View-Points in Aesthetics.
1. Two Specimens of Art-Appreciation.
A gifted Indian painter writes to me from Calcutta (March 9, 1921): "If I had spent years among the museums and exhibitions of Paris I could never have reproduced a replica of that art in an Indian city."
The artist's argument is thus worded: "People—including our greatest men—come back from Europe with a changed point of view which they cannot adjust to Indian conditions. Our ideas must live and grow on Indian conditions—however much our education and outlook may be finished and enlarged by foreign travels and intimate contact with the living phases of a living civilisation."
The writer is not only an artist of distinction but is also the author of writings on several phases of Indian painting and sculpture. He is familiar, besides, with the art-history of the world in both its Asian and European developments.
Almost in the same strain Mr. "Agastya" gives his reactions to the "art of a Bengali sculptor" in the Modern Review for May 1921. Says he: "Though the subject is Indian there is nothing in it which could not come from the chisel of a non-Indian sculptor. Indeed our grievance is that in Mr. Bose's (Fanindra Nath) works we search in vain for the revelation of the Indian mind of an Indian artist, the peculiarity of his point of view, and the traditions of his great heritage."
"Agastya" also, like my friend the painter, attacks the problem from the standpoint of a "question larger than the merits of his (Bose's) individual works." "What is the value?", asks he, "of a long training in a foreign country which disqualifies an artist from recognizing and developing his own national and racial genius? A nation can no more borrow its art from abroad than its literature."
The problem is explicitly stated by "Agastya" in the following terms. "We are told," writes he, "that Mr. Bose perfected his training by his travels in France and Italy. We are not told if he ever studied the masterpieces of old Indian sculpture and extracted from them the lessons which no Greek marble or bronze could teach him." Further, "an Indian artist," as we are assured by "Agastya", "is destined to tread a path not chosen by artists of other nationalities."
From his communication in the Modern Review Mr. "Agastya" appears to be "an authority on Indian sculpture." He is at present, as may be gathered, engaged in deciphering with his "old eyes dim with age" some of the worm-eaten palm-leaves on image-making now rotting in the archives of the Palace Library at Tajore." Consequently he claims to be resting "in a place of telescopic distance" and to "have a more correct perspective and a wider and a dispassionate view of things, unattached by temporary values or local considerations." It must be added that "Agastya" also has cared to devote attention to Ruskin, Leighton and other Westerns.
2. The Current Standard of Aesthetic Appraisal.
These statements, coming as they do from two authorities, might be strengthened by passages from the writings of other Indian writers who are known to be connoisseurs and art-historians or art-critics. For, virtually with no exception the field of art-appreciation is being dominated in India by one and only one strand of thought. And this "monistic" critique of aesthetic values which our archaeologists and essayists have chosen to advocate in season and out of season is essentially none other than what Eur-American "orientalists" and "friends of the Orient" have propagated in regard to the "ideals" of Asian art and civilisation.
There are two conceptions underlying each of the above, specimens of art-appraisal.
First, there runs a hypothesis as to the "Indianness" of Indian inspiration, i.e., the distinctiveness of Hindu (or Indian?) genius, or, in other words, as to the alleged antithesis between the "ideals of the East" and those of the West.
Secondly, both writers have pursued certain canons in regard to the very nature and function of art itself. In their appreciation of paintings and sculptures they seem to be guided exclusively by the subjects painted and carved, in other words, by the story, legend, or literature of the pictorial and plastic arts. That is, while travelling in the realms of art they continue to be obsessed by the results of their studies in history, literary criticism, and anthropology.
This methodology of art-appreciation has long awaited a challenge. It is the object of the present essay to offer this challenge.
3. The Boycott of Western Culture.
Let us follow the first point in the current standard of art-appreciation systematically and comprehensively to its furthest logical consequences.
If the exhibitions of paintings, sculptures and decorative arts conducted under the auspices, say, of a Salon like the Société des Artistes Français, in Grand Palais (Paris) every spring, or the collections of Assyro-Babylonian cylinders, Greek vases, Roman sarcophagi, Etruscan urns, the safety-pins of Roman Gaul, the keys of Saalburg, Renaissance bronzes, and the mosaics, coins, and terra cottas of different epochs in the museums of Europe and America, and the studies concerning these monuments published in the monographs of learned societies, or, visits of investigation to the edifices of Moscow, the basilica of Algeria, the Byzantine sphere of influence in Asia Minor and Eastern Europe, not to speak of the Acropolis and the Gothic Cathedrals should have to be ruled out as of questionable importance in regard to the spiritual equipment of an Indian creator of art-forms because in sooth the East is postulated always to have been and ever in the future to remain different from the West, can we not dogmatize with the same emphasis that writers of novels, dramas and lyric poetry in modern Marathi, Urdu, Bengali, Hindi, Tamil and other Indian languages are not likely to imbibe any inspiration or derive any creative suggestions from Whitman, Browning, Sudermann, Ibsen, Dostoyevski, and Hervieu? And yet what else is Indian literature of the last two generations but the product of India's intimate acquaintance with and assimilation of Western literary models?
If the frescoes of Ajanta and the bas-reliefs of Bharhut, if the South Indian bronzes and Rajput-Pahari illustrations, if the gopurams, the shikharas and the Indo-Moslem domes and minars are to exclude from India's aesthetic vision the superb architectural immensities engineered by the American designers of sky-scrapers, the styles of Kiev and Novogorod, the glories of Florence and Ravenna, the Parthenon and the Notre Dame, why should not Kural, Kalidas, Vidyâpati, Tukârâm and Tulsidâs monopolize the imagination of every rising genius in the field of Indian letters? Should Hari Narayan Apte have produced another volume of Abhangs? Should the creator of Bande Mâtaram have compiled another Kathâ-saritsâgara?
Pursuing the current logic of art-appreciation we should have to dictate that Indians must by all means avoid the contact of Lavoisie and his disciples, of Humboldt, Pasteur, Agassiz, Maxwell, and Einstein because in order to be true to Hindu "heritage" it is necessary to boycott everything that has appeared in the world since Leibnitz, Descartes and Newton! No Indian, therefore, we must accordingly advise, should investigate the acoustics of the violin because not much on this subject is to be found in the mediaeval Sangita-ratnâkara! And since the only mechanical engineering of which our great encyclopaedia, the Brihat Samhitâ, is aware is the dynamics of the bullock cart, no Indian if he wishes to remain a loyal Indian must pry into the mysteries of the printing press, wireless telegraphy, the Zeppelin, and long-distance phones!
From the identical standpoint the student of Hindu heritage in polity should be asked to come forward with the message that India's Indianness is to be found only in Kautilya or that from the great vantage ground of the Arthashâstra and of the Tamil inscription discovered at Uttaramallur Young India can afford to declare a contraband of Rousseau, Washington, Mill, Mazzini, Treitschke, and Lenin!
