—I did not copy the light nor did I pay it any special attention. I was simply soaked in it. My eyes saw it and my subconscious registered what they saw: my hand fixed the impression, one cannot go against nature. Nor is there any "figurative" and

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"nonfigurative" art. Even in metaphysics ideas are expressed by means of "symbolic figures". Do you think it concerns me that a particular picture of mine respresents two people? Though these two people once existed for me, they exist no longer. The "vision" of them gave me a preliminary emotion; then little by little their actual presence became blurred; they developed into a fiction and then disappeared altogether, or rather they were transformed into all kinds of problems. They are no longer two people you see, but forms and colours; forms and colours they have taken on, meanwhile, the idea of two people and preserve the vibration of their life. Certainly painting has its conventions and it is essential to reckon with them. Indeed, you can't do anything else and so you always ought to keep an eye on real life.

7.The artist is a receptacle of emotions that come from all over the place; from the sky, from the earth; from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider's web. That is why we must not discriminate between things.

8.The painter goes through states of fullness and evacuation. That is the whole secret of art. I go for a walk in the forest of Fontainbleu, I get "green" indigestion. I must get rid of this sensation into a picture. Green rules it. A painter paints to unload himself of feelings and visions.

9.Academic training in beauty is a sham—Art is not the application of a Canon of beauty, but what the instinct and brain conceive beyond any canon.

10.It is not what the artist does that counts, but what he is—what forces our interest is Cezanne's anxiety—that is Cezann's lesson; the torments of Van Gogh—that is the actual drama of the man. The rest is a sham.

11.Everybody wants to understand art. Why not try to understand the songs of a bird? Why does one love the night,

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flowers, everything around one without trying to understand. If only they would realise above all that an artist works of necessity, that he himself is only a trifling bit of the world and that no more importance be attached to him than to plenty of other things, which please us in the world, though we can't explain them.

12. How can you expect an onlooker to live a picture of mine as I lived it. A picture comes to me from miles away: who is to say from how far away I sensed it, saw it, painted it; and yet the next day I can't see what I have done myself. How can any one enter into my dreams, my instincts, my desires, my thoughts which have taken a long time to mature and come out into day light and above all grasp from them what I have been about perhaps against my own will?—There ought to be an absolute dictatorship—a dictatorship of painters—a dictatorship of one painter."¹

III. IDEAS OF PICASSO EXAMINED

"Art is not Truth"—What does he want to say by that? Does he mean that art is not meant to give us the Truth of the physical—the objective Reality, or does it mean that art does not express the Truth of form?

If art is a falsehood, then it is difficult to understand how it can give us Truth (as Picasso says.) It seems only a way of saying, perhaps, a way of being clever like Oscar Wilde who made a similar statement about art in the eighties of the last Century.

Picasso says that the attempt to paint the Invisible is bound to fail. The question is: Has not the "invisible" been represented in arts? Look at the Medonnas, look at the works of Eastern art and the art of Renaissance and you have ample

^l These statements are not full but condensed in his own words.

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proof that the Invisible has been successfully represented in arts. The Chinese or Japanese Dragon is it from the visible? It may even be asked: are the forms created by modernist art from the visible?

He has tried to say that Cubism is art-language of the modern artist. It would be truer to say it is art language of some artist of the modernist School. The difficulty is that each artist has, or seems to have, his own art language which probably he alone can understand. That renders the task of appreciation by others difficult, if not impossible. If one of the functions of language is to serve as a medium of self-expression for the creator, its other function is communicability, though it must be conceded that the creator may not aim at being communicable.

When some one argues that Cubism is not in accordance with our intellectual knowledge of the Reality, the answer is: Cubism is above ordinary experience and against man's prejudice or customary likes. It is often the result of simultaneous vision—superimposition of planes and dimensions upon each other that gives rise to what appears queer to normal sight. We have no objection to simultaneous vision if the resulting form symbolises successfully that simultaneity. If we make a frantic effort with the help of our imagination to see this simultaneous vision, can we say that our aesthetic sense is satisfied?

A picture says Picasso goes not changing after it is finished. It undergoes change according to the man who looks at it. But this happens to all pictures and this change is subjective and has nothing corresponding in the picture.

He seems to say that expression of "passion" "emotion" is his chief aim in his works. It is true that 'art' can express it. But the question to be considered is: "Is it the main aim of art to express "passion" or "emotion"? are there not many things

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other than passion in the human consciousness that are fit material for art-expression?

He says that the fact of representing two men in the painting is not important because as the picture proceeds the two men have ceased to be men and have become "problems". We can understand this as an explanation of the process in the artist's inner being. But the onlooker will have only the painting before him to form his impression or opinion. Now if the painting itself is such that the onlooker gets the suggestion that it is a problem—nevermind what that problem is—then the work may be said to succeed in its aim. But if the onlooker gets no hint or suggestion from the picture then the artist's own idea that he has represented a problem has no relevance for the onlooker.

His assertion that "not what the painter does but what he is", is important and deserves consideration. It is true that the true centre of creation in the artist is himself even though outer nature, objects or experience of life may give him the excuse for setting into movement his inner being. This inner being has many levels of its natural self. It is this complexity of man's inner being that renders the task of the artist very difficult. Very often he mistakes his vital being, the being interested in life and action—for his true soul. It is certainly true that this vital being—the being of life-force—can and often does, create great art. It draws its material not merely from the great ocean of life around the artist, but by help of imagination it can create powerful new forms which have a great appeal for life. There is a plane of the higher vital being—a higher vital world—far above the plane of ordinary life of everyday, where forms of great power and beauty exist. An artist can either rise to this plane occasionally and draw inspiration for his work from there. He can straightaway bring down forms—either literary or plastic, into his creation from this plane or may modify them in transit through his consciousness.

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He can contact the mental i.e. the intellectual—plane and feel, perceive or see forms on that plane and if they attract him, he can establish a contact with them and bring them into his creation.

He can—if he acquires the practice—contact his true soul, his psychic being, his innermost self and perceive or see forms on that plane. He can bring them down into his art creation. Or, he can see this world—men, nature, etc.—from that higher plane and it would be a very different view of it!

Above the mental level, there are ranges of consciousness attainable by man. The greatest artists are those who either unconsciously or consciously succeed in contacting these levels of consciousness and bring down some forms from that great world of harmony. Behind all the turmoil and strife of life there is a harmony trying to express itself. This harmony is not merely harmony on the life-plane, though that is its most important field for expression. This harmony is spiritual—it belongs to the levels above the life plane, but its aim is to manifest itself on the life plane. Art is one medium through which it can express that world of harmony on the plane of life in terms of material medium. An artist can contact—in fact great artist have always contacted—this plane of harmony and express forms from there in his art either without any modification or with some changes, while they pass through his consciousness.

It is perhaps necessary that the artist in modern times at least realises the complexity and multidimensionality of man's consciousness so as to save himself from obscurity due to want of clarity about the inner structure of man. He is most often confused. Some of the modern theories of psychology, like psycho-analysis, give him a very onesided view of man's inner being.

When Picasso says that it is the personality of the artist

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that is important, our difficulty in accepting it is that we have no means other than the picture to know his personaliny. So the observer has got to know the artist only through the work, through painting. While writing about Cezanne he says that "it is the anxiety in Cezanne that goads us to take interest in him". What was that anxiety? Was it his intense desire to bring something new to the world of painting? Many others may also have similar anxiety. We consider Cezanne a great master because being dissatisfied with the modes of painting current in his time, he tried sincerely to bring about two or three new departures in the realm of painting and achieved notable success. The bringing out of volume, representing "solidity" and planes of colour-tonality were some of the elements he brought into painting. His lifelong effort was to represent the "sensation" of the object, the atmosphere of the landscape etc. This individuality of Cezanne we can see in and through his painting. and achieved notable success. The bringing out of volume, representing "solidity" and planes of colour-tonality were some of the elements he brought into painting. His lifelong effort was to represent the "sensation" of the object, the atmosphere of the landscape etc. This individuality of Cezanne we can see in and through his painting.

When faced by the observer who feels the need to understand art Picasso angrily asked: "Everybody wants to understand art, Why not try to understand the songs of a bird." For the simple reason that an artist is a man and not a bird; we do understand the songs of a bird by an instinctive, if one may say, intuitive perception of the joy and harmony that flows through the songs. We do want to perceive and feel that harmony and beauty in the artist expressed in terms of his art, which is a product of a human being.

"How can you expect an onlooker to know the picture as I know it". We don't expect the onlooker to know the picture as the artist knows it in his travail and wrestle with material and technique—if he has any. We do not require to know how Raphael created his pictures to know what he went through in doing his paintings. The onlooker is not interested in how the picture came to you. Why should he be interested in that? He may be, and is interested in knowing

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about the artist from his art, if that is possible. The onlooker can only enter into that realm through the painting. If the work is such that the onlooker gets no idea either about the subject painted or about the painter, it is not his fault.

There is a great effort on the part of modernist painters —notably Picasso—in some of their works to revert to Primitive art—as represented in some of the Negro sculptures. To the Negros these masks or images were objects of worship or of fear, perhaps they represented to them 'spirits' malevolent or benevolent. They hardly looked upon them as art-products. The effort of the modern artist to go back to primitive art-forms for inspiration is, to say the least, a vain effort. It is bound to be unconvincing and lead to strange forms which neither spring from genuine religious feeling and emotion nor from sincere artistic inspiration. The desire for novelty, the need to be striking, straining for effect ete., can hardly give real artistic creation. Such efforts cannot satisfy the aesthetic feeling in the onlooker, they may at the most excite his curiosity. The thirst for beauty remains unquenched in face of these works.

This very often happens in arts when the "intellect" of man takes the lead. There is hardly an artist today who has not got his own "theory" of art! This "theory" is his intellectual formation. It is true that "intellect" can create art—but that is art of the second order. The greatest art comes from "inspiration", not from the mere "intellect."

Man may receive forms from the subconscient, the dream-world, the world of fancies, from the impulse-domain and they would generally be what the forms of these planes are—ugly, strange, repellent etc.

" Picasso gives out a secret "

"The Hindu" November 30, 1964.

A sensational " confession" has been made by Picasso,

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that in many of his extravaganzas he was simply " amusing himself" at the expense of his " intellectual " admirers.

Statement in a quaterly publication. " Living Museum " has evoked lively controversy.

