Sri Aurobindo as an Art Critic

Like Ananda Coomaraswamy, his contemporary, Sri Aurobindo was a sensitive interpreter of Indian culture who played many Intellectual parts during the Indian Renaissance. If Coomaraswamy’s earlier work may be said to give aesthetic expression to the forgotten night of India’s soul, some of Sri Aurobindo’s poems as well as essays on Indian culture, reflect its intimations of the new dawn. Coomaraswamy is a scholar-critic, Sri Aurobindo an essentially scholar-poet. The former redirected criticism to fundamentals and significantly to a fresh scrutiny of the classics of Indian aesthetics. And Sri Aurobindo revealed the subtlest meanings of Vedic thought and sensibility. But the two philosophers are alike in seeing plainly into the clear depths of India’s soul.

Paradoxically enough, Sri Aurobindo’s reputation as an art critic is based on his reply to Mr. William Archer’s criticism of Indian art. Equally paradoxical is the fact that the memory of this obscure English critic lives in Sri Aurobindo’s pages! Sri Aurobindo not only castigates Mr. Archer with his characteristic thoroughness, but raises the discussion to a higher level. Time and again, one lights on trenchant comments such as these: “….Indian Poets and authorities on art have given…….the simile of the lion, and lo and behold Mr. Archer Solemnly discoursing on this image as a plain proof that the Indian people were only just out of the semi-savage state!......I presume, on the same principle and with the same stupefying ingenuity he would find in Kamban’s image of the sea for the colour and depth of Sita’s eyes clear evidence of a still more primitive savagery and barbaric worship of inanimate nature, or in Valmiki’s description of his heroine’s ‘eyes like wine’, Madirekshanaa, evidence of a chronic inebriety and the semi-drunken inspiration of the Indian poetic mind. This is one example of Mr. Archer’s most telling points.….” Again, “mark the curious misreading of the dance of Shiva as a dance of Death or Destruction, whereas anybody ought to be able to see who looks upon the Nataraja it expresses on the contary the rapture of the cosmic dance with the profunditites behind of the unmoved eternal and infinite bliss. The Kalasamhara Shiva is supreme not only by the majesty, power, calmly forceful control, dignity and kingship of existence which the whole spirit and pose of the figure visibly incarnates–that is only half or less than half its achievement–but much more by the concentrated divine passion of the spiritual overcoming of time and existence which the artist has succeeded in putting into eye and brow and mouth and every feature and has subtly supported by the contained suggestion, not emotional, but spiritual, of every part of the body of the godhead and the rhythm of his meaning which he has poured through the whole unity of this creation.”

Concerning the significance of Indian art as a whole, “its highest business,” said Sri Aurobindo, consists in disclosing “something of the Self, the Infinite, the Divine to the regard of the soul, the Self through its expressions, the Infinite through its living finite symbols, the Divine through his powers.” And since the ultimate goal of the Indian artist is to catch a glimpse of the reality that lies behind the flux of phenomena, it is clear that the visual conception of Indian art is derived from the expression of abstract thought. In other words, the Indian mind looks for reality in the realm of ideas rather than in the world of objects, in the abstract rather than in the concrete. This could be illustrated with a few examples. Consider the image of Nataraja, in which every part is expressive; yet its fundamental rhythms and perspectives of proportion symbolize the transformation of the concept of infinite energy into a cosmic setting of infinite repose. It is a plastic view of an entire philosophy of the interplay of opposites which not only brings out the rhythmic nature of the creative process but also attempts to catch a glimpse of the reality that lies behind the appearance of things. Again the Buddhist frescoes of Ajanta and that truly memorable sculptural representation of Mahishasuramardini in rock at Mahabalipuram depicting the slaying of Mahishasura are essentially idealistic In aim, although realistic in execution. This ideal is even more clearly reflected in the Indian conception of painting as visualized music. Each painting is an interpretation in form and colour of a particular raga or ragini. Similarly on listening to the particular raga or ragini, one can recall the particular painting. This peculiarity in Indian practice of weaving music and painting into a stylistic pattern of aesthetic harmony illustrates the Indian ideal of perceiving reality in the realm of ideas.

Sri Aurobindo’s collection of essays on The Foundations of Indian Culture is significant in the present context not only because Sri Aurobindo’s thought has a particular affinity to Coomaraswamy’s but also because he belonged to the charmed circle of Coomaraswamy, Tagore, Havell and Cousins who provided a much-needed aesthetic corrective to the one-sided approach of the professional politician during the age of Indian nationalism. “The spirit of old Indian art” cried Sri Aurobindo at a pitch which was at once inspired and nostalgic “must be revived, the inspiration and directness of vision which even now subsists among the possessions of the ancient traditions, the inborn skill and taste of the race, the dexterity of the Indian hand and the intuitive gaze of the Indian eye must be recovered and the wholenation lifted again to the high level of the ancient culture–and higher.” Again he emphasized that the system of education which, instead of keeping artistic training apart as a privilege for a few specialists, frankly introduces it as a part of culture no less necessary than literature or science, willhave taken a great step forward in the perfection of national education and the general diffusion of a broad-based human culture.