Perhaps the advocates of the current method in art-appreciation will consider our students of philosophy to be the best representatives of Indianness and of the distinctive Hindu spirit because during the period of over half a century they have failed to produce anything superior to mere paraphrases, translations and commentaries of the ancient Darshanas and have thus marvellously succeeded in demonstrating that they were incapable of assimilating and extending the thought-world exhibited by masters from Bacon to James and Wundt.
And certainly the apostles of Indianness of the Indian mind will as a matter of course fail to appreciate the achievement, whatever be its worth, of Vivekânanda simply because on account of his Western leavening this Carlyle of Young India happened to realize and exploit the dynamic possibilities of the Vedanta such as were undreamt of by Shamkarâchârya.
The absurdity of the current methodology in the appraisal of life's values is patent on the surface.
4. Achievements of the Modern Mind.
Our Vishvakarmâ had succeeded in inventing a bullock cart. He could not hit upon the steam engine. Is this why the bullock cart is to stand for "spirituality" and the steam engine for gross materialism? Is this why the bullock cart should be regarded as the symbol of Hindu genius, and the railway and all that has followed it of the Western?
But how old is the steam engine in the West as an aid to transportation or manufacture? This machine was unknown to the Vishvakarmâs of Greece and Rome and of Europe down to the French Revolution. The difference between the East and the West in materialism is then not a difference in "ideals" but only a difference in time which can be measured by decades.
What the bullock cart is to the steam engine, that is all that Hindu genius had produced during the epochs of its creative history. to all that Western genius has produced during, roughly speaking, the last two hundred years. Previous to the advent of the recent phase of civilisation East and West ran parallel, nay, identical in the "point of view", in "genius", in "spirit".
Here is a test case. The music of Beethoven, nay, the "harmonies", "symphonies" and "overtures" of modern Europe would have been as unintelligible in the Middle Ages, to Dante and his predecessors for instance, as they are still unintelligible to us in Asia simply because we have not advanced further than the discoveries of our forefathers in the thirteenth century.
If today an Indian ostad, but one who is conversant with the theory of Indian music, — a condition perhaps very difficult to fulfil in the present state of the art — were to attempt mastering the technique of the great "composers" -a class of artists probably unknown in Indian tradition — of this new West and on the strength of that equipment proceed to improvise some novel forms for our own râgas and râginis should he be condemned as a dilettante or should he be appreciated as the true disciple of our own swadeshi Bharata and Dhananjaya? And if a failure, should he not be honoured as the first term in a long series of pioneering experiments?
The instance of music is offered as a typical problem for Young India because music is perhaps the line of creative activity in which Indian "genius" has taken the least step forward in centuries. Even the elementary work of matching appropriate "chords" to the notes of a melody or of devising a musical notation has not been attempted as yet.
5. The Alleged Indian Point of View.
From achievements let us pass on to the analysis of ideals, the same problem, in fact, turned inside out. The question may reasonably be asked: What is the Indian spirit? What is the distinctive Hindu or Oriental ideal?
Is it to be detected in the charkhâ, the handloom, and in cottage industry? But previous to the "industrial revolution" mankind nowhere knew of weaving factories, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the Krupp Workshops.
In the "village communities", those so-called rural republics, as every Indian has learned to repeat ad nauseam since the publication of Metcalfe's Report? But England also should appear to be quite possessed of the Hindu spirit because there, says Gomme the anthropologist and historian of civics, the "localities" have "survived all shocks, all revolutions, all changes, and their position on the map of England is as indestructible as the country itself." Has Metcalfe said anything more or different about India, the country sui generis of panchâyat and "local government?"
In agriculture? But all through the ages civilization has fundamentally been agricultural. And today not only in France, Russia and Germany, but even in the United States agriculture (including go-sevâ or cow-"worship") is the greatest single occupation of the people.
In land-revenue as the principal item of public finance? But the backbone of the national treasury even under the Roman Empire was furnished by the realizations from land, nay, from crown-land.
In the shrenis, ganas, corporations or gilds? But these economico-political unions have served the same social, religious, ethical, literary and artistic functions of the Europeans in the Middle Ages as in India.
In monasticism and sâdhuism? But in a religious map, say, of England in the sixteenth century previous to the dissolution of monasteries the country will appear to have been dotted over almost with as many cathedrals, churches, âshrams, mathas, tapovans, "forests", as our own punya-bhumi, sacred Motherland.
In the sanctity of the home and in the reverence for the female sex? But even in 1921 entire Latin Europe, as we understand from Joseph-Barthélemy, the liberal suffragist, in his Le Vote des Femmes, is disposed, although without purdâh (veil), to look with disfavor on the public and political activities of women. And in the Anglo-Saxon world, even in go-ahead America1, although the tremendous economic developments of the last century have inevitably led on to the recognition of the independent status of the woman in law and politics, it is the "society" obsessed as it is with the ideal of the Hausfrau which still rules the "proprieties" of the "eternal feminine" in the daughter, the bride, the wife, and the mother.
What, then, are the elements in the Indian "atmosphere" which differentiate it, whether item by item or ensemble, from other atmospheres? Where are to be discovered the specifically Indian "traditions". of human evolution?
In the "enlightened despotism" and pax sârva-bhaumica (peace of the world-empire) of the Mauryas, Guptas, Pâlas, Cholas, Moghuls, and Marathas? But one has only to envisage Versailles or study the seventeenth century of European civilisation with open mind in order to be convinced that there has not occurred anything in the history of the world since the days of the ancient Egyptians more dehumanizing and demoralizing than were the autocracy, intolerance, luxury, effeminacy, and licentiousness which Europe has exhibited under her Bourbon and other pharaohs.
6. Race-Ideals in Fine Arts.
Perhaps here one should be interrupted with the remark that the rasas or emotions with which paintings and sculptures deal belong to a category altogether distinct from the psychological processes involved in the making of exact science, industrial technique, material invention, and social or political institution. It might be suggested, in other words, that although the sciences may be conceded to be universal, international, cosmopolitan, or human, fine arts are on the contrary essentially racial, national, local or regional.
For the present we need not enter into a discussion as to the correct physiological and psychological basis of the mentalities operating in the different orders of creation. We shall only single out certain types from the art-history of the world at random and examine if they really point to any psychological diversity, any divergence in rasa between race and race.
Let us consider the epochs of European art previous to the moderns, say, previous to Da Vinci, Rembrandt, and Velazquez. The sociology of that Western art will be found to be governed by the same rasas, the same ideals, whatever they be, as that of the Hindu. We have only to visit the galleries or go around the world with eyes open, i.e. with an eye to the pragmatic meaning of the diverse art-forms in the life's scheme of the different peoples.
The sculptures of Greece and their Roman copies do not tell any story different from the images of the Hindu gods and goddesses. The art of Catholic Europe (both Roman and Greek Church), embodied in the architecture, painting, stained glass, mosaic, bas relief, and statue, is one continuous worship of the Unknown, the Infinite, and the. Hereafter, which the Hindu or the Buddhist considers to be a monopoly of his own shilpa-shâstra and temple paraphernalia.
