object:2.04 - On Art
book class:Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
author class:A B Purani
subject class:Integral Yoga
class:chapter
ON ART
ON ART
22 JUNE 1924
An article on Modern Indian Painting by O. C. Gangooly.
Sri Aurobindo: It is very well written and is illuminating. But I don't understand why he says that those who are not acquainted with Indian subjects would not understand Nandalal's Shiva paintings. He seems to suggest that knowledge of the Puranic 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 Europe itself there is a radical departure from Realism, and all bondage to tradition has disappeared.
26 JANUARY 1926
We were showing an art journal published from Andhra. On seeing some of the reproductions Sri Aurobindo made the following remarks:
Sri Aurobindo: The further you go back in time the greater the grandeur you meet in the conception. The nearer you come to our time the more the art becomes great in detail. Even up to the time of the Delvada temples something of the old culture was living. One must bring the tide back.
Disciple: But why is it gone?
Sri Aurobindo: That is the law. You can't have the creative spirit always at the height.
Disciple: What we require is the reawakening of the Spirit, it is not necessary to have the same or similar form or style.
Sri Aurobindo: In spirituality, in the arts, in poetry, you find the same foundation in old times. You find a certain 'calm strength' founded on the Spirit, and all expression proceeds on the basis of that calm strength. In modern art as soon as you begin to give place to, or substitute, vital fantasies and other elements instead of that calm strength you find that art deteriorates. It becomes an effort, a straining to express, it becomes artificial and even vulgar. In ancient times they expressed what they had and were. The Upanishads have not been rivalled since because of their calm strength.
In a way, the same thing applies to Yoga also. For example, my objection to the present-day Vaishnavite method of Sadhana is that it gives too much of an opening to the demoralising spirit of the vital world.
Disciple: But is there no truth in this Vaishnavite method?
Sri Aurobindo: Not that there is no truth in it; but it is lacking in that calm strength of the Spirit. For instance, why should a man put on a sari because he feels Radha-Bhava? Let him feel it and realise it within. But that way of bringing down a law of another plane to the plane where another law holds, and trying to impose it there, introduces a falsehood. That is to say, even the truth in it is turned into a falsehood.
28 JANUARY 1926
Disciple: Do you find signs of decadence in the art of painting?
Sri Aurobindo: I do not find any sign of decadence; only, in old times they had grandeur; as you come nearer to our times you find they do finer and more delicate work. For example, late Rajput painting, the fundamental spirit is the same in it. Formerly it was thought that there was a gulf between Ajanta and the Rajput School of painting, but the Nepalese, the Tibetan and Central Asian finds of painting prove the continuity of Indian art. Almost in every culture one sees that in earlier times there is grandeur of conception, while later on it becomes more conscious and vital, — detailed and delicate in expression.
(After a pause) Did you refer to the dictionary to find out whether Chaitya Purusha can mean the psychic being, the soul?
Disciple: I did, but the word is not given there in that sense; it only carries the sense of Chaitya of the Buddhists and the Jains.
Sri Aurobindo: That is quite another meaning. But what about this one?
Disciple: But you have yourself used it in the Arya at two places.
Sri Aurobindo: How is that? Where?
Disciple: In The Synthesis of Yoga, in the fourth chapter about the Four Aids; you have mentioned there Chaitya Guru, the inner guide.
Disciple: In Vaishnavite literature it means the portion — Amsha — of the Divine which guides a man. It is called Chaitya Guru.
Sri Aurobindo: I wanted to know if the word has a fixed connotation. If it has not, then one can use the word Chaitya Purusha for the psychic being. It has the advantage of carrying both the functions of the psychic being: it is the direct portion of the Divine in the human and it is also the being that is behind the Chitta.
Disciple: There is an idea of publishing some of your old writings.
Sri Aurobindo: Yes, the other day I was looking over the Karmayogin series with an idea of correcting it, and it seemed to me as if somebody else had written it!
Disciple: What do you mean by "somebody else"?
Disciple: Perhaps he means not his present self but some past personality which is now gone or absorbed.
