THE SPIRIT OF MAN IN INDIAN ARTS

(Congregation of various assembly)

An impassioned invocation to the unseen presence of the Western mind
A record of human happiness is man’s art.
It is the expression of spirit of man
The artist is more complete because in him the life of the senses, intellect and the life
of emotions combine into one. His creation comes from a stratum of being into which
the conscious reason can never fully enter and it is like a stratum in our own nature
that it appeals.
Since each man is a unique personality different from everyone else the artists’ work
is a sort of cry statement of his most secret and profound experience. Every work of
art is a fragment of its time.
It is the delight in movement as manifestation of life as characterised in a design.
Lines run and flow, playful grotesqueness pleases the artist’s fancy – a life of their
own.
The countries of Asia have more in common than might be supposed. The painters
never introduced, cast shadow or attempt to produce an illusion of natural effect. It is a
felicity and vitality of line drawing that symptoms of an attitude of mind – a mental
attitude cannot rest in the material world as an ultimate reality.
What sort of style Indian genius had formed in painting and sculpture?
These artists are inspired by faith in the unity of all like not human beings only but all
the creatures. The sense of that unity underlines all their creations. Joyous ease of
casual movement, natural grace which unites the apparent differences, the
spontaneous, instinctive, conscious art at work.
There is difference in the actual mould of the human forms. The pliancy and
gentleness of limbs which are not powerful and muscular but graceful lithe and active.
Still move to a different method and practice. They paint from memory but a memory
severely trained by watching natural movements of the body. Background grasped in
details rather than as a whole. Warmth and glow in the vision of life on the fruitful
earth. All mingled is the spiritual element, manifested in transcendental forms,
something latent but very rare.
A vision of the spirit passing successfully to all the forms of life, charity- compassion,
sorrows in man is the vision before the painters’ eyes uniting every scene they picture.
The sense of relief and roundness emphasized by reticent highlights on silent features
and a suggestion of molding.
The Bagh frescos are much less famous than those at Ajanta, but they seem if anything
superior as art- Amazing mastery of form and movement. This mastery through a
flowering of the mind in form.
There is rhythmic felicity in the discovery of the beauty inherent in natural gesture and
attitude. A perfect fusion of sensuous and spiritual.
A movement not merely across the space before the spectator but obliquely from the
background towards the front. Sense of motion is emphasized by the suggestion of
swaying movement in the elephant riders. Slow ponderous advance of the huge
animals. They hold their own with any pictorial art in the world. There is nothing like
them in latter Indian art, which is flat and in 2 dimensions and absolutely Indian in
character.
The pictorial art relies on line for the suggestion of the form it encloses. Seizure of
living form and feeling of exuberance fire one’s soul and enlarge his imagination.

Creating harmony by continuous relation between the forms is subtly exerted to

control the multitude of figures into an ordered whole.
Feel the pulsation of the blood beneath the skin. Reality of the forms is diminished- a
unique gift of communicating the sense of immaterial forms floating in the space,
forms so massive should appear so immaterial – a wonderful equilibrium of spirit and
sense. Figures like sculpture seem to walk out of the picture and back into it.
The energy of his being overflows into the aureole of leaping flames, to diffuse power
in mind and matter to make them dance in their term – conception of internal energy
as the reality behind appearances.
He who is ever clogged by passions can see no more than its outer form. One who is
eternally free of earthly passions can apprehend its spiritual essence (it means the
way).