Indian Sculpture c7: Chapter IV. Essential Qualities of Indian Plastic Art

Indian Sculpture c7

Language: English

c7.s1 Plasticity — 7 parts
c7.s2 Accentless Distribution and Dynamic Coherence — 8 parts
c7.s3 Naturalism — 4 parts
c7.s4 Inner Dimension of Indian Plastic Art — 12 parts

Chapter IV. Essential Qualities of Indian Plastic Art

MONUMENTS are coming to light (Amri) and show that the antiquity of art in India extends to a past remoter than that of Mohenjo-Daro, Harappa, and other cities. The achievements of these millenia out-lasted their actual existence. What had brought them about remained active as long as Indian sculpture itself. But this ancient art of India, carried on—it may be surmised—from the palæolithic age, though it underlies ineradicably the many varieties, phases and provinces of Indian sculpture, as an aspect of art had itself by the second century B.C. sunk into the background. By that time many seeds sown on its fertile soil had germinated. Its rich humus supplied them with vitality. The earthbound quality of ancient Indian sculpture from the palæolithic age—actual relics are known hitherto from the chalcolithic period only—was to withstand, by assimilating while transforming, whatever racial influx touched upon it.

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Ancient Indian sculpture is not yet Indian plastic art to the full extent. It lacks some of the essential components, as well as some of the essential qualities, of classically Indian art. Plastic art of the Dekkhan, with its qualities of rock-cut sculpture, from Bhājā to Elephanta, appears basically and aboriginally Indian. Sculpture in the south has certain distinct features of its own (Drāviḍian). The northern half of the country, in parts and at certain phases is definitely distinguished by trends of its own. To disentangle the ethnical contributions in the single instances is impossible for the present; nor is this of primary importance, as the synthesis of the many factors in every province, and in each single work, constitutes the Indianness of the art of this country. What separates the provinces of Indian art is subsidiary to what they have in common. To our present knowledge the fabric of Indian art, thus established, becomes known by approximately 200 B.C. Art in India prior to that moment we call ancient; though it is ancestor of future unfoldment, and this not only historically but permanently, because of its survival and its potential readiness as the substratum of new formations.

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As on the whole certain indelible qualities inhere in the whole fabric of Indian plastic art, a definite aptitude persists throughout the ages in every single art province, and moulds what it contributes, according to its own compulsion and limits. The soil of India responds to, and shapes in each of its parts, the urge of giving form to the un-formed as an expression of the quest of the formless. Each art province plays the part of the active memory of such ethnical impresses, which in each particular spot have become one with it. This active memory of every part on the Indian mother-soil contributes provincial (and within that compass, indelible) features or schools of sculpture. It renders the peculiar flavour of the soil that is limited geographically. Its humus consists of a special mixture of people for untold generations.

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Each art province speaks its own language through the ages. But this stable aspect is modified along the time-line. The latter is the thin thread which the process of art itself spins. It leads from attempt to accomplishment, and is technically conditioned. Its structure in this respect is not different from that of the process of art anywhere else. The symptoms are the same, just as the signs of growing up or ageing are the same amongst men all over the world. Criteria of style, according to the organic transformation brought about in time, and according to changes caused by extraneous factors, such as contact with foreign spheres of art, and facilitated by a given readiness, help to order and to classify the monuments. The data which these skin-deep marks afford, must not, for the sake of wider implications, be lifted and abstracted from the body to which they belong, and which makes it possible for them to be present.

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The phrase ‘classically Indian’ refers more to the quality than to the chronology of art in India. It denotes a unique total, in which the ancient substratum unfolds its pertinacious vitality with the help of heterogeneous ethnical factors. None of them resisted, while each of them contributed to utterances more and more complex and subtle. The tension between the many components and their past shows the artistic vitality of the country, of its soil and of the response of the craftsman, and creates features that belong to no single component in the continuous structure of Indian art.

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Terms that will apply to Western art ill fit, and often are meaningless, if used to denote qualities of Indian art. Two essentials of Indian sculpture, for instance, plasticity and naturalism, have to be used with a meaning unfamiliar to Western art. Other peculiarly Indian features also have to be pointed out, so that their significance may be kept in view when discussing any particular aspect or phase of Indian art. None of them can be singled out from the life-stock of these permanent and uniquely Indian conditions and values of form.

Plasticity

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When other civilisations in their sculptures aim at results vastly different—Egypt, for instance, at crystalline purity and permanency; or Greece, with an increasing knowledge of anatomy, at the perfect beauty of the human body—the Indian craftsman models what has a primary significance to him as an integral part of a supra-personal connectedness of life. This he neither interprets nor illustrates. Endowed with tradition and training, he forms his vision in the material before him by the touch of his hand.

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Throughout the modulations brought about by the passage of time and by the ethnical structure of the country, the plastic quality of Indian art persists.