Sri Aurobindo explained the meaning of his aesthetic creed in this metaphysical strain: “…..that will be the highest and most perfect art which, while satisfying the physical requirements of the aesthetic sense, the laws of formal beauty, the emotional demand of humanity, the portrayal of life and outward reality, as the best European art satisfies these requirements, reaches beyond them and expresses inner spiritual truth, the deeper not obvious reality of things, the joy of God in the world and its beauty and desirableness and the manifestation of divine force and energy in phenomenal creation.” I think the breaking-point of Sri Aurobindo’s critical attitude lies in his facile assumption that European art is inferior to Indian art, because of the absence of these criteria. It is clear from the foregoing analysis that Sri Aurobindo’s idealization of Indian art at the expense of European art was based on some of the ideas which he formulated during the ‘Swadeshi’ phase of his career. Interestingly enough, Sri Aurobindo’s approach had a profound impact on the Indian art criticism of the time. Indeed Sri Aurobindo’s approach was continued in Dr James H. Cousins’s exposition under the terms ‘Bengal School’ and ‘Western art’, to the latter’s disadvantage, naturally. For example, Dr Cousins commented: “The present confusion in art outside India arises from the exhaustion of the eye and the lower emotions. This exhaustion cannot be relieved through fantastic variations of the things seen and felt, such as has been attempted by the Cubists, Futurists and similar groups of Revolutionaries in art: it can only be relieved by raising of the consciousness of the artist toa higher level, the level of the spirit. This, the work of the Bengal School is helping to do.” And it was during this point of time that Dr Ananda Coomaraswamy restored a sense of aesthetic perspective. As Coomaraswamy has put it: “There has been a revival or painting in Bengal, inspired by Abanindranath Tagore and his brother, nephews of the well-known poet. But important as this movement has been, its main significance belongs to appreciation rather than production. It may be compared rather to the work of the pre-Raphelites than to that of the great post-Impressionists–the time for these has not arrived.” This said, one gratefully admits that everything Sri Aurobindo says on art is expressed with brilliance and wit. Here the important point to be noted is that the major premises of a culture must be grasped before one can apply an accurate terminology to the concerned art. In the ultimate analysis one can perceive in the wider mutations of history the same great cycle and sub-cycles of Indian art that are characteristic of other artistic cycles. There is an initial creativity characterized by reserve and power together with a primitive awkwardness; a period of the flowering of the aesthetic imagination in which the earlier plastic amplitude is rendered with easier movement, classical grace and cultivated charm; a period of gradual decline when the original signature of craftsmanship is reduced to a mere scrawl; a Rococo period of subtle intricacy in which form is subordinated to ornament and finally when accuracy is at a discount. The latest phase of the modem idiom in art ranging from the surrealistic fantasies of Klee’s drawings to the intense paintings and drawings of Barbara Hepworth is perhaps not strictly represented in India. But the point worth stressing is that these stylistic sequences are not merely of artistic significance, but actually correspond to the parallel crisis in the sociological, religious, cultural and political history of the human race.

Sri Aurobindo from the beginning of his career as an expositor of Indian culture was not only concerned with the symbolism of Indian art, but also with the symbol of dawn in Vedic ontology. In fact his unique distinction lies in his translation of some of the Vedic hymns. Incidentally Coomaraswamy has argued in A New Approach to the Vedas that a deeper understanding of the Vedas is possible only from the point of view of the history of religion. The Vedas have been interpreted in the past as a system of rituals in the light of Sayana’s commentaries or as a naturalistic body of knowledge by Western scholars. Sri Aurobindo, however, has interpreted the Vedas in their esoteric sense. As he observed, the Vedic chants “are episodes of the lyrical epic of the soul in its immortal ascension.” Perhaps Sri Aurobindo’s interpretation of Agni as the spiritual fire in matter, is a key to his aesthetics.

“I cherish God the Fire, not God the Dream!” exclaims Savitri

“A fire to call eternity into Time
Make body’s joy as vivid as the soul’s.”

Again, the legend of Savitri took Sri Aurobindo to the Vedas, where it was a feminine principle sustaining the universe. In the Mahabharata, it was a symbol of the victory of love over death. Sri Aurobindo imparts to the legend a contemporary aesthetic relevance by projecting it as a symbol of the conquest of darkness by light, of ignorance by knowledge. Here Savitri symbolizes the birth of new knowledge in man. For Sri Aurobindo’s concept of the new dawn unveils vistas of Ahana and Usha in an expanding horizon of aesthetic consciousness. And the totality of aesthetic effect in Sri Aurobindo’s epic Savitri reminds one of his own suggestive lines in Urvasie.

“... ... ... ...as if a line
Of some great poem out of dimness grew
Slowly unfolding into perfect speech.”

“To get in contact with the Divine Consciousness and to live in its mercy, its strength and its light is the only true effective way to get out of this difficulty and suffering. And by uniting with the psychic we can obtain this condition. My help and blessings are with you for this purpose.”
–Mother