Ecclesiastical art was practically the only art of Europe until about three centuries ago. From an intensive study of the Notre Dame alone (such as the orientalists and archaeologists are used to bestow on our Ajantas and Bharhuts), from an analysis of the elongated statues, the design of parallels, the transcendentalized anatomies, the morals on the facade, the chimerical animals on the roofings, the ritualistic basis of its internal arrangements, and the metaphysics of its mystical theology any Asian can satisfy himself as to the existence in Western civilisation of everything which he considers to be essential to "spirituality."
To what extent has this old religious mentality or superstitious attitude disappeared from modern Europe? Even today a Catholic priest is shocked to see the nudes in the Museum of Fine Arts at Boston or in the Luxembourg galleries at Paris. While examining the paintings and sculptures of the saints or the illustrations of the Biblical stories, should he chance to come across a "modern" treatment somewhere hard by, he knows that he has committed a sin against the most important commandment. This is the attitude also of every "decent" Christian woman, especially among Catholics,— the more so in the villages. What more does Indian "intuition" demand? And catholicism is still the predominant religion in Eur-America.
Cornelius, Overbeck and other painters of German romanticism in the early years of the last century must have out-Hindu the Hindu in their practice of dhyâna, yoga, meditation. In order to derive inspiration they renounced their family ties and came all the way to Italy, because, verily, they believed, as says Lewes in his Life of Goethe, that highest art was not achievable except by sâdhus, sanyâsis, Capucins and Rosicrucians.
Even in the "idealistic" interpretation of art-philosophy it is possible to find the alleged Hindu principles in Western speculation. If Croce's Italian Aesthetic is too contemporaneous, one can cite Schiller from Germany of a few generations ago. For, says he in his Use of the Chorus in Tragedy: "The aim of art is to make us absolutely free; and this it accomplishes by awakening, exercising and perfecting in us a power to remove to an objective distance the sensible world." Here then we have a European philosopher preaching the Hindu doctrine of mukti, moksha, freedom.
Nay, the art of Bolshevism counts among its spiritual antecedents the same "Hindu" mentality. As can be gathered from Reau's Russie: Art Ancien, for about two decades previous to the Sovietic revolution of 1917 the art and craft circles of Young Russia had carried on a propaganda in favour of going back to religious paintings, images, and so forth.
It is indeed absolutely necessary for every student of a so-called Hindu type of inspiration in art to be familiar with the Christian iconography and symbolism in the researches of Martin, Cahier, and Didron. More modern and novel eye-openers from the same standpoint will be Male's Art religieux du XIIIe siècle (available in English) and Art religieux de la fin du moyen âge.
Should we still have to suspect a difference in life's attitudes between the East and the West as exhibited in art-structures, let us observe the Napoleonic Arc de Triomphe at Paris. The arch is a jaya-stambha — like the one our own Raghu constructed on the Gangetic delta in Eastern Bengal— consecrated to the victories of the grande armée from 1792 to 1815. The sculptures illustrate the scene in the history of revolutionary France with special reference to Austerlitz (1806).
No man of common sense will dare remark that in this memorial of military glories Napoleon or the French nation intended to display a characteristically French or European ideal of civilisation. The obelisks and pylons of Luxor and Karnak had anticipated the same ideals of mankind three thousand years ago. We may come to the Persia of Darius or even nearer home and say that if a monument in stone were erected by Samudragupta's (c 370 A. C.) architects and sculptors in order to illustrate the lengthy literary monument composed by Harishena in honour of the emperor's digvijaya (conquest of the quarters) the descendants of this Hindu Napoleon would have always seen in their own Rome the solid testimony to the same Egyptian or French rasa (emotion).2
Where, then, are the distinctive racial traits and psychological attitudes in the world's architecture, sculpture, and painting? Nowhere. Such differences have never existed in the mentality of which history furnishes the objective evidence.
7. Aesthetic Revolution.
But in the first place the moderns in Eur-America have succeeded in profoundly secularizing the arts. In the second place they have attained certain conspicuous results in technique and treatment of the material. It is questionable if we can credit them with the creation or discovery of an essentially new rasa, a characteristically modern emotion,— except what is automatically implied in the new subjects of secular experience.
Whether there have emerged some new emotions or not, the advance of the creative mind in technique is already too obvious. And continuing the previous parallelism, one may almost remark, although with great caution in regard to the application and interpretation of the analogy in the field of aesthetics, that what the fishing canoe is to the submarine, that is all Classic and Christian art to the art of the last two hundred years, and that is all Hindu art to European art since the Renaissance.
This revolution in fine arts is indicated by Professor Lewis in a public lecture on the "Logical in Music" given at Harvard University in the summer of 1917. While analyzing the "First Movement" in Beethoven's Third Symphony this lecturer on musical appreciation remarks: "The logical development of the thematic material in the first section to the climax has the same place in the history of music as the French Revolution in world's history. It swept away the 'Classical' in music by establishing the influence of the 'individual passage.' Measures 280-283 are epoch-making. Herein is born the 'romantic movement' which gives rise to 'modern beauty.'"
Perhaps these words do not convey any sense to the ordinary. Asian student of art. This is all the more corroborative of the fact that in art technique as in everything else India, nay, Asia has failed independently to evolve this last epoch of human attainments.
For Young India today to appreciate and assimilate the new achievements of mankind in aesthetics as in the utilitarian sciences and arts is not tantamount to inviting an alleged denationalization. That is, on the contrary, one of the chief means of acquiring strength in order that the Orient may push forward the creative urge of life and contribute to the expansion of the human spirit as the offsprings of Maya and Vishvakarmâ should be able to do.
8. Historical Art-Criticism.
But all this analysis of sociological ideals, Weltanschauungen, and other philosophical platitudes in the style of a Hegel or a Taine is the least part in the appreciation of art. It is the most irrelevant and the most superficial element in genuine shilpa-shâstra. We are thus led to the discussion of the second point in traditional art-criticism, viz. the question of the importance of the story, the legend, or the theme in sculptures and paintings, and in aesthetics generally.
It must be admitted at the outset that in this respect the methodology of art-appreciation prevalent in India or Japan is but an echo of the conventional manner in which art-products are usually evaluated in the bazaars and learned societies of Eur-America. The method consists in describing the pieces limb by limb, telling the subject matter, counting the number of figures, trees or utensils, naming the animal, directing attention to the costume, and finally, if old, ascertaining the date.
The manner is familiar to those who have to use the catalogues of museums, expositions, show-rooms, and art dealers' salons. This is the "method in archaeology" as described by Reinach in De la méthode dans les sciences. Essays which appear in newspapers and magazines and even in such reviews as are devoted exclusively to fine arts hardly ever rise above this descriptive plane. The traditional method is thus one adapted to the kindergarten stage of art-education.