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Modelling in India on the whole has no descriptive aim. This, concentratedly, is the task of the outline, where it intends to be objectively accurate in order to make knowable the object. In this respect the outline has an intellectual function. But this is not its only task. The other is to act its part as a limit to the modelling, which in its turn is brought about by an experience of dynamic balance. This, however, belongs to the creative attitude, which recognises its own impulse in the material while it transforms it.

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It is for this reason, too, that metal and stone, wood and clay are treated—with the necessary exceptions, for instance, the earliest clay figurines—more or less in the same way, irrespective of their special structure and its demands. The actual material as an individual instance, that is, as far as it is gross matter, has to be overcome so that what is alive in it—and there is life in every stone, etc.—may enter into a novel substance, i.e. one conforming with the artistic experience itself. Just as the material, so also the appearance of all objects translated into plastic form is moulded with a certain similarity. The outline characteristically circumscribes each type represented; the modelled surface, of which it is but the limit, if imagined without it, would lack distinction. Thus it keeps within limits, which give it a name, be it that of god, human figure, elephant or tree. What brings about the possibility of that limit, while at the same time filling it, is nameless. It is not conditioned by anything perceived. It is an immediate expression of the creative urge.

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This plastic and essential quality of Indian sculpture does not brook our use of the term. In Western art the hewing into form of an originally shapeless block of stone, etc., underlies the notion of sculpture. The term ill-fits the plastic art of India, but we retain it nevertheless, though with the reservation, explained in these pages, devoted to the three-dimensional works of Indian art. The notion of sculpture, i.e. of giving form by detached movements to a hard and unyielding material, is valid for European art. In India, on the contrary, marble or wood appear as if kneaded in a continuity, as if the hand were never separated from the mass and were never losing touch with the material. While the vision, i.e. the object contemplated, is before the mind of the craftsman, his hand records his experience of that object and the rules laid down for its visualisation. There is something fluid in his rendering; a peculiar perpetual balance of up and down that does not admit any halt, any accent, any emphasis. A ceaseless and seemingly effortless gliding rounds off all corners.

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Technically, too, Indian plastic sense evolved in its own manner. Such distinctions as low relief, high relief, and sculpture in the round, do not exist. The self-same continuity of modelling that applies to the surface also applies to depth. Not only may low and high relief occur side by side at the same age in one and the same monument; they are possibilities afforded by the three-dimensional material, and used to the full extent in one and the same composition. Thus from top to bottom, in the direction of depth, a gradation of modelled surfaces takes place. It has a measure of its own, which is not a cut and dried rule, but varies in connection with and is dependent upon the other factors of the composition. The adaptability of the graded relief goes so far that sculpture fully carved in the round, i.e. detached from the ground where resorted to, is the ultimate—or if seen from the other side, the a priori—possibility of plastic form; it is not too frequently made use of (pp. 24, 95, etc.).

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The graded relief demands a graded texture of its surface. This is provided for by jewellery and the infinite care that is given to all its intricacies, clinging to, rising from, and in contrast with the smoothness of the body. Jewellery and body, in their surface treatment, offer contrasts, but these are brought into intimate contact by obvious nearness. In the same way do, at times, reliefs on temple walls cling to its body. As no phase of Indian art exists apart from the whole, so are the various aspects, forms and figures interconnected. Fluid, accentless continuity is manifest throughout.

Accentless Distribution and Dynamic Coherence

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Not to emphasise any single part of the sculpture is a rule with the Indian artist. This is not counteracted by such conventions, as, for instance, that of giving disproportionate size (from a Western point of view) to figures or parts of figures of outstanding importance, i.e. to divinities mostly. Although they are made to occupy a far larger share of the available volume than other figures, they do not receive any special accent. The other figures are not grouped so as to culminate in the figure of the divinity, and, though much smaller, they occupy their allotted and collateral place with equal self-sufficiency. The entire composition consists of self-sufficient units, which, paradoxically enough, gain that quality only by their intrinsic connectedness. But each unit is self-sufficient in its meaning, and in its plastic, i.e. three-dimensional, extensiveness. The meaning and composition of the whole, however, are by no means their sum total. The dynamic way in which these are connected produces a singular compactness. Accentless distribution is the visible outcome of dynamic coherence.

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The fluidity which permeates not only every unit, but every part of the unit, thereby joins the one to the next in unending succession. At the same time the difference in appearance, be it in the figures of men, animals or flowers, makes every unit distinguishable and induces modifications of the fluid medium. This causes a tension from unit to unit, which is redeemed only by the fulfilment of each entire composition. No linear scheme is responsible for this, but a balance of plastic weights, which, while being weighted on one side is relieved on the other, as often and in as many ways as the number and constellation of the units will allow. Fluidity, by passing through limits, that is, those of appearance, is sometimes contracted and at other times allowed to expand. These haltings or accelerations compensate each other, and keep the balance of the parts of every single work of art in an unwavering state of potential movement. Their dynamic tension is not restricted to any part; it belongs to the whole and makes it consistent. With this fluid and balanced underground vitality calmness is apparent; there is no accent in the deeply inter-related extensiveness.

