Abstract
There is confusion about the purposes of art. It has become disconnected and elitist. In India, we find an increasing and intrusive ugliness, which is jarring given the culture’s rich aesthetic traditions of making everything beautiful. Its contemporary art has become imitative of Western contemporary art and become infected by the ‘anti-beauty’ thinking of Western art theories and practices. There is a sad amnesia about the distinctive characteristics of the Indian art tradition: continuity between art and craft, purposeful communication, absence of ‘art for art’s sake’, integrated experientiality at sensory, emotional and mental levels – rasas and ananda that cut across every socio-economic strata.
In India, beauty was understood to be both an experience and a state of being, occurring in outer and inner worlds. The axioms of balance, harmony, proportion and rhythm once extolled in the classical traditions of aesthetics in the East and the West, are re-considered as relational and inter-relational qualities, and beauty is understood as relational excellence and wellness. A re-purposing of art is explored and it is suggested that beauty, properly understood, might hold a promise of a renaissance in art around the world, making it more meaningful and relevant for wellbeing – experientially and systemically.
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Notes
- 1.
Like Subodh Gupta, Jitish Kallat, Bharati Kher and Atul Dodiya.
- 2.
Though India became a dominion of Britain in 1858, the East India Company pretty much ruled India since 1757, after it won the Battle of Plassey.
- 3.
For more, see Maira 2006, 44–47.
- 4.
Google images for Damien Hirst’s dot painting: http://www.damienhirst.com/exhibitions/solo/2012/complete-spot-paintings
- 5.
Marc Quinn (1964 -) is a British artist and one of a loose group known as the ‘Young British Artists’.
- 6.
Bandhini is the technique of tie-dying practiced in Rajasthan, India.
- 7.
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory in psychology suggests that in general people have to first meet basic physical and safety needs before they can progress to the higher needs, such as those the arts might fulfill. The terms he used for the levels of needs were: Physiological, Safety, Belongingness and Love, Esteem, Self-Actualization and Self-Transcendence.
- 8.
“The End of Art and The Promise of Beauty,” India Habitat Centre, New Delhi, February 25–27, 2012.
- 9.
In Vedanta, the individual atman is not separate from Brahman, and in Buddhism we have anatman – the absence of an independent, enduring self-entity.
- 10.
Pitrim A. Sorokin (1889–1968).
- 11.
See Lane 2003, 70–72.
- 12.
Kathleen Raine (1908–2003) was a British poet, critic, and scholar writing in particular on William Blake, W.B. Yeats and Thomas Taylor. Known for her interest in various forms of spirituality, most prominently Platonism and Neoplatonism, she was a founder member of the Temenos Academy.
- 13.
From the Foreword to Timeless Beauty (Lane 2003).
- 14.
See note 29 for the levels of consciousness in the Indian aesthetic system.
- 15.
These are excerpts from a Beauty Dialogue between Fritjof Capra and Shakti Maira. A condensed version was published as Maira 2013a.
- 16.
Excerpts from a Beauty Dialogue between Roger Scruton and Shakti Maira. A condensed version was published as Maira 2013b.
- 17.
Pushpa Bhargava was a speaker at The End of Art, and The Promise of Beauty conference. He is the author of six books, including the forthcoming Two Faces of Beauty: Art and Science.
- 18.
Excerpt from a Beauty Dialogue between Dr Pushpa Bhargava and Shakti Maira. A condensed version was published as Maira 2013c.
- 19.
Dr Rupert Sheldrake, British biologist and author. For more on his theory of morphic resonance, see Sheldrake 1981.
- 20.
Excerpts from a Beauty Dialogue between Dr Rupert Sheldrake and Shakti Maira.
- 21.
Satish Kumar is a philosopher, environmentalist, peace activist, editor and author.
- 22.
Vandana Shiva is an environmental thinker, activist, physicist, feminist, philosopher of science, writer and science policy advocate.
- 23.
Excerpts from a Beauty Dialogue between Dr Vandana Shiva and Shakti Maira.
- 24.
Semir Zeki is Professor of Neuroaesthetics, author and convener of the annual international meeting in neuroaesthetics, held in Berkeley, California.
- 25.
Pleasure, gladness, wellness, delight, joy, spaciousness, connectedness, timelessness, integration and wholeness.
- 26.
The young men were completely unsighted, but they would interestingly refer to their perceptions as ‘seeing’ just as sighted people tend to.
- 27.
This particular formulation is from On the Origin of Beauty by John Griffin (Griffin 2011).
- 28.
In Indian philosophy, the mind is sometimes added as a sixth sense. Also, the idea of extra-sensory perceptions exists in non-Indian cultures. In this context, we could also consider the relationship between the senses and consciousness. In Indian philosophy there are sense consciousnesses: sight consciousness, smell consciousness, etc. A gradation of functions is described for consciousness, starting with activities of nutrition, followed by the collective activities of the senses and of thought, which lead to activities of cognition and finally, at the apex of this chain, ananda – absorption and bliss. The ultimate aim of consciousness is to enable the experience of ananda. This conception of the movement of the human spirit towards ananda furnished the central purpose of all the arts. Experiencing this inner joy was thought to be the heart of the aesthetic experience.
- 29.
For more on this, see Maira 2006, 37–38.
References
Capra, Fritjof. 2008. The science of Leonardo. New York: Anchor.
Griffin, John. 2011. On the origin of beauty: Ecophilosophy in the light of traditional wisdom. Bloomington: World Wisdom.
Lane, John. 2003. Timeless beauty. Totnes: Green Books.
Maira, Shakti. 2006. Towards Ananda: Rethinking Indian art and aesthetics. New Delhi: Penguin/Viking India.
Maira, Shakti. 2013a. Patterns of beauty: India artist and thinker Shakti Maira asks Fritj of Capra what he means by beauty. Resurgence & Ecologist, Issue 276, January–February.
Maira, Shakti. 2013b. Beauty is long-term utility: Part two of the beauty dialogues, featuring Roger Scruton. Resurgence & Ecologist, Issue 277, March–April.
Maira, Shakti. 2013c. Science and beauty: In part three of his beauty dialogues, Shakti Maira talks to scientist Pushpa Bhargava. Resurgence & Ecologist, Issue 278, May–June.
Scruton, Roger. 2009. Beauty. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sheldrake, Rupert. 1981. A new science of life: The hypothesis of formative causation. Los Angeles: J.P. Tarcher.
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Maira, S. (2017). The Hollowing of Art and the Call of Beauty. In: Higgins, K., Maira, S., Sikka, S. (eds) Artistic Visions and the Promise of Beauty. Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures, vol 16. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-43893-1_2
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