What is Creative Art?

DR. N. CHINNASWAMY NAIDU

All of us have heard the school boy story of Tansen and Emperor Akbar. Tansen was the great court singer. Was there a greater singer than Tansen? Yes, there was Tansen’s master. Emperor Akbar must hear him then. Both repair to the Ashram of the great master. Even as they approach the Ashram, they hear the rapturous glow of the saintly master singing. Both Emperor and Tansen stand transfixed to the ground and listen in stunned silence. As they drag themselves away. Akbar asks. “How is it you never sing like this?” The reply is: “Sire. I sing for amortal or pelf, while my master, the saint sings in praise of the Lord, regardless of any earthly consideration!” If Saint Thyagaya or Saint Purandaradasa composed and sang their Kritis, it was for the sheer joy of creation and the ethereal rendering of them that they strove after. If Beethoven and Handel composed their symphonies and sonatas and rendered them on the piano or violin, it was because of the inward compulsion of the creative joy.

Milton wrote his “Paradise Lost”, Goethe His “Faustus”. Kalidasa his “Sakuntalam”, Valmiki or Kamban, his “Ramayana”, Tagore his “Gitanjali” not to satisfy their mundane, needs but in obedience to a creative urge and the result is abiding joy to the reader for all time to come. Such great classics are timeless.

Michael Angelo, after years of unremitting toil, completed the dome of St. Peter’s Church in Rome an architectural triumph indeed. One day he was surveying this marval with evident satis­faction and pardonable pride when some of the prelates who had gathered there said, “Whoever has seen Angels wearing footwear?” Michael Angelo heard this remark and said dryly, “Whoever has seen the Angels?” and walked away. It was his creative imagination that provided wears to the feet of the Angels that adorn the great dome.

A friend once remarked to Michael Angelo that it was a pity that he had not married. He replied “I have only too much of a wife in this art of mine. She has always kept me struggling on. My children will be the works I leave behind me. Even though they are worth naught, yet shall I live awhile in them.”

Leonardo da Vinci created on canvas “The Last Supper” and ‘Mona Lisa’. The one continues to be a masterpiece unrivalled by even such greats like Raphael, Titiam or Michael Angelo, while the latter, the portrait of a mere lady “Mona Lisa” continues to fascinate the world with her enigmatic smile, half-cynical and half-bewitching. His fame over the centuries is due to the near perfection that he achieved. Will Durant commented. “Leonardo was the fullest man of the Italian Renaissance, perhaps all time”.

An essay on Art is not complete without a mention of Raphael, the painter of fifty odd Madonnas. To quote Will Durant, again: “Leonardo puzzles us, Michael Angelo frightens us, Raphael gives us peace. He offers us the loveliness of life as ambrosial drink. He admits no conflict between intellect and feeling, nor between body and soul: everything in him is a harmony of op­posites, making Pythagorean music. His art idealised all that it touches: religion, women, music, philosophy, history, even war. Himself fortunate and happy, he radiated serenity and grace. In the arbitrary anthologies of genius he finds his place just below the greatest, but with them: Dante, Goethe, Keats, Beethoven, Bach, Mazart, Michael Angelo, Leonardo, Raphael”.

These three giants were products of the Italian Renaissance. Let us have a look at the greats of 18th Century England: Painter Constable and Poet Wordsworth. Both were votaries of the religion of nature. Wordsworth sang:

One impulse from the vernal wood
May teach you more of man
Of moral evil and of good
Than all sages can.

Constable expounded the view that an artist must “seek excellence at the sensitive source of Art–Nature”. The beautiful English landscape was the source of inspiration to both. While Wordsworth rendered his response in simple, romantic poetry. Constable turned out passionate convases revealing the beauty of England’s “Green and pleasant land.”

Now let us have a look at Modem Art. Paul Gauguin (along with Cezanne and Vail Gogh) counts among the great masters of the Post-impressionist period of modem art. If Van Gogh is considered the father of expressionism and Cezanne the father of Cubism, Gauguin can be deemed the father of decorative “Primitivism”.

Gauguin was essentially a painter of nature and human beings in the raw. His paintings, most of which deal with the bright tropical scenery and the simple people of Tahiti, create in simple lines, colours and forms a beautiful world which according to Gauguin represented “truth, dignity, grace and serenity of artist’s spirit”. He said “Remember art is an abstraction, dream in front of nature, draw from it the essence of what you see, then paint.”