Sri Aurobindo: It is always very disappointing to read ones own writing. One feels how ignorant one was!
Disciple: But the writing can be recast, though it might mean a lot of labour.
Sri Aurobindo: Do you mean to say that I have not written enough?
Disciple: Did you read the last issue of Rupam? There O. C. Gangooly says that he has found the reason for the Mithuna — a pair of male and female figures — being kept in the temples in India.[1]
Sri Aurobindo: Yes, Isaw the article. Did you read the quotation at the end?
Disciple: Yes, I read it, but it does not say why it is to be there.
Sri Aurobindo: I think he says at one place that it typifies the male and the female — the Purusha and the Prakriti — aspect without which there is no creation.
But at one place he speaks of the Mithuna verging on the obscene. But I did not see anything of that in the illustrations.
Disciple: No, there are no such illustrations; but I think he has not given the worst ones. They are at Puri and Konarak they say.
Sri Aurobindo: Has anyone seen them?
You know, Gangooly wanted me to recast the chapters on Architecture and Sculpture,[2] cut out the strictures on William Archer and give the remainder serially in Rupam.
Disciple: Why cut the strictures out?
Sri Aurobindo: Because, he said, Archer need not be answered. Of all the chapters on Indian Art I think those on Architecture and Sculpture are the best. While writing the chapter on Painting I was tired and besides I have a great natural predilection for the other two arts. Appreciation of painting I cultivated afterwards; I acquired it — I had not got it by nature as that of the other two arts. And even then, in painting I have to get at the spirit and I can get at it but I do not know about the technique. In architecture also I do not know the technical terms but yet I can seize on the spirit.
Disciple: You have dwelt on sculpture, architecture and painting, but you have left music to sing for itself.
Sri Aurobindo: You may as well ask me to write about trigonometry! (Laughter) I can get at the spirit of the singer and catch the emotion; but in appreciating that art that is not enough.
(After some time) In these matters of natural predilections, we have an element from our past lives; one always brings something from the past.
I got my true taste for painting in Alipore Jail. I used to meditate there and I saw various pictures with colours during meditations and then the critical faculty also arose in me. What I mean is that I did not know intellectually about painting but I caught the spirit of it.
31 MARCH 1926
An album of Abanindranath Tagore came and was shown to Sri Aurobindo.
Sri Aurobindo: Are these pictures of Abanindranath his latest ones? They have given me a peculiar impression.
Disciple: They are his paintings and portraits since 1923. Do you find that he has deteriorated?
Sri Aurobindo: No. But they all seem to be from the vital world. Of course, all Abanindranath's paintings are from the vital world. But this time they appear to come from a peculiar layer of the vital plane. I felt something like that vaguely, so I asked the Mother and she pointed out that it was the colouring which was responsible for the feeling or impression.
Disciple: We have many paintings of Nandalal dealing with Puranic subjects. But I find one or two are failures.
Sri Aurobindo: In Nandalal's paintings you find the background of a strong mental conception, while Abanindranath's paintings are from the vital world.
I would like to see some of his earlier works. My idea is that in Abanindra's case the inspiration from Ajanta is not so strong as that of the Moghul and Rajput schools.
Disciple: Of late he has been leaning more towards the Moghul school. Besides, he has been changing his technique so often that it is very difficult to say which style has really impressed him. His subjects may be such as to suggest Mahommedan influence.
Sri Aurobindo: I do not think that the impression is due to the subject at all. It is due to the peculiar layer of the vital plane to which the pictures belong. For instance, take his "Bride of Shiva". It is an Indian, a Hindu, subject. But it is not the bride of Shiva at all in his painting. If at all it is Shiva's bride, it is the bride of Pashupati — Shiva's bride from the vital plane.
Disciple: Abanindranath very early began his work in the Kangra style. I mean his Krishna Lila paintings.
Sri Aurobindo: All arts in general and poetry and painting in particular belong to the vital plane.
Disciple: Does not poetry — like that of Tagore — come from the mental plane?
Sri Aurobindo: No. It does not come from the mental plane; at best it is from the vital mind, or vital-mental, that it comes.