He said, " People no longer seek consolation or inspiration in art. But the refined people, the rich, the idlers, seek the new and the extraordinary, the original, the extravagant. And myself since the epoch of Cubism, I have-contented these people with all the many bizzare things that have come into my head. And the less they understood the more they admired it.

By amusing myself with all these games, all these non-sense, all these picture puzzles and arabesque, I became famous and very rapidly. And celebrity for a painter means sales, profits, a fortune. Today as you know I am famous and very rich.

But when I am alone with myself I have not the courage to consider myself as an artist in the great sense of the word, as in the days of Giotto. Tittan, Rambrant and Goya, I am only a public entertainer who has understood his time.

( Madeleine Roussau, Editor of "the Living Museum" )

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Address to Art Students - Bombay

I HAVE undertaken this task not because I want you to accept my ideas but because I have a liking and respect for some of our young artists and art students. I admire their earnestness and I want to be of some service to them in clarifying some of the fundamentals of art. I want to bring to their

notice that besides European art there are other arts equally great and that there is much to learn and assimilate in them. I want to put before them some ideas of Sri Aurobindo on arts,-ideas which he gave to mankind in order that man may be able to fulfil his destiny, and live a divine life on earth. I want to tell you, students, that most of you lack mastery over technique-any technique-which gives discipline to the artist.

The mastery which the Chinese and the Japanese artist has —and which the Indian and Italian artist had—over his technique is not found among modern artists.

It is true that technique is not all, and that mere technique is not art. But the discipline, the control of the material which the mastery of the technique gives is very precious. The efforts to create without mastery over techinque is like trying to write poetry without grammar or even language. The artist must learn and then forget the technique.

Europe has dominated the world for more than two centuries not only in economics and politics but in literature and arts. This domination by the European culture has produced very tonic effect on many cultures in Asia and has given rise to renaissance in their literature and life generally. But together with much good this domination has also given

* A Lecture at the J J. School of Art, Bombay 1-2-1954.

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rise to a general inferiority complex and in the field of arts particularly this has resulted in lifeless imitation of European art and soulless attempts by Indian artists—except the work done by Indian artists in the years when the national consciousness awoke. The European critics told the world that India had no art and Indians swallowed this nonsense for more than two generations. All arts except those that Europe had created were 'primitive'. Greek art which is the parent of later European art was the standard by which all art had to be judged. All these uncritical ideas have to be given up. Fortunately, thoughtful men in Europe are giving them up. It is good to remember that, however unconventional the art of Europe may be for the last century, even European art had its tradition. Let us also remember that Persia, China,¹ Japan and India have had their arts—arts of long standing, and that their artistic value need not necessarily depend upon their fulfilling the standards set by the latest current fashion or theory or values current in Europe.

It is true that our artistic activity—as all our cultural life—came to a standstill practically with the loss of freedom and cultural decline. During the period of domination England forced upon India European art-ideals, methods and values. Schools of art were compelled to teach only European art and by European methods. It was only in Calcutta at the end of the last century that an English artist of exceptional calibre, Mr. E. B. Havell, introduced on his own responsibility

I "Chinese art has consistent history and is even more persistent than the art of Egypt. It is more than national. 30 Centuries before Christ it began and yet Europe has not been able to enter into the spirit of this art,

Its inward spirit still remains strange and remote.......We are passive spectators of a way of thought and life which is beyond us.

The East yields its secret slowly and one may say that in order to appreciate these works of art to the full, one has to acquire new way of looking at the world. It may be said without exception that the oriental artist is never looking at the world from our point of view.

Herbert Read Meaning of Art,

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Indian art, its ideals and methods in the school at Calcutta. It is not that European culture has done India no good. Far from it. Some great and eternal values like freedom, value of the individual, need of organising collective economic life for general progress—these are elements that are bound to lead men to progress.

Today when the world wants to be free and India has secured her freedom let us shake ourselves free from this cultural domination. Let us not reject what we need and can assimilate but let us not harbour the illusion that whatever the West thinks and does is perfect. Let us not blindly accept their values and judgements. Let us take what we have to, and need, but also let us find out whether we have anything to give, to contribute. Let us not be servile imitators of a dead past, or living present of Europe. Let us free ourselves from the false notion that holding on to Indian technique—of whatever period or school—is the way to express the soul of India in art-forms.

In order to bring home to our young friends with force some of my contentions I would put two or three points of view before even I begin my discourse.

We all know very well that the ideals of the Renaissance are long past from the field of art in Europe—for art also reflects the culture of the time—and yet in spite of all the changes that have taken place during 3 or 4 centuries, it is possible to stand before a picture of the Renaissance period and feel admiration for it, to enter into its world and enjoy it. Could we feel the same about a modernist work of art, say after one hundred years ? Even today one hears that Epstein's "Eve" had to be put away into the godown because nobody is prepared to pay the price. If it is contended that Renaissance art is preserved because it is religious—and not secular—one may ask: have the pictures no aesthetic appeal ? To all Indians who are all not Christians, that art has an appeal even today.

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It has been suggested that the objections to ultramodernist art is based on its being new, on its containing the unfamiliar and therefore it appears foreign to the taste of the ordinary man. This is not quite true. Intellectual people are quite prepared for novelty, and they do try to put away their preferences when they find a painting done in the new style. There are cases in which the disapproval is not due to want of desire to understand and appreciate. Besides, one can cultivate and acquire a taste for art that is new and foreign. Do we not in Indian cultivate our taste when we first eat chocolates or cheese?

There are persons who are impressed about the artistic value of ultra-modernist paintings by the fabulous prices at which they are sold. This is an illusion which the true art-lover must get over. The price paid for a painting is not an index to its artistic value. And it is a gratuitous assumption to suppose that one who pays a high price for a painting understands art.

The first genuine outburst of inspiration in European art,—apart from Greek which derived much from Crete, Asia minor and Egypt,—was after the spread of Christianity. It was during the Renaissance that churches, statues and paintings came as if in floods. Gothic, Romanesque and Baroque and other styles found expression in church-building. Great creators came on the scence almost in a crowd. The soul of the people found expression in an inspired art which is the wonder and admiration of mankind for all time.

The art of the Renaissance was mainly religious and spiritual, like the ancient art of the East. But when European mind turned to Rationalism and science then all secular arts— especially painting, found their centre in Paris. France, notably Paris, has remained the dynamic centre of European

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Painting for nearly three hundred years. Between the idealism of the Renaissance and intellectualism of today there are many phases.

The Age of Reason followed the Renaissance and materialistic sciences advanced in Europe. Reason gradually became the leader in all the fields of life. The attention of Europe was then again directed towards Greek culture. The inspiration of religion from arts almost dried up and Europe accepted the Greek ideal of perfection especially in its arts. The Greek ideal was a kind of balance between man's intellect, his aesthetic being and his body. To the Greeks, a human being endowed with intellectual eminence, a sense of beauty and a strong and beautiful body was the ideal. The Greeks never seriously looked beyond the intellect in their cultural endeavours. The European art-ideal underwent a change. The eye of the artist that was turned inwards or towards a supraphysical Reality now turned outwards, towards Nature, human body, life etc. And even when it turned to creation of Gods, it conceived them with the help of intellectual imagination and did not see them by inspired vision. Catholic France became the leader of this rational movement and the centre of art-activity.

Formerly, the subjects of painting were either religious or mythological. It is true that the church was the patron, but it must not be forgotten that the spirit of the times was intensely religious. Later on, life of heroes, historical events and incidents interpreted imaginatively came into vogue. Now, Nature became the chief subject of art. Landscape painting had a place in the Renaissance. It was meant as a background for life, for incident, for man. Herbert Read says, " it was not as objects of separate aesthetic contemplation ". " Landscape element in a painting was allowed to dominate the incident". Originally it was intended to create or supply an atmosphere appropriate to the incident. From there came

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the idea of creating " atmosphere for its own sake " (Read). From the infinite beauty of Nature the landscape-artist used to select a portion that specially appealed to his aesthetic sensibility, and he rendered it realistically. There used to be an element of harmony in the choice and execution of work.

But Nature was not the chief subject for the artist—in Europe as it was to the Chinese or the Japanese artist. To him Nature mainly existed for man.

In Japanese and Chinese art Nature exists independently of man. The attempt to portray the mood of Nature which we find in these far eastern countries has very few parallels in European art. In their art Nature becomes a living expression of the infinite, she is one of the chief powers of the Cosmos and very often, men, animals and birds appear small in the midst of Nature's vastness and infinity. In European art the mood of the artist is dominant, in far eastern art the mood of Nature seems to be depicted. Nature in the East is like a symbol, She is infinite and eternal. Art of the east tries to represent the infinitely varying moods of Nature in her infinitely multiple forms,¹

But that is besides our purpose. There is no doubt that there has been very remarkable progress in the technique of art in Europe during this modernist period and many fundamental considerations about art have been brought to the forefront. The establishment of Art Academy in Paris gave a great impetus to art in France. At that time Realism and classicism were in vogue.

¹ " Chinese Art depicts the harmony of the universe. It has nothing in common with Western art which wants to represent the particularities, of natural appearances. His landscapes are not Particular landscapes behind the particular is the general. Chinese art conceives Nature as animated by an immanent force and the object of the artists is to put themselves in Communion with this force and then to carry its quality to the spectator "

The meaning of Art—Herbert Read.

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The officially sponsored Academy recognised art which conformed to its standards. Ingrees was the recognised leader of the Academy. There was a great opposition to the policy of patronising only the official art-style. Eugene de-la croix, the great Romantist, was the prominent leader of the opposition. Pictures done in a style other than the one favoured by the Committee were refused. Even De la Croix was refused. It was long after he became famous and was recognised that he was taken as a member of the Committee, and even then he was a minority of one !

We shall try to see the general outline of evolution of western art from 1875 to 1906. We might distinguish between Modernists and ultra-modernist to bring the evolution upto-date. The Modernist period can be said to come to its close in 1906 with the death of Cezanne, though some of its leading figures like Claude Monet continued to live upto 1926. But Matisse and Picasso had already come to Paris in 1906 and they and some others had done some of their paintings in the ultra-modernist style.

The artists who ushered in the Modernist era had to struggle very hard and to go through many difficulties. But the same cannot be said about the ultra-modernists. They practically stepped in the wake of success that attended the efforts of the heroic group that led the vanguard of the movement. I believe Picasso saw something of this struggle in the first four or five years of his career in Paris. But really speaking this point is hardly pertinent in evaluating art. It can have a place in our understanding and estimate of the personality of the artist but not of his art.

