Triveni Journal
1927 | 11,233,916 words
Triveni is a journal dedicated to ancient Indian culture, history, philosophy, art, spirituality, music and all sorts of literature. Triveni was founded at Madras in 1927 and since that time various authors have donated their creativity in the form of articles, covering many aspects of public life....
Dr. Sanjeev Dev
Dr. Sanjeev Dev, the great painter of international renown sent this article for publication in TRIVENI a few months before his demise. It would have been easier for the readers to understand the artistic aspects and spiritual implications, if the brochure of paintings is placed before our eyes. –Editor
The elemental world, destined to culminate into mental world is mainly five-fold consisting of sky, air, fire, water and earth. Sky belongs to sound, air to sound and touch, fire to form, touch and sound, water to sound, taste and smell.
Of all these, the vision and audition, or sight and sound are the most significant ones in human life which mainly relies, for its existence, on time and space; time belongs to sound, space to form.
The main characteristic of the visual world is form containing colour. The art of painting belongs to the medium of form including colour. The form in the visual world is the significant phenomenon. No form, no vision. Thus form is the vital phenomenon of the art of painting.
In the visual world the form is divided into two sorts - natural and artistic, the former is made by nature itself while the latter is by man. Natural form is the unmodified form while artistic form is the modified form executed by the artist’s manual dexterity.
The art of painting is wisely divided into two - the representational, the semi-representational and the non-representational corresponding to realism, idealism and abstraction. Realism is exact imitation, idealism is modified imitation, while abstractionism is anti-imitation or absolute creation.
Every human being is an artist, no doubt. Simply because every human being is an artist, every being is not a talented artist. He or she alone is a talented artist who happens not to be a sleeping artist but a waking artist.
He is the master of all techniques and media and all themes. But since some time he has been interested in specialising the methods of modern art especially the abstract painting.
Each art creation, whether visual or aural, required content and form or theme and technique. No amorphous art Could exist. But what we call the abstract art is then alone is abstract when it happens to be shapeless or formless. But when form exists it would be no more abstract art. Thus the abstract art could become an abstract art when it happens to appear in concrete form.
But there is a way for solving this self-contradictory complex problem. In art the term ‘abstract’ means not absolute formlessness but it implies the absence of familiar forms or the absence of forms that are familiar to us in our empirical life or the sensory objective world. The abstract artist is he who relies on his subjective conception instead of the objective perception.
An abstract artist is he who does not utilise the forms of the realistic appearances but the realities of the imaginary forms. He or she wants to keep aloof from the forms of phenomena and take refuge in those of the phenomena which are not identical with those of the elemental world. Thus gives tangible forms to intangible objects.
Yet, his paintings are not the forms of exclusively intangible imagination nor those of exclusively tangible realities. His forms exist beyond the touch of the brush. Thus these paintings are formless forms and colourless colours - a silent visual music beyond all sound; they are the visual music because it is heard only through the eyes and not through the ears.
His themes in these pictures mostly belong to ‘Liberation’ - liberation from the bondage of agony and anguish or sorrow and suffering. In the usual sense our mundane world is an elemental prison where living is a pain, from which man hankers to liberate himself and enjoy the eternal joy in the effulgent light of the infinity both terrestrial and celestial.
If any art; any science or any other ramification of culture fails to liberate man from any such material limitation, unless he is helped to progress on the path from thraldom to freedom, would remain a greater bondage.
All the chromatic pieces reproduced in the present brochure are indeed master pieces of revaluation of enlightenment and refinement. Each piece represents peace and bliss. Rhythm and tune reflect and resound the transcendental worlds beyond rhythm and tune. Beyond the rhythm stays the sthasis and beyond the tune moves the kines. The stasis is space and the kinesis is time; thus the harmony of the two forms the infinite cosmos.
The material of these paintings is a special type of fabric which spreads until the four corners of the frame creating the illusion of reaching the empty space outside the frame unfolding the various twists and bondages of the corners together with the enfoldments of the two-dimensional base. This strange aspect of the pictorial execution gives not merely the charm of the form but the enhancement of the delicate paint. Thus these pieces create both the external charm and the internal calm. All these forms deal with the illumination of liberation. Unfoldment of the enfolded is the living liberation.
Natural creation is bondage while artistic creation is liberation. Whatever is bondage is the source of all sorrows and sufferings while liberation is the instruction that relieves the sufferer from the bondage into the realm of joy and peace.
These paintings represent both bondage and liberation. The forms as well as the colours are not contrasting but harmonious. Different shades and tints of the same colours are displayed here. The darker shades represent the realms of sorrow and the lighter tints represent those of joy.