31 DECEMBER 1938
A few paintings of Picasso were shown to Sri Aurobindo. These were four or five only: A man and a woman; a human figure with a birdlike face and a tuft of hair; and a figure with three eyes, etc.
Sri Aurobindo: There is some power of expression in the picture of the man and woman. The other looks like a Brahmin Pandit with a Tiki [tuft of hair] on the head. The face indicates the animal origin and its traces in him. One eye seems Prajna Chakra and the other some other centre.
When these artists want to convey something then arises the real difficulty for the viewer. How on earth is one to make out what the artist means, even if he means to convey something? It is all right if you don't want to convey anything but merely express yourself and leave people to feel about it as they like. In that case one gets an impression and even though one can't put it in terms of the mind you can feel the thing, as with the two figures. But if you express something and say like the Surrealist poets, "Why should a work of art mean anything?" or "Why do you want to understand?" then it becomes difficult to accept it. Take the other picture of the Brahmin Pandit, as I call it. It would have been all right without the eyes. But the eyes, or what seem to be the eyes, at once challenge the mind to think what it means!
(Turning to a disciple) Did you see the futuristic painting representing a man in different positions? The artist wanted to convey the idea of movement! It is most absurd. Each art has its own conditions and limitations and you have to work under those conditions and limitations.
Disciple: Elie Faure, the famous art critic, has an idea that France sacrificed her architectural continuity of five hundred years for securing the first place in painting in Europe.
Sri Aurobindo: It is true that France leads in art. What she initiates others follow. But architecture has stopped everywhere.
Disciple: Elie Faure says that the machine also is a piece of architecture.
Sri Aurobindo: How?
Disciple: Because it is made of parts and it fulfils certain functions.
Sri Aurobindo: Then, you are also a piece of architecture: everything in you is made of parts. The motor-car also is architecture!
Disciple: X finds these paintings very remarkable.
Sri Aurobindo: Does he understand anything about them?
Disciple: The more ununderstandable the more remarkble they are, I think.
11 JANUARY 1939
A book on Modern German Art (Pelican Series) was shown to Sri Aurobindo — particularly the illustrations.
Sri Aurobindo: As for the "Parents" it does not do much credit to the artist. I do not understand why he should draw the portraits of two old ugly people unless he wants to do it from a sense of filial duty.
Disciple: Perhaps he wanted to indicate his origin.
Sri Aurobindo: You mean that his parents' portrait explains his art? (Laughter)
( There was an illustration captioned "Watched Girl".)
Sri Aurobindo: The picture shows the effect of being watched! And that other illustration, the "Gold Fish", is good as decoration but as painting, no!
Disciple: It looked at first sight to me a curtain or an embroidered piece of cloth for a door or a window curtain.
Sri Aurobindo: Yes, it is very good as a decorative design. In pictures like "Early Hours" you find the idea but it could be less violent and less ugly in execution.
(After some time) One can't blame Hitler for suppressing these paintings. Germany has lost much. It is surprising how this ugliness is spreading everywhere. Is the art of Bengal also like this?
Disciple: Perhaps the art in Bengal is not so bad as the poetry — except that of Tagore.
Sri Aurobindo: Bad in what way?
Disciple: They are trying to be Eliotian (imitators of T. S. Eliot). Good poetry is not being read. X's book came out and was very well reviewed and yet the book is not selling.
Sri Aurobindo: So they don't read poetry in India as they don't in England. Nowadays, at least for the last 20 years and more, the field has been captured by fiction — novels, short stories, etc.
Disciple: Is it possible to write spiritual stories, I mean stories with a spiritual content?
Sri Aurobindo: Many occult stories have been written but I do not know of any spiritual stories. They say Marie Corelli used to have that background in her stories though she is not comparable to Lytton in literary merit. She was very popular but nobody reads her stories now. There was one Victoria Cross who used to write erotic novels and she thought there were only two figures in literature: Victoria Cross and Shakespeare! (Laughter)
Disciple: Is it possible to write a spiritual story? We know it is possible to write a story with a deep religious background like Les Misérables.