Deriding critics say that Henry Matisse and Pablo Picasso are the two “monsters of modem art”. According to Matisse “Composition is the art of arranging in a decorative way the various elements which the painter has at his disposal to express his feelings”. His aim was to reach that stage of condensation of sensation which constitutes a picture. But Picasso’s approach to painting is explained by his famous remark: “Creativity is a series of destruction”. According to Andre Mairau, the ex-French Minister of Culture “Picasso’s life work is the greatest enterprise of destruction the creation of forms of our time, and, perhaps, all time”.

Cubism, the development of which is considered to be Picasso’s main contribution to modem art, is an art movement which seeks to represent seen objects by arrangements of geometrical forms, such representation invariably resulting in obstru­ction and distortion.

Picasso, it appears, once said: “God is really another artist” which means that “An artist (like Picasso, is really a mini god”) who paints by divine inspiration. There is no doubt that these surrealists will survive the shocks of time, thanks to their creativity.

URGE TO CREATE

In our own country from the monks who covered the Ellora and Ajanta caves with sculptures and paintings down to Ravi Varma in the South West and later Nandalal Bose in the North East (of the country) obeyed the same urge to create things of beauty which will endure.

In the realm of Art, barring a few geniuses like Michael Angelo or Picasso, almost everyone of the famous masters could excel only in one area. There is the famous lament of Degas, the French Master. He tried to write sonnets but failed. He bemoaned to his friend, Mallarme: “It is not ideas which I lack I have all too many”. His friend consoled him saying “One does not make sonnets with ideas, Degas, but with words”. Well Dame Nature intended that energy should not be frittered away through dissipation. For example, Degas’s disappointment is not being able to write poetry has been a boon to the world of art. His vibrant ideas have taken shape on masterly canvas which delight a grate­ful world.

If we survey the urges of man at creating things of beauty from the cave man to the so called modem, in all climes, we find temples, mosques, churches, etc., by the million which provide feasts for the eye; sculptures and pictures adorning them through the ages. All works of countless anonymous artists to whom the beholders must be grateful. Various art galleries, museums, private collections provide unfailing delight to the critic as well as the non-critic, sophisticated as well as the un-sophisticated.

Let us now ask the question: “What is art?” We can say of Art: “That which endures, that which delights, that which uplifts” Creations which perhaps in most cases did not lift the authors above chill penury; but they created out of joy and obeyed the urge to create.

Today wherever we turn, we witness debasement of art, prostitution of the creative urge. While with the creators of immortal works, the motive force is creativity for its own sake, regardless of the monetary gains they brought, with the pseudo artists who abound now, monetary considerations far outweigh the purer compulsions. Take for example the monster called commercial art. The artist bends his creativity to producing really wonderful pictures which extol the virtues to the watchers of posters or readers of newspapers, magazine, etc., of the wares of paymasters. But alas! the reader does not care to have a second look at them.

Take the case of the light music. Reputed masters of Carnatic music descend on the studios of the film producers and sing jingles to cater to the tastes of the vulgar rabble which frequent the cinema theatres. The mouth which should reverberate with the pristine ragas of Carnatic or Hindustani music, spits vulgar notes, in the bargain descending from the sublime to the ridiculous all for the carrot of sizeable cheques.

Dramatic stages which produced all time greats in actors like Dame Sybil Thordike to whom acting was an for its own sake have been deserted in preference to the film studios which convert even talented actors to mediocrities by the humiliating dictates of Film Directors. In the whole gamut of world film production which has swallowed millions of artists and actors, only a handful like Greta Garbo or Charlie Chaplin or N. S. Krishnan stand out, thanks to their philosophies of perfection.

We have examples of descent from the sublime heights in the transformation of the temple sculptures who used to fashion granite blocks into architectural pieces to fit into the mosaic of great temples or chip away the granite stones and bring out of them divine forms of the gods and goddesses of the Hindu phantheon, now line up the roads in towns and cities with ugly huts and in them turn out base grinding stones to fit electrical grinders! Or the Rangoli artist dragging his art to the streets making figures of gods and goddesses in the roads to be trodden on by vulgar feet much to the annoyance of the road user, all for alms! One cannot but throw up his arms, at these atrocities and cry in agony alas! alas!! vulgarisation has invaded the areas which have been held sacred and inviolate from time immemorial.

But I am an optimist. Man’s make up is such that sooner or later he will look to the eternal values of his legacy and give vent to his creative impulse and the stroke that creates a picture of the hour will catch the marvels of nature; the voice which sings transcient hits will soon reverberate with the classical strains; the chisel that chips the mean grinding stone will chip again mere granite mass into figures of figurines of joy; the pen that writes penny terribles will start writing poetry or prose which will survive time.

For man’s soul is not so dead as not to heed Keat’s immortal saying:

“A thing of beauty is a joy for ever.”