Equipped with this canon the art connoisseur comes to study in the Notre Dame the economic organization of the French shrenis (gilds) of masons and glass-cutters in the thirteenth century just as he tries to reconstruct the dress, manners, jokes, funeral ceremonies, dance, rural institutions, and commercial activities of ancient India in the bas-reliefs of Sanchi. In the Venuses and Apollos of Classical Europe the conventional art-critic studies perhaps the physiognomies of the Aegeans, Pelasgians, Cretans, Ionians, Etruscans, Florentines, and others, in the Madonnas he will detect the faces of the wives of the Italian Renaissance painters, Spanish or Russian nuns or the milkmaids and peasant women of the Netherlands, in the Buddhas he marks the Afghan, Central-Asian, Punjabi, Nepalese, Mongolo-Dravidian, Chinese, Javanese, Siamese or Japanese types, and within the Indian boundaries he tabulates the goddess Shakti according to her aboriginal, Kashmiri, Bengali, Tamil and other features.
Such studies are important in themselves. Their value as aid to identification and "classification in a series" is unquestionable. They offer material contributions also to the geography of art-migration, the science of ritual, superstition, and religious observances, economic history, ethnography, and to the study of many other phases of human civilisation. Readers of Michaelis' Ein Jahrhundert kunstarchäologischer Entdeckungen could never dare suspect the utility of such investigations.
But how much of these studies is real analysis of rasa, genuine art-criticism? Absolutely nothing.
9. Philosophical Art-Criticism.
Not all art critics, however, are exclusively interested in these descriptive, historical, economic, anthropological or sociological aspects of fine arts. There are connoisseurs who try to attack the problem from what may be called the psychological point of view. They analyze the ideas, the ideals, the "nine rasas", the message, or the philosophy of the paintings and sculptures.
When these art-philosophers see the landscapes of Sesshu, the great Japanese master of the fourteenth century, they read in the rasa of his pines the symbolism for longevity, in that of his bamboos the allegory of chastity, and in that of his plums all that is implied by taste and elegance in belles lettres.
If they come across Chinese silks depicting mountain scenes with snows and pines or perhaps a solitary man seated in a certain pose these metaphysicians of aesthetics will discover therein the cool contemplative calm of Chinese consciousness conducive to the quest of the Beyond.
In the same manner they would have interpreted at least half a dozen works of Corot (1796-1875)— his mornings, evenings, shepherds playing on the flute in moonlight — as philosophical allegories pointing to quiescence, passivity, and the communion of the soul with nature, were it not for the fact that Corot happens to be a Frenchman and a European and that ergo the "message of the forest" must by no means be attributed to a beef-eating materialistic Westerner!
Likewise will these philosophical connoisseurs find a mystery in the paintings illustrating Râdhâ and Krishna simply because by their conventional pose and dress such as are described in literature the figures can easily be identified as the sacred persons of semi-mythical tradition. With equal energy do such critics run into ecstasy over a Giotto's (1276-1337) St. Francis receiving the wounds of Jesus on his own person or over a Murillo the Spanish master's (1616-1682) Immaculate Conception and Angel's Kitchen because these stories possess a spiritual "polarization" in the folk-psychology.
And in the portraits of a Rash Behari Ghosh or an Andrew Carnegie or in the statues of a Ranade or a Clemenceau the metaphysicians of rasa will manage to discover the idea, the soul, the allegory of the person, so to speak, and try to point it out, in a language which satisfies none but the initiated, in the facial expression, in the eyes, in the forehead, in the jaw-bones, in the lips and in the chin.
It is out of such Hegelian analysis of the "souls" of paintings and sculptures that critics have generalized as to the fundamental distinction, in spirit between the East and the West.
These are clever investigations undoubtedly, and perhaps not unnecessary. But here, again, we ask: How much of all these is art-criticism? Absolutely nothing.
10. The Themes of Art.
Both the historical and the philosophical art critics are focusing their attention on one thing, viz. the legend, the story, the theme. While evaluating the workmanship, the shilpa, of the artist they are not at all studying the shakti, the genius of the sculptor or the painter as creator of beauties nor the magic touch of technique by which he has been able to produce the rasa, whatever it be. They are interested in everything else, i.e., all that lies outside the sphere of beauty and the artist's rasa. They are concerning themselves with the history, the literature, the geography and the biography of the themes with which they are already familiar or about which, may be, they wish to derive some new information.
Of what avail, from the standpoint of aesthetic enjoyment, is it to know that Cimabue (1240-1302), the "father of modern painting", was the first artist to paint from the living model or to be told that the expression of a portrait is exactly what one knows of the person? Do we gain anything in art appreciation by indicating that certain pictures on terra cottas or certain bas reliefs on walls or on sarcophagi are vivid illustrations of the armageddons in the Iliad or the Purânas? Similarly to emphasize that the message of Omar Khayyam has found the aptest expression in certain paintings is nothing but beating about the bush, promenading far beyond the vestibule of the temple of art. All this is like reading the description at the bottom of a piece and on that strength announcing that over here there is the picture of a mouse.
Such descriptions or expressions (i.e., interpretations) are the minimum expected of every painter and sculptor. One or other of the so-called nine or of the thousand and one rasas (emotions) may be postulated about every piece of work, Oriental or Occidental, ancient or modern. But when we enter the sphere of art we must take care not to insult the artist by asking such puerile, elementary and extraneous questions. We come to understand him in his own language, in his own idiom, in his own technique.
And that language, that idiom, that technique are absolutely independent of the theme, the legend, the story, the message. The art-world is a sphere by itself with its own "conditions of temperature and pressure", its own zones of influence, its own canons, statutes and bye-laws. It can only betray our naive simplicity if we obtrude our knowledge of history, biography, psychology, drama, lyric and epic upon the productions of the painter and the sculptor when we come to interrogate them.
11. Swarâj in Shilpa.
It is now time to cast aside the negatives and enunciate our position in as positive a manner as possible. What are we to understand by the emancipation that is being advocated here of art from the despotism of literary criticism, historical or philosophical analysis, ethical or religious studies, and democratic, bolshevistic or nationalistic propaganda? What is the meaning of the thesis that we should have to conceive shilpa as a svarâj in itself, i.e. to treat art or the creation of "beauties" as a self-determined entity in human experience? In what sense is it possible to concede to painting and sculpture an absolute autonomy whether as modes of objective description or subjective expression?
The problem will become lucid if we take an analogy from the domain of music. If I say that behag is a melody which is played at midnight or that it is suggestive of the depths of mountain solitude, or that it is evocative of the emotions, the rasas, of a pensive mood, am I using the language of music? None at all.
Or, if in order to illustrate the beauty of behag I begin to sing a song which is tuned to that melody and then point out the exquisiteness of the words and the charm of the ideas in them, am I using the language of music? None at all.