This period between 1876 and 1906 is one of the most extraordinary periods in the history of art,—particularly painting. Painters whose works were refused by the official committee formed themselves into a group,—several small

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groups also—and decided to hold exhibitions of paintings rejected by the Committee. This was a great adventure full of many difficulties not the least of which was economic. " Salon des refuses" attracted slowly the attention of the public.

Art, including painting, is pursued as a profession and the number of painters in Paris alone was about 30 thousand in 1929. When art is pursued on such a scale, it is possible that ambition, patronage, desire for money or name may influence, to some extent, the standards of pure art and opposition might be offered on mere materialistic considerations. But in this case of the modernist movement there was no such thing. It was the opposition between true votaries of art on one side, and the established method and its upholders on the other. The officially recognised art had fixed standards while the modernists claimed freedom to create as they liked.

When Cezanne and his contemporaries declared their revolt against the academic art they did not have any special revelation, or had not found some other Reality. They were all not in agreement about the goal and the technique. But they all felt the cramping influence of the official policy and wanted to pursue new ideas. They did not take to Nature as their predecessors, and they met the opposition of established standards in their work.

Representation of Nature or of incidents of history or religion or mythology as subjects of art were left behind. The painters wanted to represent the " impression " produced on their mind or on the sense, by objects, persons or Nature. De la Croix was a romantic; he used to interpret Nature and incidents through his individual temperament. Cezanne wanted to express in his painting his " Sensation " of the object. He found that forms of objects in Nature could be classified into simple geometric shapes-cubes, pentagones, triangles, cylinders etc. He aimed at representing volume and solidity in painting.

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He noted the differences in the colour-effects of shades. Shade was represented before by black colour. He introduced various colours to represent shadows. The modernist, in short, did not want to reproduce or imitate Nature, for he argued that the painter could never represent an actual tree in his painting.

It was also noted that the colour of objects undergoes a great change with light. In fact, there is no one colour of an object. It depends upon light falling upon it. They wanted to paint these light-effects on colour in their works.

There is hardly any parallel in world's cultural history to the heroic struggle for artistic revival carried on by this band of painter in France, poor, unencouraged, neglected and subject to an official taboo. There were among them fifteen to twenty painters who would have ranked as masters at any period and in all there were 40 to 60 painters of good calibre who struggled for years to secure the freedom of the artist to create according to his genius. In spite of temperamental differences, and those of ideals and methods they stuck together united in their opposition. The economic difficulties they went through were great, for, their paintings, unrecognised by officialdom, found it difficult to find a market. Many of the great works were sold at ridiculously low prices. When they were in difficulty they left Paris and went to the suburbs and even to small villages where they continued their work. Whenever they could they organised " Salon des refuses" Exhibitions. There were times when some of them could hardly afford to buy canvas; they used to scrap off the colours from an old painting of their own to utilise the same canvas for a new painting. Such was the singleness of their devotion to art that when Monet's wife died in penury the first thing he remarked was the change of colour on her face due to death! How hard they worked and how prolific was their output may be gauged from the following fact. Pissaroo had to flee from the village in France to England when the Franco-Prus-

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sian war was declared. He could not take his paintings with him. The Prussian soldiers occupied the house and used it as a butchery and his paintings as door-mats and as fuel in winter! When the war was over he got back 40 out of his 1500 paintings. It must be remembered that Pissaroo painted for thirty years after that! This is only one instance out of many.

Art—Ideal and Technique

To us, perhaps, the development of their art-ideal is more important and useful. Art could not have progressed on the old ideal accepted by Realism. So, the aim of representing in painting the "Sensation" of the object made its appearance and instead of Realism that imitated Nature, the aim of reproducing the "Impression" became dominant. The artist wanted not to represent the object, but his "impression" of it. On the side of the technique planes of colour and differences of tone were used in order to bring out the artist's "Sensation" and "impression" Light and shade—particularly effect of light on colour and on object was studied very minutely and it made a new departure in the technique of painting. Some of them,—notably Monet—tried to represent the effect of light on colour by painting the same object several times under different light. Many painters began to paint direct with colour,—without resorting to outlines. Volume alone was considered enough to give form; thus colour became prominent in painting.

There was a time in Europe when painting was learnt by apprenticeship with a great master—as was the case in the East. So many well known artists of the Renaissance learnt their art in their master's workshop. That training gave mastery of the technique. But when this new movement came even the weak remnants of the system disappeared and with it gradually was lost the mastery of the technique which is so essential to real creation. It is one thing to have the mastery

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of the technique and forget it or leave it—like Picasso—and quite another to have no mastery and to aspire to create without any knowledge of the materials or technique. It is like a man using sounds to convey language. He has to learn the language and even grammar to be able to create.

Some of these painters in France saw Nature with the infinite variety of objects capable of being reduced to simple geometrical shapes, like cubes, squares, cylinders, triangles. The impressionists not only tried to give their own "Sense-impression" of the object but their own "mental impression" created by projecting these geometrical shapes upon Nature. So far as the sense-impression of the object was concerned, there was something in Nature which corresponded to it. If winter was represented in the picture there was the 'impression' on the eye of winter. But when the Impressionist passed on to Cubism, there was no such correspondence in Nature. The Cubes were present in the mind of the painter—though the first cubes might have been "suggested" to him by his own sence-perception either in colour-plane or in the forms of objects.

It was Gaugain¹ who gave clear expression to this view, though his own works show no sign of his being able to carry out his view,—that the artist has to use Nature only as a repertoire. Nature is only a mass of raw-materials for the artist. He can use what he likes out of it. He can even change nature.

From this liberty with the forms of Nature that the artist claimed the assertion of his right to create altogether new

1 Gauguin: "For him the Impressionists were the representatives of their decadent century, for they had pursued their researches in accordence with the eye, and not towards the mysterious centre of thought."

Basil Taylor

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form—forms which did not exist in Nature—was only one step further. So, the artist claimed the right to create forms from within himself. It may be from his sensation interpreted by him, or his mental idea projected by him—as in cubism—on Nature.

Then the question was: if "Sensation"—"impression" "idea" or "mental thought" could give us new forms why not "instincts", why not "passions", "fancies" "dreams" "suggestions"—"impulses"—"feelings"? The "Fauves"—the word means "wild-beasts", tried to carry 'instincts' in their paintings. A further step was "Surrealism" which wants to assert the right of art to be above the need of being comprehensible! "Why should art 'mean' anything"? the Surrealist asked. "Dadaism" —"Futurism" and many similar ultra-modern movements in art are only extensions of this fundamental trend of subjectivism which began with Cezanne. The circle almost seemed complete when the modernist artist tried "Primitivism" with a vengeance. Manytriedtoderiveinspirationform Negro primitives.

Looking at the vast output of artistic creation during this period, we find that there has been an unusual number of new "forms"—forms unknown before. But it may be admitted that so far as "beauty" is concerned, there seemed to be a great ebb. Art has to create forms, it is true, but has it not to create forms that express beauty, some self-existent harmony, some rhythm, which our intuitive faculty of appreciation can feel? Nobody seemed to bother about "beauty", "rhythm" in this drive to create "new" forms. Forms for the sake of forms cannot hold the aesthetic sensibility for long. It is "beauty" "harmony", and some inner quality of Truth—some power in the form that endows it with a Reality, that gives permanence to a form in art. Most of the forms that are created under this subjective trend by modernist artists hardly embody these aspects. They excite one's curiosity at the most, some of them tremble under feet the aesthetic sense. It is true that man

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must be prepared to change or develop his sense of appreciation of forms by accepting new form—forms that have been created from within by the artist.

But the question is: Are they " forms" ? i Secondly "forms" because they are 'new' have they the right to be called "artistic"?

Traditon is a bondage if it dominates but it is also a protecting influence and disciplines the artist. When that protection is gone, there comes in the field of art unruly self-will, desire to be singular, even queer—and it leads ultimately to chaos. The artist comes to believe that what is new is necessarily great—, a work of genius. He wants to be striking and extraordinary—there is straining for effect. As a result he tends to become obscure.

When the modernist movement began in Europe, nobody could even believe that the forms of art which the ultra-modern school has given us, would ever come out of it. The artists only wanted in the beginning of represent their "sensation" of the object. This meant that he was feeling that he is not bound to represent the object as it was, i.e. to imitate Nature. The sensation meant the impression produced on his senses and interpreted by his mind. Then his "I" came to the front and wanted, or began, to take freedom with line, with colour and ultimately he wanted to be independent of all bondage to Nature; his "Self", he asserted, was free to express itself. He claimed the right to create forms that did not exist in physical nature, in life. He accepted in the beginning the forms of nature as raw materials—as repertoire for his new creation. But he distorted, twisted and dislocated the forms of Nature in his new creation. The onlooker instead of perceiving the delight of new creation very often feels only the violence of the distor-

l "All expression is not art" Herbert Read.

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tion on his sensibility. One may say that the aesthetic sense of the onlooker requires to be trained to appreciate this new creation.

Now, no one ever disputed, in the East at least, the right of the artist to create forms that have nothing in common with natural forms. But when it is asserted that the artist should not imitate Nature and when the artist begins to distort the forms of Nature then, the memory of the natural form constantly reminds the onlooker of the correspondence and it is therefore difficult to feel it as a new creation.

What is needed is to " transform", not merely to take liberty with and "distort" the forms of Nature in art. Otherwise, as Dr. Anand Coomar Swamy says, the forms will only be " denatured "—contrary to Nature. This creates the impression of unnaturalness, violence, repulsion. This " transformation " of nature in art cannot be made by merely changing the outer, the external parts of the natural form. Such a change or transformation to be real and effective must be organic. This work of transformation has to be done by the inner being of the artist—not by his outer mind—or by his intellectual theory about forms, i or his erratic unregulated fancy, or his subconscious.

So, while we do accept the right of the artist—as the ancients in the East and the West had done,—to create new forms we find it difficult to accept as valid the methods he adopts for his creation.

I have said already that a form because it is "new", —i.e. independent of Nature—is not therefore "artistic" or "beautiful" or aesthetically satisfactory. These forms too

1 " It has always been recognised that the source of art's appeal lies in these unconscious regions. A work of art cannot be constructed rationally." Herbert Read

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must satisfy the fundamental elements of beauty. The method employed by modern artists is often without discipline,— chaotic. Sometimes it seems the artist is trying to exhaust the methods of distortion possible with a natural form—a human face or an object. Often the result is mutilation of Nature, it may lead to a sense of the strange and bizzare. It does not give joy which is the mark of true creation. If we are told " The artist feels delight in these creations ", we may say— " Perhaps he does, if it is creation, it is not normal, not human but creation from lower subconscient world with its chaotic and amorphous forms ".

