... 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... 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... 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 ...
... they remain diverse and unreconciled. In dealing with the form the question between them is Shall I reproduce what the eye sees or shall I reproduce what the soul sees? The lower type of European Art is content with reproducing what the eye sees. This it calls realism and fidelity to Nature—narrowing Nature to the limited confines of the materially sensible. The reproduction, of course, is not... possible. This style of Art had perhaps its utility, but now that we have photographs and can put colour into the photographs, its separate field is in danger of being taken from it. A higher European Art takes imitation of the form as its basis, but its nobler objective is not the imitation of form, but the imitation of emotion. The artist tries to see and recover on canvas not only the body, but... interprets, this Art interprets. Its interpretation Page 539 is second-hand, its vision derived and unable to go beyond its authority. A still higher reach is attained by imaginative European Art. Imagination, according to the European idea, is creative, not interpretative. What is really meant is that the imaginative artist transfers something that belongs to himself into the object of ...
... Standpoint of Indian Art INDIAN art is not in truth unreal and unnatural, though it may so appear to the eye of the ordinary man or to an eye habituated to the classical tradition of European art. Indian art, too, does hold the mirror up to Nature; but it is a different kind of Nature, not altogether this outward Nature that the mere physical eye envisages. All art is human creation; it... metamorphosis is at its minimum; at the other, there seems to be no limit, for the mind's capacity to dissolve and recreate the world of sense-perception is infinite – and many modern schools of European art have gone even beyond the limit that the "unnatural" Indian art did not consider it necessary to transgress. Now, the classical artist selects a position as close as he can to the photographer,... European – the Far Western – art gives a front-view of reality; Japanese – the Far Eastern – art gives a side-view; Indian art gives a view from above.* Or we may say, in psychological terms, that European art embodies experiences of the conscious mind and the external senses, Japanese art gives expression to experiences that one has through the subtler touches of the nerves and the sensibility, and Indian ...
... long a considerable part of the occidental theory is regarded as a passing phase for which the introduction of oil paint gave the occasion, an accidental and not at all an essential difference: European art at the beginning was free from it and is now rejecting this defect or this limitation. Nor are other details of method, such as the use of cast shadows as opposed to a reliance on outline, the real ...
... temples, akin in their spirit and style to the work at Ajanta. × All this is no longer true of European art in much of its more prominent recent developments. ...
... verifications. These utterances are the extreme indications of a growing change of which the drift is unmistakable. Nor is it only in philosophy and the higher thinking that this turn is visible. European art has moved in certain directions far away from its old moorings; it is developing a new eye and opening in its own manner to motives which until now were held in honour only in the East. Eastern ...
... crucial question cannot be doubtful. Vedantic Art reveals spirit, essential truth, the soul in the body, the lasting type or idea in the mutable form with a power and masterly revelation of which European art is incapable. It is therefore sure to conquer Europe as steadily as Indian thought and knowledge are conquering the hard and narrow materialism of the nineteenth century. Asceticism and Enjoyment ...
... even somewhat [sarcastic?]’ And it was to Mirra that he came to unburden his heart and to ask for advice regarding his sentimental adventures. It was the time of one of the great culminations of European art with the music of Berlioz, Franck, Saint-Saëns, the poetry of Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud and Mallarmé, the novels of Zola, the operas of Massenet, the recitals of Eugène Ysaÿe, a Belgian violinist ...
... because of qualities in them which these have not. Why should not an Indian feel a parallel attraction? Manmohon Ghose never forgot the Greeks and to the end his delight was in European Literature and European Art." That Sri Aurobindo (a more brilliant classical scholar) shared this appreciation of Greek Art and Poetry with his elder brother is undoubted. We know that the libraries of both brothers ...
... 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 ...
... Duckling is germane to most cavalier judgements on art and literature; alas, the duckling that is adjudged "ugly" is no duckling at all - it is a swan! Sri Aurobindo was acquainted with European art in its early classical, renaissance and recent experimental phases, and also with Chinese, Japanese and Indian art. His intimacy with the Hellenic and the Hindu spirit, and the cultural achievements ...
... Art which, while satisfying the physical requirements of the aesthetic sense, the laws of formal beauty, the emotional demand of humanity, the portrayal of life and outward reality, as the best European Art satisfies these requirements, reaches beyond them and expresses inner spiritual truth, the deeper not obvious reality of things, the joy of God in the world and its beauty and desirableness and ...
... behind a mass of heavy impenetrable green a slender tapering tower rises into the peaceful quiet of Delhi. On another page of the same review we have a picture by one of the greatest Masters of European Art, Raphael's "Vision of the Knight". The picture is full of that which Greece and Italy perfected as the aim of Art, beauty and such soul-expression as heightens physical beauty. It is beauty that ...
... philosopher, the poet and the artist. It is they who see with the sūkṣma dṛṣṭi , the inner vision, and not like the ordinary man with the eye only. Beauty for beauty's sake, the other great note of European Art is recognised by us, but not in the higher work of the artist. Just as in the first ideal, the tyranny of the eye is acknowledged, so in the second the tyranny of the aesthetic imagination. The ...
... sense which modern Europe with her assault of crowded art galleries and over-pictured walls seems to have quite lost, though perhaps I am wrong, and those are the right conditions for display of European art,—have put their temples and their Buddhas as often as possible away on mountains and in distant or secluded scenes of Nature and avoid living with great paintings in the crude hours of daily life ...
... tradition would help in appreciating his works. But one need not know all traditions to appreciate art. Disciple : We do not have to know Christian traditions in order to appreciate European art. This article is perhaps in answer to adverse criticism by someone who said that there is no art in the new art-school in Bengal. Sri Aurobindo : Nobody need answer ignorant criticism. In ...
... Rolland the literary artist who made musical experience his special study. And many utterances that go to the heart of music in particular and art in general are here recorded. Several striking judgments are also passed on the methods of Indian and European music. In fact, a few flaws of extremism notwithstanding, a more discerning and far-reaching piece of declaration of faith by a great artist... by a man who is so much at home in a hundred matters — bringing to each a penetrating word. Among the letters, those treating of poetic values, Frank Harris and Shaw, Anatole France, European philosophy, art and spirituality, the inner meaning of the war with Hitler are perhaps the finest. If not anything else, Among the Great is worth buying for these discourses. Roy is nothing... Aurobindo he was convinced that far from stultifying life and, with it, art, the Integral Yoga taught at Pondicherry would heighten and fulfil everything. It must have been novel indeed to find a Yogi who could write in a book of his that the rationalistic Materialism which characterised nineteenth-century Europe had an indispensable utility both in counteracting the spiritual habit ...
... Rolland the literary artist who made musical experience his special study. And many utterances that go to the heart of music in particular and art in general are here recorded. Several striking judgments are also passed on the methods of Indian and European music. In fact, a few flaws of extremism notwithstanding, a more discerning and far-reaching piece of declaration of faith by a great artist who... fascinated by a man who is so much at home in a hundred matters - bringing to each a penetrating word. Among the letters, those treating of poetic values, Frank Harris and Shaw, Anatole France, European philosophy, art and spirituality, the inner meaning of the war with Hitler are perhaps the finest. If not anything else, "Among the Great" is worth buying for these discourses. Roy is nothing but generous... Sri Aurobindo he was convinced that far from stultifying life and, with it, art, the Integral Yoga taught at Pondicherry would heighten and fulfil everything. It must have been novel indeed to find a Yogi who could write in a book of his that the rationalistic Materialism which characterised nineteenth-century Europe had an indispensable utility both in counteracting the spiritual habit of recoiling ...
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