All this at best is but literary criticism which does not touch the stuff of which music is made.
If I am to appreciate behag as the master devised it I must have the capacity to analyze the sounds and the "phrases of sounds", and discover the integral and "organic" concatenation of sounds. I should be in a position to point out the logic of these sound-combinations and detect the consistency in the development of the "sound-sentence" and the sound-paragraph from beat to beat, rhythm to rhythm, phrase to phrase. It should be necessary, for instance, to explain why a "phrase" from todi melody can serve but to create a melodic inconsistency in the system of behag.
There is a logical "necessity" in the order and sequence of the rhythm constituting each "musical form". It is the function of musical appreciation to deal with that organic necessity in the creation of sound-structures.
The sense of the sounds, thus grasped, possesses an independent existence. It must not be confounded with the sense of the subject matter of a song which is set to that sound-structure. Music itself has absolutely no connection with the meaning of the words, the significance of the song, the philosophy of the poetry. Indeed to confound music with song is a sign of puerilism in an individual, and if committed by a race it can only point to the primitive stage of development so far as this particular art is concerned.
Let us now illustrate the autonomy of art in the domain of poetry. If I say that Jogindra Nath Bose has produced a great epic because it deals with Shivaji, a historic hero, or because his Prithvirâj is a call to national unity, or that Rajani Kanta Sen is a great poet because he writes devotional hymns, or that the poets of Young Bengal are performing great things in poetry because they sing to the country, to nationalism, and to democracy, am I using the language of poetry? None at all.
The message does not make poetry. The subject matter does not make poetry great.
The subject matter, the message, the philosophy, the social ideal, the "criticism of life" may have to be appreciated or condemned on their own merits. But poetry itself will have to stand on its own dignity. You may condemn the rasas dealt with in a work, i.e., the message of the author from your particular ethical point of view and yet you may worship him as a great poet.
One does not have to be a Roman Catholic in order to feel that the author of the Divine Comedy is a first class creator of characters and situations, of problems and possibilities. Paradise Lost does not depend for its strength on the cult of militant puritanism on which it is reared. Men who are the furthest removed from the religious controversies and political rasas of the English people in the seventeenth century or of the Italians in the thirteenth can feel in the atmosphere of these two creations the Titanic might of Himalayan upheavals.
Whatever be the subject matter, the poet will have to be judged as poet solely by his manipulations, his treatment of the material, the machinery he has invented in order to make the material speak, the individuality and fruitfulness of his technique. We need only ask: "What new personalities have been manufactured by the author? What new attitudes and rearrangements of ideas? What devices, what complexities, what surprises? Are the creations attempted important, integral, and organic enough to enrich human experience?"
The autonomy of poetry as a mode of literary expression depends on the "artistic necessity" pervading, as it must, the organism of vital situations and ideas. Not to create this artistic necessity through the medium of language is not to be a poet. To fail to discover and appreciate this artistic necessity is to fail in understanding poetry.
12. The Art-In-Itself or Pure Art.
We should now be able to analyze and understand the artistic necessities in painting and sculpture.
Let us begin with a simple query in regard to modern French paintings: How do the Cêzannes differ from the Corots in so far as both Cêzanne and Corot are landscapists? If you wish to detect a Chinese Tao or a Wordsworthian "Nature's holy plan" you are at liberty to interpret both these masters alike. But wherein lies the individuality of each as shilpin, as artist? How has each created his own beauties, his own "message of the forest"? Here then we have to find some new criterion of art. The problem lies in the how.
Indeed, when we are face to face with one thousand landscapes executed by several hundred painters and get used to viewing them from different angles and in different moods all those descriptive, historical, philosophical and idealistic criticisms are bound to disappear. We are forced to meditate upon the art-in-itself, the only feature in all these productions which is of supreme importance to the painters themselves, in other words, upon "pure" art.
The same problem arises when we are in a gallery of sculptures where the exhibits are to be counted by hundreds, and including the miniatures, by thousands. The question of photographic likeness or the symbolism of the executions then retires into the background; and even in spite of ourselves real aesthetic criticism makes its appearance. We begin to discuss the "hows" of each masterpiece.
It is possible for some while to remain satisfied with cataloguing the Natarâjas as South Indian and Sinhalese, the Buddhas and Târâs in terms of latitude and longitude, the Apollos and Venuses according to the cities where they were unearthed, and the Madonnas according as their pose agrees with or varies from the Cimabue patent. One may also enjoy a diversion by classifying the distortions in anatomy as much from the Pharaonic, the Aegean, Korean, Japanese and Hindu executions as from the statues on the façade of the treasury at Delphi or from those on the portals and tympanum of the cathedrals in France.
But the multitude of specimens and the plurality of types, inevitable as they are, compel us at, last to come down to the fundamentals of beauty and truth in shilpa and to try to decipher the alphabet of plastic and pictorial art.
13. The Alphabet of Beauty.
Drawing, painting, bas relief and sculpture deal with the subject matter of anatomy, botany, and the other branches of natural history, but they are not governed by these sciences. These arts are regulated by the science of space, geometry, the vidyâ of rupam, the knowledge of form, morphology.
The language of the painter and the sculptor is, therefore, point, line, angle, cone, square, curve, mass, volume. The creators of beauty speak the vocabulary of positions, magnitudes, dimensions, perspectives. If we are to associate with the manipulators of these forms we must learn how to employ the terminology of obliques and parallelograms, prisms and pentagons. We must also have to practise understanding the message, which in every instance is spiritual, of the lumps, patches, contours, balls, depths, and heights.
We can only make ourselves a nuisance in the company of painters and sculptors if we speak a jargon which is utterly incomprehensible to them. Such jargons, not to be found in the dictionary of art, are the technical terms known as the tibia, the clavicle, the cerebellum, the stirnum, the pelvic girdle. Other jargons like these are the dicotyledons, the conifers, the palmates, the pinnates. More such jargons are love, anger, hatred, malice, compassion, and the rest of the rasas, whatever be their number according to the latest experiments in "individual psychology."
To a shilpin there is only one organ of sense, and that is the eye. The artist does not, however, view the world as a theatre of minerals, plants, and animals, nor of the races of men with their physical, mental or emotional characteristics. In the geology and anthropo-geography of art there are recorded only the forms (and also the colours). The optic nerves, or for that matter, the entire sensibility of the artist as artist can not respond to anything but these shapes and hues,— the most fundamental "generalizations" that can be deduced out of the world's structure.
And what does the artist create? Not necessarily the doubles or replicas nor even the interpretations or symbolisms of the forms which arrest his eyes, but whatever his form-sense, his rasa-jnâna, dictates to him as worth creating. If out of his readings of the crystallography of the universe he can give birth to a type by his constructive will he is an artist. If he can render his types readable, i.e. intelligible to the eyes of his fellowmen, in other words, if he can make his creations, the progeny of his form-sense, live in the imagination even of a section of his community he is a master.