In this task of arriving at the correct technique of creating new forms, it may be of interest to consider whether there could be a synthesis of the technical advance attained by modern art in the West and methods of creating forms known in ancient India and countries of the far East. That may, perhaps, help us to find a way out of the present impasse. The Indian method was that of inner concentration on the subject,—or one may even say, " on the object ". The artist has to allow the form that corresponds to the subject to arise out of his consciousness as a result of this concentration. I have already partly indicated this process in my preceding exposition. Often it may be an outer suggestion, excitement of some sense or some experience of life that may start the process and set the creative consciousness of the artist to work. What is created may bear some sign of the originating cause. But the form thus created corresponds to the subject of his concentration. This was what the ancients meant by " correspondence " or Sādṛśya. It is not outer resemblance or imitation of the natural form, but the correspondence of the form created with the consciousness of the artist, its being the true representation of that which the creator wants to express or create,¹

1 "Aryan and Semitic races have different modes of aesthetic expression. The Aryan sees in painting not a means of interpreting the outer world, but a means of expressing the inner self."

Herbert Read The Meaning of Art.

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The artist concentrates his consciousness (on the subject, or on the object) which attracts his will to create. This itself becomes a kind of discipline, which rules out erratic suggestions, phantom forms, random fancies, eruptions of the subconscient, intrusion of the strange and such other things that are irrelevent to his artistic aim. For illustrations of this method in art, one may look at the forms of God and Goddessess and those of the Titans—Asuras and Rākṣasas—that eastern art has created. They do not observe the rules of human anatomy— for, as Dr. Coomaraswamy said "they are not expected to function biologically", but they do give us an impression of superhumanity which they are intended to represent. It is possible that the aesthetic sense of an observer who has never thought of art-creation beyond Nature may find it difficult—if not impossible—to appreciate these forms and may even conclude, as once Joshua Reynolds did, that "this art is barbarous"; but if it stops a little and allows the first reaction to subside, it may find that the form though beyond nature satisfies his sensibility and even his demand of beauty. One says "yes, this kind of form is possible". "It is even beautiful, has a beauty of its own—but not on our material plane". The form has proportion, rhythm, which lends it a kind of beauty. Twelve or six hands of Goddess or God seem at first sight to break the rule of human anatomy, but it conveys the spiritual aspect or its own truth and at the same time the disposition of the limbs appear to our intuitive sense quite proper—appropriate and even beautiful. The elimination of wondering impulses, fancies and suggestions allows a kind of steady form to emerge or precipitate itself in the consciousness of the artist which has a reality of its own. Dr. Coomaraswamy in his book Transformation of Nature in art refers to Malvikagnimitra, a Sanskrit drama, in which there is reference to portrait painting. The reason for failure in making a portrait is said to be "shithila samadhi" or "lack of concentration or identification"—and

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not want of observation or imitation. Some may think that this method of an inner concentration or identification with the subject may be suitable to ancient India but can have no utility for the modern man. This is far from actual experience. The example of George Russell, alias AE, the Irish poet, shows that not only in modern times but even outside India, this subjective method of creating forms is practicable. His book "Candle of vision" bears witness to his experience of it. The case of Raihana Taiyabji, whose book "The heart of a Gopi" is an illustration of such receptivity of forms from the inner worlds, proves that it is capable of being useful today. The most striking example however, so far as the field of painting is concerned, is that of the great Bengali artist, Abanindranath Tagore. In his autobiography A. Tagore has described how he used to see a flood of forms, all colourful, around him when he was trying to paint the ''Krishna-Charit" series. It seemed as if the brush was slower than the flow of forms that was trying to rush down on the canvas. The difficulty was not how to create forms but how to canalise the flow of inspiration into controlled expression. The other experience came to him after the death of his mother. When his mother died A. Tagore felt deeply sore because he had not drawn his mother's portrait. He sat quietly and tried to recall in memory his mother's form. All unexpectedly it appeared before his inner vision and A. Tagore was excited and became nervous and tried to draw the portrait in a hurry. Suddenly the vision disappeared. Then being advised by his elder brother, he remained calm when the vision appeared to him a second time. This time he was able to draw the whole portrait faithfully and satisfactorily.

But while these examples—Indian and European, are given it is not suggested that there should be in the world of art a return to the past whether of Europe or of India. This is not desirable, neither is it possible. In the words of A. Tagore "such an effort would be a forced marriage—(Rāksasa Vivāha)

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between the present and the past"..."As a carriage cannot move backwards so cannot life" Bagishwari Lectures).

But India should certainly try to contribute something from her deepest soul, something based on her culture,—something that once gave to the world Ajanta and Ellora—to modern art, as to other fields of human endeavour. In short, India, open to the world's progressive currents, must create as her deepest soul dictates, not as some outer domination dictates or determines. As the spiritual vitality of India becomes strong her creative power in art will also develop. When I say "Strong vitality" and "India's advance" I mean by the phrases India's spiritual strength, the development of her soul, her true consciousness apart from national egoism and desire-soul.

The differences that divided the East and the West have not remained constant. Political and economic considerations and also the swift and easy transport are bringing men nearer and nearer. This process is bound to increase with time. More than any other, in the field of art men will begin to feel the need of unity and progress. Future art will move more and more towards the art of humanity. But it will not be the type of modern European art though it seems to dominate almost all countries at present. The ideals, theories and methods which govern it will pass and will have to give place to more balanced elements. The art of the future will utilise to the full the great contribution to technical advance made by modernist period. The art of humanity—a common cultural achievement of man's soul seeking for beauty, desiring to create forms—will not mean the disappearance or suppression of all characteristics of racial or cultural art-elements. On the contrary the characteristics of each art will contribute its share to the common, universal art. But before that consummation comes each regional or cultural art will have to try to assimilate the elements of other developed arts. The art of Japan, China, India, France and other countries will each contribute to the making of the art of

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humanity. This will not come about by an artificial process of addition but by an organic growth, by assimilation. Art of humanity will really appear when mankind has learnt to feel the whole humanity as one, i. e. when man outgrows his national egoism, and begins to think and feel in terms of humanity.

The main characteristic of that future art will be that of the modernist art in its beginning. It will be an art of subjective self-expression in which the higher ranges and deeper truths of man's consciousness will find rhythmical expression. It will bring into art-forms authentic subjective experience of levels of being beyond mind. And even when it deals with life and Nature and the material world, it will bring into play an intuitive or an inspired vision, the sight which will transform them into a world of beauty.

It may be asked why the modernist art, which already stresses the subjective expression, is not regarded great or successful. The answer is that the nature of the trend is in the right direction. Europe is trying hard to get away from its extroverted surface consciousness to something behind, something deeper. It has not yet found the true inner source of creation. There is possible, as I said already, a true and a false subjectivism. There is 'ego' and true individually in man : one is false the other is true—though both may be said to be subjective. It is the false, or rather ignorant subjectivity that finds expression in most of the modern art creations. It expresses the subconscient, the lower-vital region of impulses, the chaotic inner planes of consciousness. It is incapable of meeting our highest aesthetic need. Two elements of the highest importance which modernist art has given to all future art are: freedom to create in the light of the artist's soul, and a certain directness in the method of self-expression.

In one of his replies to a friend Picasso says : "not what the painter does but what he is, is important". It has long

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been recognised that the true creator is the soul or more correctly, the inner being, of the artist, even though outer objects, environment, life-experience may act as stimulating influences to set his creative inner being into movement. But this inner being of man is surrounded by instruments of Nature which are very complex. It has many levels of being. In fact, it is this complexity of man's inner being that renders the task of the artist very difficult. Very often he mistakes his vital being that is interested in life and movement, his desire-soul, for his true being. It is even true that this Vital being in man, his being of life-force, can and often does create great art. In all true artistic creation this vital element is needed to give life to it. It draws its material not merely from the great ocean of life around but with the help of imagination it can create powerful, new forms which have a great appeal for life. There is a plane of higher vital being, a higher vital world, —far above the plane of ordinary life of every day where forms of great power and beauty exist. An artist can either rise to this plane occasionally and draw inspiration for his work from there. He can straightway bring down forms— either literary or plastic—into his art-creation or may modify them in transit through his consciousness.

But that is not the highest plane available to the artist. He can rise to the intellectual plane and feel, perceive or see forms on that plane and can establish contact with them and bring them down in his creation.

He can, if he acquires the practice, even contact his true soul, his true being, his inmost self, and see forms on that plane. He can bring them down into his art-creation.

Above the mental level there are ranges of consciousness attainable by man. i The greatest artists are those who, either

1 "It has always been the function of art to stretch the mind some distance beyond the limits of the understanding. That "distance beyond'' may be spiritual or transcendental or perhaps, merely fantastical; somewhere it will overlap the limits of the rational"

What is wholly rational cannot satisfy the aesthetic sensibility".

Herbert Read.

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consciously or unconsciously, succeed in contacting these higher levels of consciousness and bring down forms from the world of supreme harmony. Behind all the outer aspect of turmoil and strife of life there is a harmony trying to express itself. This harmony is not merely a harmony on the life-plane, though life is its most important field for expression. This harmony is spiritual; some glimpse of it the poet had when he spoke of "the music of the 'spheres'." It belongs to a supreme spiritual plane, but its aim is to manifest itself here on our life-plane. Art is one medium through which it can express itself here in terms of material media. An artist can contact— in fact, the greatest artists have always contacted,—this plane of harmony and brought down forms from there in his art either direct or with some modification while they pass through his consciousness.

It is necessary that the modern artist should realise atleast the great complexity and multi-dimensionality of man's consciousness so as to save himself from obscurity and errors due to his want to clarity about the inner structure of man. Modern psychological theories can also give him a glimpse of this complexity but these theories—like the psycho-analysis of Freud—give a very one-sided view of the inner being of man.

In the present state of art there is no reason for disappointment because the trend towards subjective expression is in the right direction. In future we might even look beyond the mere human self of man, for, there is within man the possibility of outgrowing his mere humanity. He can widen out and ascend to a universal consciousness. In his inmost being " man is more than man ". The artist discovering his own true self would derive inspiration to create from there.¹

1 To live in the subliminal world, to dwell there and to forget the conscious world. ...It seems the reality or sufficiency of normal perception; the vision of the eye is arbitrary and limited, it is directed outward. Inward is another and a more marvellous world. It must be explored.

