... SRI AUROBINDO: What proof is there? It may be that they have shaken off the Greek influence and taken up a new line. Greek art had Egyptian influence, so why not Indian art? PURANI: Gandhara art may be Greek. SRI AUROBINDO: No, it is mixed. No scholar claims it to be pure Greek art. ...
... of them some sort of moderation in life in general is recommended, not because man is man and has limitations but because moderation is itself a virtue We can interpret the adage in the light of Greek Art. There also you have a fine restraint, you don't have abundance as you have in Oriental Art. You have a chiselling of lines and everywhere a kind of divine perfection limited or moderated to human ...
... Hellenistic rather than Achaemenid origin for the Mauryan lions has been suggested for stylistic reasons. (N. B. Ray, Maurya and Sunga Art, 1945, p. 42f.)." How far the comparison with Greek art is valid we may decide best by a few references to A. L. Basham. We shall start with his general observations: 3 "The capitals of Aśoka's columns, some of which were perhaps made before his reign ...
... 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 were filled with volumes of Greek Poetry and Art. Mr. Sailendranath Mitra, Secretary of the Post-Graduate ...
... 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 ...
... that it is its rational beauty, refinement and grace, normal, fair, refreshing after the monstrous riot of Hindu Yogic hallucination and nightmare. That description which might have been written of Greek art, seems to me grotesquely inapplicable. Immediately afterwards he harps on quite another and an incompatible phrase, and calls it a fairy-land of exquisite architecture. A rational fairyland is a wonder ...
... the spirit in life and matter, was not open to the classic temperament and intelligence. And it is surely time for us to see, as is now by many admitted, that an acknowledgment of the greatness of Greek art in its own province ought not to prevent the plain perception of the rather strait and narrow bounds of that province. What Greek sculpture expressed was fine, gracious and noble, but what it did ...
... reason of his discontent and sense of frustration was that he missed a practical method to realise, to incarnate, the high serenity which the mind of Greece had in its theoretic flights conceived. Greek Art and Philosophy, in spite of the transcendental ideal they envisaged, were directed more towards moral and aesthetic ends than towards strictly spiritual fulfilment: a certain indispensable inwardness ...
... of Athens, pauses, when one of his personages has conquered in the games, to give the fact full place of honour. If we had no other knowledge of what the Greeks were like, if nothing were left of Greek art and literature, the fact that they were in love with play and played magnificently would be proof enough of how they lived and how they looked at life. Wretched people, toiling people, do not play ...
... out art books. One is sure to run into debt. People don't understand art. SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, people look at art as Nirodbaran looks at philosophy. (Laughter) PURANI: Elie Faure says that Greek art is an expression of unrestrained passion and has no mystery about it. SRI AUROBINDO: What is he talking about? He seems to have a queer mind. Where is the expression of passion in the art of the ...
... l life at the court of Alexander, which we picture as very animated, was thoroughly Greek. So far as we know, he had no acquaintance with the literatures of the Oriental peoples. (...) Greek art too remained for him the art. We never hear that he caused Oriental artists to work for him; on the contrary he exclusively employed Greeks. His architects also were Greeks. (...) But nothing ...
... we mean when we say that a particular work of art is "cold", though you can see that the beauty of line and form – the technique – is perfect. The work may not be sufficiently "inspired". Take Greek art : it was their aim to put as much of inner beauty as they could in a limited form and line which had set standards. In India we had quite another standard. Disciple : What is it in beauty ...
... 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 ...
... is hostile? Art thou then hired by the gods for the bale and the slaughter of Hellas?" Zethus answered him, "Alone art thou mighty, Achilles, in Phthia? Tyrant art thou of this fight and keepst for thee all of its glory— We are but wheels of thy chariot, reins of thy courser, Achilles. What though dire be thy lust, yet here thou canst gather not glory, Only thy shame and the Greeks', if a girl... When thou art weak, thou art just, when thy subjects are strong and remember. Therefore, O Trojans, be firm in your will and, though all men abandon, Bow not your heads to reproach nor your hearts to the sin of repentance; For you have done what the gods desired in your breasts and are blameless. Proudly enjoy the earth that they gave you, enthroning their natures, Fight with the Greeks and the... like mortals Knowing their centuries past, not knowing the morrow before them. Dire were his eyes upon Troya the beautiful, his face like a doom-mask: All Greece gazed in them, hated, admired, grew afraid, grew relentless. But to the Greek Deiphobus cried and he turned from his passion Fixing his ominous eyes with the god in them straight on the Trojan: "Messenger, voice of Achaia, wherefore ...
Share your feedback. Help us improve. Or ask a question.