The creators of Apollos, Buddhas, Madonnas, Natarajas, Radhas, Shaktis, Venuses, and Vishnus happen to be masters because their rasa-jnâna bodied forth these types out of "airy nothings" endowing a "local habitation and a name" to "things unknown", and because these formations will talk to human beings as long as the world endures,— even when the dialects of the human language cease to be spoken, even when Greek mythology, Buddhism, Mariolatry, and the other conventional religious systems of mankind become things of the past.
The painter and the sculptor do not construct leaves, trunks, branches, arms, lips, thighs, loves, angers, hatreds. They are interested solely in the juxtaposition of forms, in the intermarriage of shapes, in the permutation and combination of masses and surfaces.
There is a blank wall, or a blank sheet of paper, silk, or canvas. The function of the artist is to fill it with designs, necessarily of geometry, but not necessarily the Euclid of the class-room. It is a geometry which serves the form-sense of the shilpin.
Or, there is a log of wood, a lump of clay, or block of stone. The function of the sculptor simply is to fashion out of this dead mass an organism of objects in space. The structure will naturally be made of cones, cavities, flats.
Perhaps we have already before us a Natarâja of Ceylon, a Venus of Melos, a Buddhist or Christian animal in prayer, or an Immaculate Conception. But the "reality" of these formations from the painter's or sculptor's geometry is not to be tested by their resemblance with or divergence from the types that are known to exist on earth. These rupams have a validity all their own.
The geometry of Maya or Vishvakarma has architectured a new world the denizens of which are ipso facto as real as anything of flesh and blood, or sap and tissue. The artist's creations are born on their own anatomy and physiology, on their own statics and dynamics. The solar system of shilpa moves independently of the solar system of nature.
The creations of mass in space are problems in themselves. And a "message" is immanent in each problem, in each contour in each coexistence of forms, in each treatment of colour. No rupam, however irregular, "unnatural", abnormal, nebulous, hazy, vague, or dim without its specific meaning in space. Not a bend without a sense, not a lump without its philosophy, not a bit of coloured space without its significance—in the scheme of art-geometry. We do not have to wander away from these lines, surfaces, curves, and densities in order to discover the "ideals" of the maker. The ideals are right there speaking to my eyes.
A "still life", a few slices of cucumber on a plate, the struggle of a fish in a net, the drunkard on a donkey, a pose of the arm, the leaning of a head,—things which are not at all counted in an inventory of "spiritual" assets, Hindu or Chistian— can still awaken awe, curiosity, wonder, in short, can possess a most profound spiritual mission through the sheer influence of mass, volume, position, or colour-arrangement. And, on the other hand, the thousand times memorized subjects of religious history, howsoever propped up by social inertia, may fail to excite even a thrill in our vascular organism and may thus leave our personality absolutely indifferent to their call simply because of an amateurish handling of patches and lumps.
One may have an emotional prejudice or unfavorable reaction of rasa against certain eye-types, certain lips and jaw-bones, certain other racial physiognomies, and of course, against certain distortions and multiplicities of limbs. But one must not import the reactions, responses and experiences of one's life-history into the world of art and make them the criterion of art products.
If I condemn a face in sculpture or an arm in bas-relief on such grounds I shall only be betraying impatience with the artist. In order that I may be competent to condemn a shape executed in shilpa I must be qualified enough to advance the sculptural or pictorial grounds, the grounds which belong to the sphere of the shilpin's experience.
In the world of art it is irrelevant to urge that in Bombay the female types are different or dress themselves differently from those known in Bengal. Nor does it help anybody in the creation or appreciation of art to proceed to psychanalyze the sensibilities of a young man of Kashmir and declare that a Madras beauty is likely to fall flat on his aesthetic personality.
Whatever be the type created by the artist, whether it be a Japanese Hachiman or the ten-handed Râvana, the supreme question for him' as well for us is its consistency on sculptural or pictorial reasons. What we are to seek in his forms, normal or abnormal, is nothing but their organic synthesis in accordance with the logic of aesthetics. What may be considered to be abnormals or absurdities in the world of nature may happen to be quite justified by the grounds of art.
14. Structural Composition or Morphology of Art.
These aesthetic grounds are the foundations of artistic necessity. They constitute the "spiritual" basis of paintings and sculptures (as of music and poetry) considered as structural organisms or vital entities, i.e. as contrasted with mere mechanical manipulations.
The space on the canvas is naturally to be divided into different sections and subsections. The problem is to divide it in such a manner that the different parts from one harmonious whole,— limbs of an integral entity. Easier said than done!
The same problem of "grouping" is the essential feature in the sculptor's art. He stands or falls on the organic necessity he can evoke of the different limbs for one another in the structural whole.
The form-sense, the rasa-jnâna, is thus ultimately the sense of "composition". This sense of composition, which is the soul of the geometry of beauty, does not defy analysis, as a mystic in art-appreciation might rashly assert. It can be analyzed almost as exactly, as positively, as objectively, as anything that is thought out or otherwise accomplished by man. It is on the possibility of such analysis that an "experimental psychology of beauty" can come into existence.
But this sense of composition can, however, be realized or analyzed only after the rupam has been created, i.e. only after a thing of beauty has been manufactured to add to the known forms in the universe. It can hardly be taught from mouth to mouth in a school of arts nor communicated from master to disciple in the studio of the artist.
The sculptor and the painter are not before me to explain with a compass, as it were, the warps and woofs of their art-texture, why, for instance, their spacing is such and such, or how they have been led to conceive such and such proportions in their handiwork. No, the formations must explain themselves. The key to the crystallography of art is contained in the very specimens.
And their sole language is the voice of rupam, the vocabulary of masses, volumes and poses, and the necessary lights and shades. If these forms do not convey any meaning to me about their morphology or structural composition, either I have no eye for art (an eye which certainly is very rare among men and women), or the artist himself is a quack.
From the standpoint taken in the present thesis, literary descriptions, howsoever short, which it has been the custom to tag at the bottom of art-objects, are in almost every instance a hindrance to genuine art-appreciation. Invariably they serve to shunt off the eye and the mind from the track of rasa, shilpa, and shakti (genius) of the artist to absolutely irrelevant and extraneous matters.
15. The Idiom of Painting.
Up till now it has been possible to speak of painting and sculpture in a paralel manner, as if they were the same arts. But these two arts are not identical as modes of creation. The language of the painter is substantially different from that of the sculptor. In the appreciation of art accordingly, in shilpa-shâstra, we have to employ two different languages adapted to the two spheres.
So far as composition or art-crystallography is concerned, so far as artistic necessity is sought, so far as the organic consistency of the whole is the object of our investigation, painting and sculpture can be treated in one and the same breath. But this composition, this organic consistency, this logical necessity in the art-texture is achieved in sculpture in a manner quite different from that in painting:
The sculptor speaks essentially the language of dimensions. The painter's language is essentially that of colour. The permutation and combination of rupams and their harmonic synthesis are brought about by the sculptor through his three-dimensional solids; whereas for the same object the painter depends almost exclusively on the mixing of tints and gradation of colour.