Herbert Read Meaning of Art

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Even if he could not rise permanently to his true self an occasional ascent or exaltation would enable him to create from there. This was what the Greeks meant by 'Enthusiasmos'. If the artist could rise from his mental consciousness to intuition, inspiration and beyond to the universal plane and still beyond to the plane of Truth-harmony he could then give us an art that would be an embodiment of the higher movement of his consciousness while at the same time it would satisfy man's aesthetic sensibility. He could then bring down forms which might rightly be called " divine ". It is then that the artist acquires the right of the highest creator. In order to be able to do this great work he must ascend, however temporarily, to the heights or fathom the depths of consciousness and bring down here forms which not only are new but divine. Then shall we see with our mortal eyes forms that belong to a divine world.

Note:

Some lines from Savitri which cast light upon the origin and nature of some works of ultra-modern art are quoted here.

Impure, sadistic, with grimacing mouths,

Grey foul inventions grusome and macabre

Came televisioned from the gulfs of Night.

Her craft ingenious in monstrosity,

Impatient of all natural shape and poise,

A gape of nude exaggerated lines,

Gave caricature a stark reality,

And art-parades of weird distorted forms,

And gargoyle masks obscene and terrible

Trampled to tormented postures the torn sense.

Book II. Canto 7.

All nature pulled out of her frame and base

Was twisted into an unnatural pose:

Book II. Canto 7.

A new aesthesis of Infernos' art

That trained the mind to love what the soul hates.

Book II. Canto 7.

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VI

For Discussion And Thought

In order to stimulate thought the following points are offered to the art-student:—

I.¹ Modern art is dominated by techenique or in other words the greatest triumphs of modernist art are in the field of technique.

II.² There is too much domination of " theories "— intellectual ideas—and "isms" in modern art.

III³ Most productions of modernist art are expressions of the undisciplined subconscient, suggestions from the lower vital world, full of impulses and crude material and other dream-stuff, fancies and random freaks.

¹I quote Herbert Read to show how he agrees with me on this point. Says he, " Pioneers like Saurat and Signac will be held in honour; others like Manet, Monet, Camille, Pissaro and Pierre Bon-nard (to mention only some famous names) will grow more obvious and acceptable with years. But it is already evident that they do not reach beyond lyricism, beyond surface, to the magnificent banality of the Grand manner"—

"Monet strove to communicate the transcience of light, Degas always communicates the unceasing flux of human life, the immense, unspectacular narrative which is human society." Basil Taylor

2Here also Herbert Read says:— "For the main tendency of modern art, inspite of certain romantic exceptions, has been towards a reintegration of the intellect."

3To live in the Subliminal world, to dwell there, and to forget the conscious world..-It denies the reality of the sufficiency of normal perceptions; the vision of the eye is arbitrary and limited, it is directed outward. Inward is another and a more marvellous world. It must be explored".

Herbert Read

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IV. The question may be put: Are we moving towards a Universal art or decadence in art? I have already suggested a line along which a true answer can be found : Modern art is on the right track in the sense that it stresses the subjective expression of the artist. 2. But the subjectivity that he brings into expression is infra-rational. 3. What might help the artist to create truly is his ascent to or contact with, higher levels of his being, the Suprarational. The higher the plane and truer the contact of the artist the greater would be his art.

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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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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.

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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.

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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

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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)

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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

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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.

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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.

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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-

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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.

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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).

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Some Extract from Sri Aurobindo's "Significance of Indian Art"

I

"Indian architecture, painting, sculpture are not only intimately one in inspiration with the Central things in Indian philosophy, religion, yoga, culture,-but a specially intense expression of their significance".

II

"The great artistic work proceeds from an act of intuition, not really an intellectual idea or a splendid imagination,-these are only mental translations,-but a direct intuition of some truth of life or being, some significant form of that truth, some development of it in the mind of man. And so far there is no difference between great European and great Indian work. "

III

"The highest business of art is to disclose something of the self, the Infinite, the Divine to the regard of the soul, the self through its expressions, the infinite through its living finite symbols, the Divine through his powers. "

IV

The first primitive object of art of painting is to illustrate life and Nature and at the lowest this becomes a more or less vigorous and original or conventionally faithful reproduction, but it rises in great hands to a revelation of glory and beauty of the sensuous appeal of life or of the dramatic power and moving interest of character and emotion and action. This is a common form of aesthetic work in Europe; but in Indian art it is never

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the governing motive. The sensuous appeal is there, but it is refined into one and not the chief element of the richness of a soul of psychic grace and beauty which is for the Indian artist the true beauty, - Lavanya: the dramatic motive is subordinated and made only a purely secondary element, only so much is given of character and action as will help to bring out the deeper spiritual or psychic feeling or Bhava.

The life depicted is the life of the soul and not, except as a form and a helping suggestion, the life of the vital being and the body. For the second more elevated aim of art is the interpretation or intuitive revelation of existence through the forms of life and Nature and it is this that is the starting-point of the Indian motive.

V

The Painter lavishes his soul in colour and there is liquidity in the form, a fluent grace of subtlety in the line he uses which impose on him a more mobile and emotional way of self-expression. The more he gives us of the colour and changing form and emotion of life of the soul, the more his work glows with beauty, masters the inner aesthetic sense and opens it to the thing his art better gives us than any other, the delight of the motion of the self out into spiritually sensuous joy of beautiful shapes and coloured radiances of existence.

VI

Painting is naturally the most sensuous of arts, and highest greatness open to the painter is to spiritualise this sensuous appeal by making the most vivid outward beauty a revelation of subtle spiritual emotion so that the soul and the sense are at harmony in deepest and finest richness of both and united in their satisfied consonant expression of the inner significances of things and life.

VII

There is loss of austerity of Tapasya in his way of working, a less severely restrained expression of eternal things and of the

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fundamental truths behind the forms of things, but there is in compensation a moved wealth of psychic or warmth of vital suggestion, a lavish delight of the beauty of the play of the eternal in the moments of time and there the artist arrests it for us and makes moments of the life of the soul reflected in form of man or creature of incident, or scene or Nature full of permanent and opulent significance to our spiritual vision."

VIII

"It is not that all Indian work realises this ideal; there is plenty no doubt that falls short, is lowered, ineffective or even debased, but it is the best and the most characteristic influence and execution which gives its tone to an art and by which we must judge."

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On Music

"A music spoke transcending mortal speech." Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Book r, Canto 3.

The Veda speaks of the universe as a song of seven Chhandas-rhythms. A rhythm is a pattern of harmonious vibrations of consciousness; repetition of seven fundamental rhythms maintains the universe,—each rhythm corresponding to a plane of being. The delight which is the basis of all creation throws itself out in the form of this grand universal symphony.

Tagore in his Sādhanā writes: "Music is the highest of the arts because the singer has everything he requires within him. His idea and his expression are brother and sister; very often they are born as twins. In music the heart reveals itself immediately; it suffers not from any barrier of an alien material."

And then he expounds the Vedic idea : "This world^song is never for a moment separated from its singer. It is his joy itself taking neverending form."

But ours is not a world of harmony-much less of joy. In the very first chapter of The Life Divine Sri Aurobindo says : "All problems of existence are essentially problems of harmony." In the material world there is only "ordered, rhythmic slumber," not apparent harmony. Life is a dynamism full of disharmony and conflict. Man, the mental being, as an individual, is a divided being, the various parts of his being-the intellect, emotions, passions, desires-are in constant conflict. To bring about harmony within oneself and express it in life is the problem of the individual. To achieve harmony in collective life is the problem of human culture.

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The instruments of nature in man are not able to achieve this harmony. It is only by bringing forward the Soul, the psychic being, that real and lasting harmony can be established. Sri Aurobindo says: "Harmony is the natural rule of the Spirit, it is the inherent law and spontaneous consequence of unity in multiplicity" The Life Divine (p. 922).

Music is one of the arts that can help us in realising this harmony, as it is capable of bringing down the vibrations of the deeper Soul, or the Higher Self,—though, most often, the music that we hear comes from the vital plane. Outwardly, music is the harmony of sound vibrations, which corresponds to some vibration of consciousness. "Music too," says Sri Aurobindo, "is an essentially spiritual art and has always been associated with religious feeling and an inner life. But, here too, we have turned it into something independent and self-sufficient, a mushroom art." This turning away of music from its original aim and function has tended, perhaps, to a great advance in technique, and a widening of its range. But all true art must ultimately be for the spiritual development of man.

Music has an obviously soothing effect on animals and men; diseases have been known to be cured by music. A biologist of the Annamalai University has shown that music helps the growth of plants and increases the yield. Many people experience a lifting of the consciousness to a higher level by the power of music. Music tends to bring down some harmony from the higher planes and establish it here in life. At its highest it brings Eternity in fleeting Time.

While describing the growth of Savitri Sri Aurobindo refers to this art as follows :

Music brought down celestial yearnings, song Held the merged heart absorbed in rapturous depths, Linking the human with the cosmic cry.

Savitri, Book IV, Canto 2

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It expresses clearly the various functions of music: I. To bring to man's heart aspirations that are really projections from Above; 2. to merge the heart in delight, 3. to link the cry of man with that of the cosmos.

In ancient times, both in the East and in the West, music was connected with religion. And even to-day, perhaps, the most soul-stirring music in the West is to be heard in the church. Though I am not conversant with the technique of European music, I found it possible to enter into the spirit of European music. At King's College chapel at Cambridge, I had occasion to hear organ-music while a minister was practising for his choir-service. Though the music was informal, it was for me an unforgettable experience. The beautiful vault of the chapel has a noble height and the organ is fixed exactly in the middle of the chapel. It is a very big instrument played with the help of the electric current. At first the music seemed to rise from the earth and reach heaven; then, after some time, it seemed as if the music was coming down on earth from heaven, the harmonious notes were almost flooding the earth atmosphere. I could identify many notes of Indian melodies in it. That this soul-stirring music had the power to touch the collective soul with deep aspirations evoking genuine devotion was quite obvious. I heard afterwards that the choir on Fridays draws crowds from all over the neighbourhood.