Sri Aurobindo: Yes, religious but not spiritual.
Disciple: Our friend X has taken up an episode that occurred here, and tried to bring out the spiritual struggle of the individual and contrasted it with the standpoint of the worldly people, i.e., the parents standpoint.
Disciple: Some people here think that he has not done justice to the case of the worldly people. He has made it weak.
Sri Aurobindo: Do you find it a very strong standpoint? It is simply egoistic insistence; you may call it strong insistence if you like, but it is hardly a strong point of view. I can understand the standpoint of someone who does not believe in spirituality and insists on moral and social values; he has no belief in anything else. There can be a stand, and a strong stand, from the artists point of view in that. For instance, in the Bride of Lammermoor Scott has tried to bring out a mother's point of view. The daughter falls in love with some young man but the mother does not approve of the match and she is married off to someone else. Here you see the mother does not care for the daughter's happiness but is concerned with family honour and is trying to secure connection with a high family. This point of view rendered in character has made the book interesting.
24 JANUARY 1939
Disciple: I had occasion to write to O. C. Gangooly who advised me not to undertake any publication on art in India as it is bound to be a loss. One runs into debt. Art is a forbidden fruit. People don't understand it.
Sri Aurobindo: Perhaps people look at art with the same view as X looks at philosophy.
Disciple: Elie Faure says that the Greek arts —- sculpture and painting — are the expression of passions and have no mystery about them.
Sri Aurobindo: What is he talking about? He seems to have a queer mind. Where is the expression of passions in Greek sculpture? On the contrary it is precisely their restraint that is very evident everywhere in this art. The Greeks are well-known for restraint and control. Compared to other peoples' art it is almost cold. It is its remarkable beauty that saves it from coldness. This applies to the period from Phidias to Praxiteles. Only when you come to Laocoön that you find the expression of strong feeling or passion.
Disciple: Perhaps because of the satyrs he says so.
Sri Aurobindo: That is quite another matter, they are symbolic.
Disciple: He also argues, rather queerly, that the poisoning of Socrates, the banishment of Themistocles and the killing of other great men were expressions of unrestrained passion. Greek life was far from settled at that time.
Sri Aurobindo: What has that got to do with the arts?
Disciple: He means to say that the Greek mind that found expression in the arts was such a mind.
Sri Aurobindo: On the contrary, it is a sign of their control, because they checked their leaders from committing excesses. When two leaders became powerful in combination they ostracised one.
12 MAY 1940
Roger Fry's idea about the formal elements in the art of painting was conveyed to Sri Aurobindo.
Disciple: These new movements in the plastic arts correspond to similar movements in the literary arts, especially in poetry. In all these arts the modernists are trying to reduce everything to manipulation of technique. Roger Fry takes the illustrations of the Impressionist Art which he tries to appreciate on the basis of these formal elements and yet he admits that he found it lacking in structure and design.
Sri Aurobindo: But I thought the Impressionists were trying to convey the impression by mass of colour and did not require any design.
Disciple: He seems to have found that Impressionist paintings had no body and so he went to classical art for design and structure. He found them there. But even there he tries to separate what he calls the pure aesthetic feeling from the other overtones of painting.
He takes as an illustration the "Transfiguration" of Michelangelo. He argues that aesthetically it is not necessary for one to know Christian mythology in order to enjoy the picture. These are overtones and have nothing to do with the pure aesthetic feeling of the picture. The disposition of the mass, the composition, the design, the colour-scheme — these alone contribute to the pure aesthetic value of the picture.
Sri Aurobindo: Does he mean to say that Michelangelo painted it keeping in view the masses and the colour scheme? I thought aesthetics had something to do with beauty, and beauty is not only formal. It is also beauty of the emotion, in fact, beauty of the whole thing taken together.
Disciple: These modern critics have taken some of the formal elements of beauty and have tried to reduce all art to them. Form is certainly an element of beauty, but there are other things also. Roger Fry pays a great compliment to Tolstoy for pointing out that art is not in the object and the only purpose of art is communication. Art mainly conveys emotion from the artist to others.