It is not only the perspective that evokes volume in the painter's work. Painting becomes "sculpturesque" or three-dimensioned through colour also. The American Max Weber's blues have the solid texture of Chinese porcelains. The French Renoir's metallic red brings forth the volumes of human flesh.
The brush can achieve what the chisel does, viz, manufacture a structural composition. The vidyâ of rupam, the science of form, the geometry of aesthetics, thus bifurcates itself in two directions: the composition of plastic arts and the art of colour-construction.
16. Form and Volume in Colour.
The question may naturally be asked: What does one mean when one says that colour is laid at the service of form? How can rupam be constructed out of colour?
Ordinarily colour is known merely to influence us with its tints. The agreeableness or disagreeableness of the effects on optic nerves is the sole quality we generally attribute to the combination of hues produced by the painter's artistic chemistry.
In Asia especially it is difficult to take colour in any other association and conceive the mechanics of hues in any other light. Because Oriental art-history does not make us familiar with very many "pure paintings."
The paintings of ancient and mediaeval India, for instance, should not be called paintings in the strictest sense of the term. Most of these specimens are really "drawings", but coloured drawings.
Hindu artists were primarily draftsmen. They made lines and constructed shapes with the pen or the pencil as it were. These "pencil-sketches" or designs were the most important elements in the workmanship of the shilpins. To them colour was very secondary. It was added almost as a second thought, so to speak, on the background or the surface prepared by the drawing.
Shall we call such pieces of old Indian shilpa paintings on the ground that they possess a variety of tints and also display a remarkable discretion in the selection and treatment of these tints? We can do so if we please only in the same manner, however, in which we are entitled to describe the coloured bas-reliefs in pharaonic tombs at Dehrel-bahri and other sites as paintings.
Be this as it may, the point to notice especially in connection with the handling of colour is that, neither in coloured bas-reliefs nor in coloured drawings can we find the mass, the depth, the volume, in short, the "architectural" or sculpturesque quality, which comes to our attention as soon as we view a work in which the drawing is nowhere but in which the artist uses his brush and practically nothing but the brush. It is this exclusive employment of the brush and the consequent manipulation of paintings without the support and background of drawings, which is one of the greatest contributions of the modern, especially of the contemporary Occident to the achievements of mankind in rupam.
In such "pure paintings" the idiom that the artist speaks is that of colour and nothing but colour. It is with colour that he constructs shapes, erects forms, brings about light and shade, arranges the perspective, and redistributes the forces of nature for the world of art. Colour alone has thus been made to evolve the dimensions of sculpture on canvas and to produce the harmony of structural composition.
17. The Geometry of Sculpture.
Paintings and sculptures are then universal in their appeal simply because their spiritual basis is geometry, the most abstract and cosmopolitan of all vidyâs, which is known to be the groundwork of all knowledge in the Platonic grammar of science. Curiously enough, anthropologically speaking, the primitive patterns and designs of all races (including the "savages" of to-day and the prehistoric forefathers of the "civilised" nations of history) are preponderantly geometrical, strictly so called. The specimens of decorative arts,—Peruvian, American-Indian, Maori, Central-African,—with which we are familiar in the ethnological museums of the world, point overwhelmingly to the manipulation of lines, triangles, squares, hexagons etc. (animal and plant devices must not be overlooked however) in a manner for which a comparatively modern parallel is to be sought in the "arabesque" of Saracenic fine arts. The same universal principles of aesthetics can be watched (allowance to be made for the master's creative rasa-jnâna) in all epochs of art-development, no matter whatever be the latitude and longitude, whatever be the subject matter, the superstition and the esprit des lois.
Take Plate III, Le Sommeil des Femmes in Mallon's Quatorze Sculptures Indiennes (Paris, 1920).
This piece of bas-relief consists of two horizontal sections, one-third at the top being devoted to two semi-circles enclosing an inner triangle with the vertex cut out.
The principal two-thirds is divided, again, vertically into two sections, two-thirds of which at the left forms a square. This square is divided horizontally into two sections, of which the lower rectangle is more full than the upper.
The figure seated erect helps making a small square to the left and an agreeable rectangle with the reclining form to the right. It reaches right up to the parallelogram at the top with a ball. It serves also with a cross to connect the shapes in the rectangle at the bottom with the top.
The vertical parallelogram at the right consists of two figures, of which one is erect. The lower half of this figure is covered by a parabolic shape, thoroughly supple and pliant, the two extremities of which are firmly fixed on to a semi-elliptical cylinder.
We do not have to examine the piece anatomically or anthropologically. From top to bottom, from right to left we are here viewing nothing but a drama of forms and the interplay of light and shade. Every curve tells a story to the eyes, every wave brings its message to the spirit. We do not care to know if it is a Buddha seated or a Yasodhârâ sleeping, or the women of the concert party enjoying repose on the spot. We do not have to inquire if the piece comes from Afghanistan, if the artists are Central-Asian, Hellenistic, or Indian, if the legend is derived from the Jâtakas.
We feel that the sculptor has contributed to the experiences of our life another creation of shapes, another truth in patterns and designs, another thing of beauty which is a joy for ever and to all mankind. One may view the piece from any angle, to be extreme, even upside down. It will not lose its quality of composition in any event. The melody of rhythmic contours in this bas-relief is constant and perpetual.
The composition here is very simple, almost elementary. Perhaps this is the reason why the pattern of this structure is to be found in its essential details as much in "pagan" Greece as in Christian cathedrals. Morphologically it is indeed an A. B. C. in artformations. It is a real "primitive". of art-technique.
A very close resemblance to this type is furnished by Plate V, Le Parinirvâna. There, among other things a special significance is to be attached to the oblique in the centre, which to the reader of the story is meant to indicate a person lying on the bed. But the artist's rasa-jnâna has counselled him to the effect that an ordinary horizontal would not provide the desired effect. He wants to create an aesthetic diversion in the midst of the monotonous group of parallel verticals.
A religious devotee will perhaps see in this piece one of the most solemn incidents visualized in stone. But in art-appreciation, in shilpa-shâstra, it is nothing but the "mystery" of an inclined plane which has been exploited by the sculptor in an exquisite manner. Where is the artist or the art-critic who will have to be told the story of the Great Passing Away in order to be responsive to the call of these universals in sculptural geometry?
We can then understand easily why Natarâja is one of the most signal contributions of India to the history of world's sculpture. To the anthropologist it is perhaps a Dravidian devil in his bacchanalian orgies, to the mystic it is an emblem of the cosmic music of the world-process, or, may be, of something in tune with the Infinite, to the student of literature it is but a Tamil embodiment in bronze of a Shaiva story.