Apart from religious music the concerts that are given in the big cities of Europe are very impressive. European music is richer than Indian in the volume of sound, in the wide range of its scale and in timbre. Instruments like the 'cello, the piano, and the violin allow it a range of octaves impossible for the human voice. These concerts are impressive by the powerful vibration they create, vibration pulsating with beauty and harmony. Sometimes they bring down sound patterns of cosmic harmony from the vital plane. The audience helps the artists by its semi-religious attitude towards music. The average

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European, who is generally not open to direct spiritual experience, is able to rise to a plane of harmony and peace, of beauty and self-forgetfulness, for the time being, in some of these concerts. In the midst of the general materialistic outlook, music to the average European is a convincing demonstration of the profound effect of the imponderable on man and things. I am convinced that music is one of the secular channels through which the mass in Europe can get a glimpse of spiritual experience. If music can convey a high spiritual or some deep psychic state the audience would surely be able to receive something of it.

Indian music, compared with the European, is poor in symphony, but it has developed a remarkable range of melodies. Each melody is a fixed pattern of rhythm having fixed musical notes in an ordered scale of ascent and descent. But this fixed scale does not limit the scope for original improvisation by the artist which becomes his free self-expression. Having mainly to depend on melody Indian music developed subtleties of vocal notes—it arrived at twenty-two recognised musical notes called "intervals" in an octave, while Western music has twelve.

Indian high-class music is meant to be sung in a hall for a small select audience. The temple music is meant for the mass. The highest aim of the art of music in India is to reach the Brahman-the Infinite;

The wide world-rhythms wove their stupendous chant To which life strives to fit our rhyme-beats here Melting our limits in the illimitable, Turning the finite to infinity.

Savitri, Book I, Canto 3.

To melt the limits of human being and to "tune the finite to infinity"—is what music can achieve.

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On Art and Beauty : The Ladder of Aesthetic Experience

" Art is discovery and revelation of beauty.

The aim of Art is to embody beauty and give delight."

Sri Aurobindo: Future Poetry.

Sri Aurobindo, the great Yogi, besides being a great artist, is a great aesthete. He unhesitatingly gave a higher place to Beauty and Delight than even to Knowledge. He wrote: " The day when we get back to the ancient worship of Delight and Beauty will be our day of Salvation ". He knew that the present age was rather far from the worship of beauty and delight. Art today is isolated from life. The modern European culture that dominates the world is " economic and utilitarian. " The modern mind is complex and divided, it is governed by " practical reason." Sri Aurobindo warns : " Without it (the worship of beauty and delight) there could be no assured nobility and sweetness in Art; no satisfied dignity and fullness of life nor harmonious perfection of the spirit." And he adds "Beauty and Delight are also the very soul and origin of art and poetry." ( Future Poetry)

The question may arise : what has spirituality to do with Art—with beauty and delight ? From the Indian point of view, spirituality is akin to Art. In fact, in ancient times, religion, philosophy and art were collateral activities and poetry, dance and music were allied to sculpture and painting. Religion affirms a Supracosmic Reality, a Creator of the Universe, and lays down rules to govern man's relation with Him and with his fellow beings. It attempts to bring a higher Truth into man's individual and collective life.

Art, too tried to reach out to the same Reality through aesthetic sensibility, creative urge and a sense of beauty. It

*Lecture delivered at the Benares Hindu University December 1961.

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created forms which attempted to bring the invisible reality into the realm of the senses. It makes the invisible visible; renders the Infinite in terms of the finite.

Art enriches human life; its alchemy converts the elements of gross matter into those of the Imponderable, turns stone or wood, metal or mere paper into something not only beautiful but Divine. Buddha's stone image embodies a state of consciousness, the ineffable peace of Nirvana.

The difference in the outlook of ancient and modern times is easily seen in the outlook towards Nature. Krishna Deva Raya ruled the country around Ellora. During his regime the construction of a temple to be carved from the rock was planned. It took 200 years to execute the plan. The Kailasa at Ellora is grand by any standard. Today the popular governments plan for industrial development. The difference between the dominating spirit of the two ages is clear. In the past, Art was a part of life; today man wants to make science and industry a part of life. There is nothing wrong in it, so long as it is only one part and not the all-absorbing and dominating part. The capacity to utilise the resources of Nature should not promote in man the merely utilitarian view of life. To see this world as Nature's inexhaustible treasure house and to feel that the highest business of man is to rob as much of it as he can during the short span of his life is a very poor view of the world and of man. A balanced view is needed.

*

The story of Beauty and the Beast is well-known. In all cultures there are such symbolic stories. There is a very large element of the beast in human nature. Beauty has the power to change and elevate the beast in man. Life is full of needs, necessities, impulsions and even sub-conscious irresistible movements. Man has to eat, breathe and work for his bread, life is full of compulsions. Beauty frees man from these compul-

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sions. A need touches man where he feels a want and when the want is satisfied the object that fulfils the want becomes burdensome. But "A thing of beauty is a joy forever," it is not meant to satisfy any outer need,—it does not touch us at a particular point, it embraces the whole of our being. After that man is able to look at the world free from the pressure of necessity, free from the veil of self-regarding ego and desires. Thus art-experience liberates the consciousness and brings into view a new dimension of perception in which harmony seems the established law.

The claim of science is {or rather was) that the knowledge of the external world which it obtains by using the senses and by experiments is the only valid knowledge: it is real, in opposition to the perception of the world by poetry, art, etc. which it characterised as "unreal," "imaginative,""impractical." In fact, the knowledge of the world which science gives is only one side of Reality of which the experience of poetry and art is another, and even more important aspect. Beauty, in fact, is nearer to that ultimate supraintellectual Reality, for its knowledge is directly attained by an act of identity and is not indirect like that of science.

Sir Arthur Eddington in his Gifford lectures has discussed this question of validity of knowledge. He says that the claim of physical science that the rainbow exists to give the knowledge of the difference in the wave-lengths of light to man is not valid. When the poet says: "My heart leaps up when I behold a rainbow in the sky", he expresses another aspect of the knowledge of the rainbow. The ripples in the lake do not merely indicate the force of surface-tension and the pressure of the wind, but the poet's image about them is not merely something unreal and therefore untrue.

Tagore in his book Sadhana says that a thing of beauty generally has two sides; one, outer or merely objective and

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another, inner or subjective. He takes the rose for an illustration, fortunately, there is unanimity about its beauty. Objectively, the beautiful rose is a hard-working labourer in Nature's workshop, it has no time to be a dandy. In order to live, the plant must draw the necessary elements from the soil, air and sunlight. It should absorb water in necessary quantity at the proper time. But the same rose, when it enters man's heart becomes a symbol of freedom, leisure and beauty. It seems to man a mystery of colour, form and fragrance. The soil which man looks upon as ugly and dirty hides within itself such a treasure of beauty. The very earth seems to find her joyful liberation in the form of perfume that pervades the air. But in the work-a-day world, busy with humdrum life, man hardly finds time to perceive the beauty of the rose. In the homes of the well-to-do the vases are decorated with flowers, but it is a mere convention not a communion with beauty. Such a communion is likely, perhaps, in the silence of early morning while walking round the garden when you see the miracle of the .opening rose-bud. Every thing around is calm, and in that solitude the beauty of the rose reveals itself to you. You have then the overwhelming shock of delight. You see, then what an infinite treasure of beauty is being "squandered" in the universe and how much of it runs to mere waste because of man's insensibility.

Sri Aurobindo says: "Art is discovery and revelation of beauty," and adds: "The aim of art is to embody beauty and give delight." Explaining the nature of the 'delight', he says: "Delight or Ananda is not the pleasure of a mood or sentiment or a fine aesthetic indulgence of the sense in the attraction of form." (Future Poetry)

*

Today there is an insistence on the acceptance of life and Art is expected to be directed to life. In fact, all human activities are for life. Only the question is: What is life ? Art also exists for life. Sri Aurobindo says: "Art is the rhythmic voice

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of Life—but a voice of inner life." (Future Poetry) Life is not what it appears. In fact, the outer aspect of life is a mask. To reach out to and express that which is behind the mask is the business of art.

We have to bear in mind that Art is not only expression, it can be creative, also.

Experience of Beauty

In ancient times religion encouraged the experience of beauty as an aspect of the Divine. There were puritanical religions like Protestant Christianity and some philosophical schools that condemned beauty, or encouraged renunciation as indispensable to spirituality.

But in India the Upanishad speaks of the Supreme as "Rasovai Sah", "He is of the nature of the sap of Delight". Sri Aurobindo explains the word "Rasa": "Rasa is concentrated taste, a spiritual essence of emotion, an essential aesthesis, the soul's pleasure in pure and perfect source of feeling" (Future Poetry).

Later in mediaeval times the Vaishnavite religion of the North and Shaivism of the South India have spoken of beauty not only as one, but the highest, aspect of the Supreme: The Divine to them is "bhuvan sundara", the All Beautiful. He is "nikhil rasāmrta sindhu", "the ocean of the entire ambrosia of delight"; He is "akhila saundarya nidhi" — "the treasure of all beauty". Tagore says: "vairāgya sādhane mukti, se āmār noy."¹—"the liberation that is attained by renunciation is not for me"; I feel the embrace of freedom in thousandfold bonds of delight". He wants to keep the doors of the senses open and feel through them the universal delight.

So did Kabir sing a few centuries ago: "santo sahaja samādhi bhalī"; "O holymen! spontaneous samadhi is the best". He says further, "Since I got the vision of the Lord,

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my consciousness does not turn inwards. No longer do I close my eyes or ears, nor do I mortify my body; with eyes open and a smile on my lips, I behold the beautiful form of the Lord everywhere. In the centre of all forms stands the Formless, yet ineffable is the beauty of the "Form".¹

To realise the universal beauty and also to see the Supreme as the All-Beautiful through the normal activities of the senses may be regarded as the highest experience of Beauty.

One has also to bear in mind the fact that all men always keep the doors of their senses open, and yet all do not have the vision of the divine beauty. There is needed a preparation, a sadhana, to perceive it.

Leaving aside the highest aspect of the experience of beauty one or two instances may be related here to help one to understand the nature of the experience of beauty.

The first is an experience of Tagore during his childhood. A private school was run for the children of the Tagore-family. Among the subjects taught anatomy was also included. One day, the teacher of anatomy brought the bone of a human hand isolated from the human skeleton for the lesson. Tagore felt terribly shocked at the sight of the bone unrelated to human body : he could not see it except as an organic part. Isolated from its natural place and function it appeared meaningless and was ugly.

Another experience of Tagore may be cited in his own words : ^.'One day I was out in a boat on the Ganges. It was a beautiful evening in autumn. The sun had just set; the silence of the sky was full to the brim with ineffable peace and beauty.