Sri Aurobindo: The first part is acceptable: for example, beauty may not be in the object but it is the artists vision that sees beauty in it and conveys it through art.
Disciple: Roger Fry does not admit Tolstoy's contention that it is the moral implications of the emotion aroused by the work of art that are important.
Sri Aurobindo: That, of course, is not true.
Disciple: The one good result of modern artistic movements has been that representative art and imitation of Nature are no longer considered the highest art. Now they admit that the artist can take what he likes from Nature for his purpose and convey through his creation whatever he has to say.
Sri Aurobindo: Yes. That is how you find some of them representing the human form with a few lines and very imperfectly putting force into it or emotion.
Disciple: He also speaks about the primitives. He says that their painting tries to convey their idea of Man. To them man as they saw him was not interesting or important, but the idea of Man in their mind was important. In the primitive man's idea the head and the legs and the arms had importance but the torso had no importance.
Sri Aurobindo: Idon't think the primitive men had any 'ideas'.
Disciple: Roger Fry refers to the cave paintings in the Pyrenées mountains which are supposed to be ten thousand years old and the bushman's paintings in Africa. He speaks of them as having an idea of the form and also the ability to convey it.
Sri Aurobindo: What they had was not an 'idea' but some perception, or rather some first essential perception of the object and it is that which they tried to convey. You can call it basic perception. Because the modernists believe that there is an idea behind the primitives they call Indian art conceptional. They think that somebody wanted to convey the 'idea of peace' and so he invented the figure of Buddha! But it is not an idea at all, it is the experience that is meant to be conveyed. Vision and experience are the creative elements of Indian art.
What modernist art is trying to do — at least what it began with — is to convey the vital sensation of the object, very often it happens to be the lower vital sensation. But it is the first effort to get behind the physical form.
Disciple: Yes, it was Cézanne who began the modernist movement. It was fortunate that he had not to depend on his art for his maintenance. He had no training in art and yet he was never easily satisfied with his work. His friend Vollard gave him about 150 sittings at the end of which Cézanne said he was dissatisfied with the shirt-collar! In his still-life study of the "Apples" he wanted to convey the very ripeness and warmth of the fruit.
Sri Aurobindo: But, as the Mother says, much of modernist art is erotic folly.
Disciple: Roger Fry argues that as Impressionism was lacking in elements of structure and design Cubism followed almost as a natural corrective.
Sri Aurobindo: So he thinks that Cubism supplies the element of design in Nature, doesn't he?
Disciple: He himself questions whether a picture is meant to convey merely abstract elements. In fact he asks if it is possible to have a song without meaningful words and without being set to music.
Sri Aurobindo: Evidently not, unless you repeat the letters of the alphabet and call it a song.
14 JANUARY 1941
Sri Aurobindo saw a volume containing Cézanne's paintings and one of the painters of the 20th century representing the most modern trend of the artistic movement in Europe. He found Cézanne "remarkable" in his portraits; all of them were "fine" and "showed power".
In the evening Sri Aurobindo said he liked Matisse also. But he found "three things in general about modern art: Ugliness; vulgarity or coarseness; absurdity".
Sri Aurobindo: In their nude studies it is a very low sexuality which they bring out. They call it 'Life'! One can hardly agree. Even in the ugliest corner of life there is something fine, and even beautiful, that saves it. This art explains why France and Europe have gone down.
When these artists go further in the application of their theories then they become absurd.
And what they mean by 'inner' truth of the object is most often the subconscient or lower vital. There is no objection to suppressing the non-essentials of a form in a work of art. In fact all great artists do it. But the work that you produce must have aesthetic appeal.
[1] In his editorial article "The Mithuna in Indian Art" (Rupam, April-July, 1925) Gangooly quotes (p. 60) the phrase "Mithunaih Vibhushayet" — decorate with couples — from Prasāda Lakshanam, 105, Shloka 30 (Bibliotheca Indica, Calcutta, 1873, p. 356). The phrase occurs in Agni Purana.
[2] In A Defence of Indian Culture, subsequently published under the title The Foundations of Indian Culture.
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