But to the sculptor with his rasa-jnâna, his sense of form and composition, wherever he be, but to one who speaks his own language and is true to his shilpa, Natarâja is a most original creation in the ripple of bends and joints. The balancing of diverse masses in motion, the swaying of the volumes away from one, another, the construction of imaginary circles within circles, the grouping of unseen parallels in movements and poses, and the gravitation of all the varied shapes to a common centre of dynamic rhythm — all these constitute an epoch-making attainment of unity in diversity, of the correlation of matter and motion, which possesses a meaning in the idiom of rupam as much to the Western as to the Eastern artist.
To a student of the geometry of dance the fantasy of forms exhibited by the Sinhalese or South Indian Natarâja will not fail to suggest the design of the group of dancing figures on the façade of the Opera at Paris (for which, by the bye, American millionaires are said to have offered a price worth its weight in gold). The Tamil Natarâja type of sculpture-formation is one of the permanent glories of man's creative shakti.
18. The Mechanism of Colour-Construction.
We shall now mention some achievements in colour-construction to illustrate the universal in artistic geometry.
Every painter has an idiom of his own in the matter of spacing and grouping. Among the moderns Cêzanne, for instance, has created a type of composition, almost a formula, which he has followed in almost all his major works. Whether the shapes be trees, or fruits or human figures, this master begins by dividing his canvas by a vertical structure almost into two equal divisions. The right and the left as well as the top and the bottom are then filled in with such details as will evoke a sense of their balancing and belonging to each other.
Cêzanne's anatomies are always questionable like those of the old Spanish master Greco (sixteenth century). But his colour-masses have an undeniable effect as much because of his symmetry of construction as on account of the sense of proportion he observes in the handling of different tints.
Corot's geometry is altogether different. The parts of his canvas do not balance one another as in a symmetrical scheme. He produces his volumes invariably by dark greys of which nearly the entire gamut is laid under contribution. The harmony of shapes thus created possesses a characteristic individuality which marks off the maker from other designers of landscapes.
But let us sample out some of the great masters of old. Andrea Del Sarto (1487-1531) has a piece at the bottom of which there is the caption, Charity. But what will a person see here who does not know how to read, whose sole capital is his eyesight? A Hindu pearl merchant who was present in one of my trips to the Louvre remarked: "The face looks quite Italian, does n't it?"—especially because he can read French and knows that the picture is exhibited in the Italian rooms. My guide-book says that the model for the artist's figure was always "his beautiful but dissolute wife who ruined and then deserted him."
What, now, is the art-value of this piece? As in reproduction we cannot watch the effects of colour-harmony we have to be satisfied in the present examination exclusively with noting the structural composition in the abstract. If we want a parallel from the Indian side we may point out one of those family pictures of the Shaiva pantheon in which Durga is seated with her children on both sides. But this analogy does not carry us any way nearer to the aesthetic.
An artist with his rasa-jnâna will find in the entire construction of this piece the form of a pyramid. It is made up by the stately pose not of a thoroughly perpendicular figure but of one slightly curved, like the leaning tower, from the vertical towards the right. From the extremities indicating the toes of the child at the base to the apex of the coiffure the inclined plane is quite obvious. The parallels of the masses—arms and thighs—introduce variety in structure, while as is noticeable even in the reproduction the white patches of different shades at the top and at the bottom to the right and to the left set off the light blue of the drapery.
We do not really have to know if the figure is that of a man or of a woman. If instead of human babies we had here a bunch of guinea-pigs or puppies, and if instead of a woman seated straight with legs stretched towards the right and eyes gazing towards the left we had a boulder of granite or alabaster in the same pose and architectured into groups of the same contrasts as in the present piece we should still have the harmony of, say, a mountain scenery, of a composite triangle of masses and hues. This is a symphony of shapes comparable in its general morphology to the châli of Durgâ worshipped every autumn in the villages and towns of Bengal or to the composition of the miniatures described as Vishnu with attendants among the exhibits of the Bangiya Sâhitya Sammilan or of the Varendra Research Society of Rajsahi.
Almost to the Sarto-type belongs Murillo's Holy Family which also can hardly fail to suggest to the Hindu his own pantheon. This of course is more complex in design than the Sarto. Here the group in the centre is linked up with the one at the right by an oblique line and with the other at the top by a bird device. The corners at the top are not kept empty and the centre in the left is filled in with dark. From the apex with its parabolic arch made by the extension of arms in a rounded form down to the greyish neat lump of animal structure at the bottom in the middle the whole constitutes one organic piece of workmanship.
The Birth of the Virgin by the same painter is likewise another exquisite masonry work in colour. It possesses the most remarkable design of a right-angled triangle, placed at an agreeable distance from both ends of the canvas, as the pattern for a cluster of human masses. The tall straight figure at the right is the perpendicular. From the apex to the tip of the tail formation at the left there is the hypotenuse. The whole makes a solid geometry of shapes in all possible poses.
We do not have to know if the shapes are he or she or it. Luckily, the Asian has no "polarization" in regard to the legend. We are therefore free from the tyranny of tradition and can enjoy the rasa-jnâna of the master all the better.
Corresponding to the Sarto and closely following the pyramid-type there is a Da Vinci (1452-1519) known as Virgin, Infant Jesus and St. Anne. A special feature to note in this piece is the absence of the self-conscious fore-finger which according to the present writer is so conspicuous a blemish in Da Vinci's Bacchus and St. John the Baptist. That is a mannerism which is not justified by the composition of the forms. But the typical Mona Lisa coquetry (?) is obvious in the two faces of the piece under discussion.
Altogether, however, as a structural design this is not only among the best that Da Vinci has produced but may be considered to be among the masterpieces of composition in painting, although perhaps not listed as such in the conventional catalogues of art-wonders. Any body with a sense of colour and of light and shade will find here a diversity of forms laid out in a harmonious device.
It must be understood that the mechanism of colour in painting can after all be very vaguely described in language either by the terminology of colour-chemistry or of prismatic analysis. The most minute investigation will fail to reach the processes of creative metabolism in the master's rasa-jnâna. There is accordingly no recipe, no formula for the manipulation of beauties in colour, although their objective background is unquestionable. The manufacture of beauty is the shilpin's "trade secret". Only in this sense can there be a mysticism in art.
These four specimens, all drawn from Europe, are universal masterpieces because their geometric composition is superb and because the interlacing of rupam achieved in these happens to be brought about by the most delightful magic of colour harmony. You may be unfamiliar with the legends; you may not know how to philosophize about rasa, spirit or idea, you may eliminate the racial elements in the human faces, if you please; but you will feel that the creators of these forms in colour have a message even for you whether as artist or as student of art.
Such are the universal laws of rasa-vidyâ or aesthetics, such the most generalized canons of shilpa-shâstra, such the fundamental art-geometry of rupam (i.e. of form and colour), such the positive foundations of beauty, such the absolute principles of the mechanics of creation to which Young India invites both the East and the West.