1 ānkha na mundu, kān na rundhu. kā yā kashta na dhāruh

Khule nayan me has has deskman

Sundar rupa nikārum

Sabahin murata bich amurata

murata ki ba/ihari

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The vast expanse of water was without a ripple, mirroring all the changing shades of the sunset glow. Miles and miles of a desolate sandbank lay like a huge amphibious reptile of some anitideluvian age, with its scales glistening in shining colours. As our boat was silently gliding by the precipitous river-bank, riddled with the nest-holes of a colony of birds, suddenly a big fish leapt upto the surface of the water and then disappeared, displaying on its body all the colours of the vanishing sky. It drew aside for a moment the many coloured screen behind which there was a silent world full of joy of life. It came up from the depths of its mysterious dwelling with a beautiful dancing motion and added its own music to the silent symphony of the dying day. I felt as if I had a friendly greeting from an alien world in its own language, and it touched my heart with a flash of gladness. Then suddenly the man at the helm exclaimed with a distinct note of regret "Ah, what a big fish!" (Sadhana). He saw the fish through the veil of his desire and so could not get the whole truth of it. (Sadhana). A beautiful river to a painter's view is not the same as it is to a thirsty man,

*

But what is the meaning of the experience of beauty? What does a man mean when he says: this thing is beautiful.

Words like 'beauty', 'art', 'poetry' are very difficult to define, though one feels what they mean and experiences their action in on self. Very often definitions fail to give the true idea of the thing defined.

Beauty is recognised, rather, by an instinct, a spontaneous intuition in man,—there is an inner eye that sees beauty. But all men do not perceive beauty in the same form or object. If the inner eye is not open, if the instinct is not active then beauty remains unperceived. That is what makes Wordsworth complain: "The word is too much with us." We are so engrossed in the outer and material aspect of our life, its needs, cares and preoccupations that we lose sight of the gift of beauty.

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Something about beauty may be known by finding out how it acts on men. Suppose one says : "beauty captivates me"— then he is feeling the attraction and perhaps the charm of it without the perception of true beauty. Lord Vishnu is said to have assumed the form of the fatal charmer, Mohini, to deceive the titans. When one is enchanted or enthralled by a form then something like a spell is cast upon him, it almost seems as if one is caught into a net like a helpless victim.

That is not the nature of the experience of pure beauty. When one feels: "beauty liberates me, beauty raises me to the Infinite", then he has come in contact with the real thing. True beauty frees the soul from all self-regarding reactions, desires and impulses; it gives another view of the self and the world, and may reveal an aspect of the Divine, may inspire one to unconditional self-giving, may enable one to perceive the play of infinite delight as beauty.

These various grades of the experience of beauty show that beauty is relative; it can be arranged in a hierarchy.

But what is the content of the experience of beauty? When a man says, "this thing is beautiful", he means: I feel this object rhythmic, it is well proportioned, its parts are harmoniously set, it is as it should be. Or perhaps that is not the correct way of putting it, for a machine well made might satisfy those conditions—and though one may find a machine beautiful, yet it seems so mechanical, too utilitarian, too dry. The experience may be put in this way: "My inner soul and my nature both are attracted by this object which has spontaneous harmony ". Generally in a thing that is felt as beautiful one wants to say that the inner truth which is trying to manifest itself in the object or form has succeeded in its objective; the truth in it is expressed there, without distortion or diminution, —there is here a perfect accord between the inner truth or reality and the outer form. Thus beauty is the quality of an object or

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a form, which gives to the subjective consciousness that perceives it the sense of harmony, of perfect proportion, of appropriateness, a feeling of attraction. It can be said that at some unforgettable moment or condition, the relation between the two-subject and object, becomes so special, so unique that it satisfies the thirst for beauty in the heart.

One may question: Is there thirst for beauty in man? The answer is : Yes; though ordinarily, such a need is not perceived yet unknown and unexpressed the need for beauty is always there in man. Man is an ignorant creature and lives in a world of disharmony, division and conflict, yet in his heart of hearts—there is a faith that in the centre of this vast, dynamic universe, self-existent harmony is at work, a harmony that so satisfies him that even a glimpse of it makes him feel as if the very purpose of creation were fulfilled, that the whole labour of the Cosmos was justified.

Beauty is the language of the all-pervading delight of existence calling man to itself. Experience of beauty may be said to be the direct proof of the unity of all being and of the presence of the all-pervading delight which spills itself constantly into two jets of beauty and delight. And this delight can manifest itself even in inconscient Matter to a soul encased in senses.

One can say that beauty is Nature's effort to awaken man to the universal harmony, or that beauty is a sign that Nature is not unconscious in its depth and that she waits to carry her message to man.

Sri Aurobindo defines beauty as " the intense impression, the concentrated form of delight." The all-pervading Delight manifests at each point something unique which endows it with a special quality of beauty. Beauty may be said to be the power of the Supreme which acts when He turns to create the universe. There is an infinite content of beauty in the Supreme. This Infinite content of beauty can find expression

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in a small fraction of time, in an apparently insignificant thing. Sri Aurobindo speaks about this in his poem, "In Horis Eternum". He says that the perception of this eternal beauty can occupy "a moment mere". There can be an instantaneous perception of beauty 'in a touch', 'in a smile'. Outwardly it may be something very insignificant but it is charged with burden of That which is behind all forms. The human soul through the senses catches not merely the vibration of the form but of That which is behind.

The experience of beauty can be independent of any outer equipment, ornamentation, or environment, the subjective state alone of the individual can make the form beautiful.

Sri Aurobindo clarifies the nature of the experience of beauty and its highest seeking:

" When it (the soul) can get the touch of this universal, absolute beauty, this soul of beauty, this sense of its revelation in any slightest or greatest thing, the beauty of a flower, a form, the beauty and power of a character, an action, an event, a human life, an idea, a stroke of the brush or the chisel or a scintillation of the mind, the colours of a sunset or the grandeur of the tempest, it is then that the sense of beauty in us is really, powerfully, entirely satisfied. It is in truth seeking, as in religion, for the Divine, the All-Beautiful in man, in nature, in life, in thought, in art; for God is Beauty and Delight hidden in the variation of his masks and forms. When fulfilled in our growing sense and knowledge of beauty and delight in beauty and our power for beauty, we are able to identify ourselves in soul with this Absolute and Divine in all the forms and activities of the world and shape an image of our inner and our outer life in the highest image we can perceive and embody of the All-Beautiful, then the aesthetic being in us who was born for this end, has fulfilled himself and risen to his divine consummation. To find highest beauty is to find God; to reveal, to embody, to create as we say, highest beauty is to bring out of our souls the Jiving image and power of God. ( Human Cycle, p. 178).

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DIFFERENT LEVELS OF PERCEPTION OF BEAUTY

Even though beauty is everywhere there is room for a hierarchy in it. Sri Aurobindo says: "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 some things have more divine beauty than others."

And this scale of beauty does not hold good only for one who apperciates beauty but it applies to the artist as well; "In the Artist's vision too there can be gradations, a hierarchy of values—Appelle's grapes deceived the birds that came to peck at them but there was more aesthetic content in Zeus of Phidias, a greater content of consciousness and therefore 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 in either theme."

The creations of art do not all proceed from one plane of consciousness; different artists create from different levels,— from the physical and vital attraction, to pure devotion or aesthetic perception, from reaction to shocks of life, attachment to an ideal, play of creative imagination. This ladder of creative impulse might give us different levels of the experience of beauty.

We will take a few examples at random. Byron writes: "Who can view the ripened rose nor seek to wear it?" In this line we find the irresistible attraction which beauty exerts on the human heart. But it also expresses the most common reaction of the desire-soul, the Kamanamaya Purusha, to the experience of beauty. Byron here represents the ardent cry of the vital being in man for the possession of beauty. Coupled

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with the experience of beauty is the tragic vein of disappointment and a justification of the possessive impulse.

In Shelley's experience of beauty there is an ethereal and mystic strain. Shelley and Keats are like caged birds trying to escape from the imprisonment of human limitations beating ineffectively their wings against the bars. But their perception has great truth and power; they stress the need for reaching out to the transcendent beauty. Shelley writes:—

I can give not what m en call love;

But wilt thou accept not

The worship the heart lifts above.

And the Heavens reject not;

The desire of the moth for the star,

Of the night for the morrow,

The devotion to something afar

From the sphere of our sorrow ?

Shelley's experience differs from that of Byron; it is more subtle, more delicate, suffused with elements of psychic beauty. It moves on a different plane. The poet admits that he cannot give to his beloved "what men call love",—there is an implied contempt for that love! but he offers instead a far greater thing, the worship which the human heart offers to the Divine and which the Supreme does not reject. There is a thirst in the human heart for perfection unattained. Not only is it present in the human heart but even in the insignificant moth there is an attraction for the light of the stars and even the dark night holds in her heart the immortal hope for the Dawn; from the world of sorrows the human being feels devotion for the Divine.

Here there is no distracted cry of the human vital being to possess beauty. There is instead an ardent aspiration to offer his devotion to the object of love which the poet feels akin to the Divine,

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Keats wrote those immortal lines :—

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all

Ye know on earth and all ye need to know."

Beauty is one with the Reality. But Keats found the world far from being beautiful. So, he burst forth into a magnificent and fiery aspiration :—

But cannot I create?

Cannot I form? Cannot I fashion forth

Another world, another universe

To overbear and crumble this to naught?

Where is another chaos? Where? (Hyperion)

In the white heat of his intense impulse the poet did not, perhaps, realise that one chaos was quite enough; and if any scheme of perfection is to be realised it is by a transformation of this world, by man's ascent to the attainment of Beauty which is Truth and by a descent of the Truth which would bring beauty into Life.

There is here the intense expression of human need for perfection, for beauty : the creative impulse in the poet sees the possibility of perfection in life on earth.

Wordsworth perceived the presence of a spirit behind the forms of Nature, he received intimations from the world of immortality. His experience of beauty is largely in the field of Nature; to him Nature is living; outside Nature—particularly in human life—he was very much disappointed. He did not feel beauty in life, in action or character as he felt in Nature. He wished man to identify himself with the presence that pervades Nature. He describes his experience in one poem thus—

"These beauteous forms

Through a long absence, have not been to me

As is a landscape to a blind mans's eye;

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But oft in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din

Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,

In hours of weariness, sensations sweet

Felt along the blood, felt along the heart".

The experience of beauty of Nature could influence not only his inner being but almost his nervous system and the body.

At the same time, it seemed to open the third eye of knowledge in his conciousness and illumine the world with its light and transform it, He says.—

"while with an eye made quiet by the power of

harmony and the deep power of joy

we see into the life of things" (Tintern Abbey)

This vision of "the life of things" endows the forms with universal beauty.

Tulsidas, the great Hindi poet, describes the love at first sight between Rama and Sita thus:

"Lochan maga Ramahi ura ani

Dine palaka kapata sayani

"Bringing Rama to her heart along the path of the sight, Sita closed the doors with her winking"

The aspect of beauty expressed here differs so much from the charm of mere external form. The poet does not describe here the beauty of either Rama or Sita, or the attraction they felt. The love that Sita felt for Rama seems so spontaneous, so much like recognition of the souls for each other. It seems as if Sita took Rama to her heart through the path of her sight and then closed, not merely her eyes but, the doors of her heart, so that there was no chance for anyone else to enter there. And the suggestion—the Dhwani—indicates that Rama could not go out of her heart even if he wanted to. There is no question of why there was love. The experience of beauty carries everything before it; there is no logical cause, no explanation. Beauty is

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beyond the net of logic and explanation. Here there is no question, as there is in case of Shelley, about the acceptance of the pure offering of love. Here is the self-poised serene joy of attainment, a feeling of fulfilment of the experience of beauty.

Beauty acts spontaneously and without any self-regarding motive. Bhavabhuti describes it in one of his dramas :

"Vikasati hi pataṅgasyodaye puṇdarīkam"

"The Lotus blooms at sunrise," why? Because there is between them "āntarah kepi hetu" "some inner, mysterious affinity." The attraction of the bee for the flower is natural in a certain sense. But the sunlight works on the flower on almost a different plane, their relation is on a higher plane and nearer the true expression of beauty. From that absolute love for the Divine as the Beautiful came the attitude of unconditional self-surrender known as Madhur-Bhava.

Tagore's sense of beauty is keen, colourful, universal and mystic. Beauty to him is unseizable,-though eternally alluring, beauty is the messenger from the unkown,—at times, from the Beloved. But beauty is unknowable and unattainable in life here. He calls her "Bideshini"—"a foreign lady" whom yet the heart knows—"ami chini"—"I know."

In his poem on 'Spring' he asks:— "By what path did you make your way to the earth, O traveller!" "Tumi kon pathe je yele"—"I did not see your coming—ami dekhi nai tomare" "You came upon my vision suddenly like a dream at the edge of the forest" ''Hathat swapan samo dekha dile, boneri kinare".

Tagore's Urvashi, an ode to the spirit of Beauty, is one of the finest poems in literature. Says he, "you are not a mother, nor a daughter, nor a housewife, O Urvashi, Inhabitant of heaven'! Beauty has no duty, it need not fulfil any social function, she comes into being full-blown, she has eternal youth ! (Naho

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mālā, naho kanyā, naho vadhu, he nandana vāsinī, Urvasī.")

When she dances her ecstatic dance in the assembly of the Gods, the waves of the oceans keep harmony with her steps, and green sari of the earth moves into rhythmic waves of ecstasy, the stars fallen from her necklace deviate from their orbits in the sky and suddenly the human heart beats in unison with her steps, and man forgets himself. Thus the dance of Beauty pervades every thing in the universe—heaven, ocean, earth, man, all is in rhythm with her dance.

In the last two stanzas the poet puts the question: "Will the ancient day when Urvashi walked on earth, ever return? The heart of the whole earth is pining for her, crying for her."

"No!" replies the poet, "Urvashi will never return". The poet calls her niṣṭhura, cruel, and badhirā—deaf—for she does not respond to the call of the earth. In the last stanza he says: "The moon of glory, Urvashi, has set and she is now a dweller on the mountain where the sun sets, "asta gechhe she gaurava sasi, astācalvasini, Urvaśī".

In some of his other poems like Balaka while trying to visualise the goal of the journey of humanity the poet concludes with a note of agnosticism. " Whither ? " is the question and the answer is " not here, not here, somewhere else, at some other place ". The beautiful vision of the poem emphasises the act of flight, not its destination.

The overtones of Tagore's poems are even more important than his expression. He is able to see the vision of the Universal in the particular, of the subtle in the superficial, of the profound in the simple.

In Sanskrit literature a distinction is made between creations of the Laukika mind and those of the Seer, i.e. ĀArsha. In Bhavabhuti's Uttararama Charita we find : —

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Laukikānāṁ lu sādhūnām

Artham vāk anuvartate

ṛṣīṇāṁ punarādyānāṁ

Vācam arthosnudhāvati.

" In the case of ordinary writers the speech follows the intent, the meaning, while in that of the ancient seers, the Rishis, the meaning runs after their speech".

This is an admission of overhead inspiration as a superior power of creation than ordinary mind. It also means that the creator is not a mere thinker but a ' Seer' or ' hearer' of the truth.

Rules of ordinary criticism in Sanskrit do not apply to these ' Arsha'—overhead-creations. In Greek literature also a divine afflatus is held responsible for great creation. Even today, after so much work by new psychology, the critics admit that the roots of creative power of the artist are mysterious. C. Day Lewis in his book The Poetic Image says:—

" It is a veiled vision, a partial intuition communicated to him from the depth of human heart. If he needs mystery, the last mystery is there, and of all that proceeds from man's heart, nothing is more mysterious than virtue, the disinterested movements of moral fervour and intellectual curiosity, the spontaneous springs of Mercy, Pity, Peace and Love. "

Experience of Rasa gives delight and so, very often Rasa and delight—Ananda—are regarded as equivalent. But there is a subtle difference. For the experience of Rasa,—aesthetic enjoyment, a subject, an I, is necessary. In the experience of delight the subject, the I, may be completely dissolved—o_r disappear. Delight can be self-existent,—without any outer support. Whereas for Rasa some outer support is needed. Even in the subjective aesthetic enjoyment there is needed a double action in consciousness, on one side a detachment from

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the experience and on the other an identification with it—which is the result of unity with the cosmic spirit. One identifies himself with the spirit of the poem, with a character in a drama or story, and at the same time a detachment keeps all personal elements aside. The individual outgrows the limits of his ego, enlarges his being, and has the joy of the universal consciousness. That is why Vishwanath, the Sanskrit critic, speaks of the delight or Rasa — as " Brahmānanda sahodara " "Of the same nature as the spiritual delight of the Brahma".

The meaning of the word " Rasa" can be easily grasped if we compare it with the liquid flow that keeps the tree alive. That sap is the " Rasa " of the tree's life. The life of the tree depends upon it. It is the same sap that transforms itself into flower and ripens into fruit. We get the taste, the Rasa, through the fruit. The Rasa of literature, poetry, music is similar to the sap that flows in trees, it is the stream of universal delight that flows through everything. That is why the Upanishad says: " who would breath, who would continue to live, if this universal delight was not there. " It is this delight which finds expression in works of art and the creator enjoys the delight while creating and imparts the same to others.

The capacity of aesthetic enjoyment is limited at present by man's nature, i.e. by his mental, emotional, vital and physical being. Man has been using the material of his experience from these fields for aesthetic enjoyment. Now and then, some sparks from some unknown higher regions have illumined his experience with a light that can be called divine. The acceptance of the phenomenon of inspiration, intuition etc. as exceptional, points to the mystic origin of such light.

But if man is a growing and evolving being and if ascent to higher plane than mind is the goal of his evolution, then his aesthetic instrumentation, his creative power, and the field of his aesthetic enjoyment of experience should not only expand hori-

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zontally but ascend vertically. That will liberate man from the limits of his ego and widen him to universality. Such an ascent is possible now by a conscious effort—though the aspiration is present in man from the beginning of history. The demand on the human spirit today is that he should make the effort now and be faithful to his inmost urge.

Such an ascent of consciousness, it is often feared, would mean renunciation of, or at least indifference to, life. That such an ascent to a higher plane must mean a negative condition is a current but mistaken idea. On the contrary, such a rise brings out an intensification of the powers of nature. So, the power of aesthetic enjoyment also increases in intensity, extension and subtlety. A rise in consciousness brings about a state of ease and serenity—it is based on a universal calmness and ease.

To Sri Aurobindo beauty is the highest aspect of the Divine, and his faith is that divine beauty not only can but shall walk on earth;—"Beauty shall walk celestial on earth" (Savitri). Three of his long poems "Love and Death", "Urvasie" and "Savitri" deal with the subject of love and therefore are concerned with beauty. The whole outlook breathes the spirit of one who not only knows true beauty but lives in secure intimacy with it. To him has come the vision of the universe, harmonious and beautiful. The beauty that one finds in his works is universal, its expression is impersonal and yet it is the most intense. Beauty, in his view, is not only of the intellectual plane, nor merely of the life-plane,—though he is familiar with the beauty of those planes—but it also belongs to the overhead. But because it is of the overhead origin it is not abstract, and airy nothing, it is on the contrary much more concrete. This can be very easily seen in his epic Savitri, where on four different occaions Savitri, the princess, is described: these descriptions are surcharged with overhead beauty and yet all of

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them are convincingly concrete and intense, full of the colour of life.

Sri Aurobindo does not get, as do some other great creators of beauty, intermittent glimpses of this supreme beauty; he seems to have his permanent station on those heights. And he sees and utters from those heights, the heights of intuitive vision, of inspiration, and overmind influx. All is securely possessed, truly felt and effectively expressed—expression that is, in his own word, "inevitable".

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Appendix

An extract from " A Study of History " by Toynbee may be cited here to stimulate the critical consideration of modern art:

" The prevailing tendency to abandon our artistic traditions is not the result of technical incompetence; it is the deliberate abandonment of a style which is losing its appeal to a rising generation because this generation is ceasing to cultivate its aesthetic sensibility on the traditional Western lines. We have willfully cast of our souls the great Masters who have been the familiar spirits of our forefathers; and, while we have been wrapped in complacent admiration of the spiritual vacuum that we have created, a Tropical African spirit in music and dancing and statuary has made an unholy alliance with a pseudo-Byzantine spirit in painting and bas-relief, and has entered in to dwell in a house which is found swept and garnished. The decline is not technical in its origin but spiritual."

" Our abandonment of our traditional artistic technique is manifestly the consequence of some kind of spiritual breakdown in our Western civilization,"