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As dynamic coherence accounts for accentless distribution, Indian sculpture is not static, but it is essentially dynamic. The static condition, however, is true of a considerably large number of images, yet stiffness in their case is nothing but lifelessness, and this is due to many of the craftsmen not being artists. These merely proceed according to prescribed formulæ. Their mechanical rendering serves well enough the purpose of the image and makes it a fit object for worship. But the prescriptions laid down for this purpose were never intended for the achievement of artistic quality, but they were meant to make the image fit for worship. Still, apart from the demands of cult, the born artists amongst the craftsmen could not help, while obeying the rules, to re-invest their work with a significance, in relation to which these rules were but helps and stepping-stones towards visualisation.

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While it is only the artistically lifeless image that is static, even the most agitated action suggested by Indian sculpture is never translated into a composition that would have to resound with the movement of the former. (Exception p. 88.) But wherever frantically agitated figures occur, they do so as permanent states of a mental quality that is possible alongside with the rendering of other such qualities embodied in the remaining figures of one and the same composition. The dynamic nature of the plastic treatment is not influenced by the showing of activity, or the lack of it, in the case of the single figures and their movements.

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The way in which the raw material is transmuted into Indian plastic, and the qualities that are the outcome, have their correspondence in the attitude towards the subject matter and its treatment. Whatever figures or scene the artist represents are real to him, imaginary neither less nor more than the seen. He does not assert himself in his creation. But however impersonal and above individual thought, emotion, or technique be the attitude of the artist, he cannot but impart his vitality to his creation, i.e. his most unindividualised and natural aspect. On the kind and degree of this, while assuming a standard in common of technical efficiency, depend the quality of production. Vitality in this connection has to be understood as mainly vegetative. This is the chief root, and its ramifications embrace the meditative amongst others, while the animalic is a lesser root, and innervation or emotion correspondingly well up into lower branches.

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It is this vitality that cannot be arrested permanently in any shape. For this reason portraiture, in the current sense, does not exist in Indian sculpture. Portraiture belongs to civilisations that fear death. Individual likeness is not wanted where it suffices for the type to continue.

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This specifically Indian mode of creative vitality may take an introvert or an extrovert course. In the former and more frequent case, it imbues every figure, as well as the entire scene, with an intensity that falls back upon itself. Tension results between the single figures, and not merely contact; however widely apart they may be placed, there is no distance, nothing void nor spatial, between them. Thus they are held in the balance, and every part of their visibility acts as index that does not stir.

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Where, however, the extrovert tendency is unavoidable, as, for instance, in the scene of the three steps of Viṣṇu, etc., it endows the physical movement of the figure with indomitable power, so that what otherwise might be direction is here flash and aim in one.

Naturalism

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If existence and action of the figures that are given plastic form are conditioned and connected in this manner, their appearance, too, is based on the same principles. Yet Indian sculpture, from the outset, is profoundly naturalistic. This, however, must not be taken in the one-sided meaning which the term conveys when applied to Western art. In India appearance for its own sake and as an end in itself was never made an object of study. Nevertheless, the surface of things was appreciated, for their visible quality was taken by the artist as the result of the living and forming principle in them. A flower is not rendered only for its swaying and dewy grace. The sap that surges into its petals finds parallel channels in the creative attitude and achieves form in the work of art, just as in nature it achieves the appearance of a flower. The artist looks at nature, and finds in it further incitement and actual proofs for his experience of it. A clear and unmistakable rendering is necessary, accurate in the manner of communication.

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Seeing, according to Indian notions, is a going forth of the sight towards the object.¹⁶⁶ Sight touches it and acquires its form. Touch is the ultimate connection by which the visible yields to being grasped. While the eye touches the object, the vitality that pulsates in it is communicated, and the form which is given creatively is full with a life which in every part of the surface comes against self-caused and inevitable limits. The object seen is an enduring token of the force that has moulded it and is keeping it in shape. By touch, form is felt to be the rind of the movement of life.

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Appearance itself is real to the Indian artist. It supplies the points of contact between object and artist. Thus there is no illusion in appearance that would disguise the reality of the object; it is, on the contrary, that part or aspect of the reality of the object that is met and comprehended by the eye. Indian naturalism, at various ages and with different degree, always relies on the outer aspect of things as means and proof of understanding a pre-existent situation, where, as in a capillary system, one and the same fluid rises in different and connected tubes. The creative acknowledgment of this internal and living connectedness of an inner experience of nature and the visible world, by putting it into form, is Indian naturalism. It comprises innervation as well as transubstantiation (pp. 5, 55).

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While all form is essentially homogeneous as far as it is brought about by movement, the manifold types are keenly understood and stressed as possibilities within, or as qualities of nature. On this basis it easily happens that types are made to interchange—varieties of animals amongst themselves, and man and animal as well. The combination is equal to the embodied and combined potentialities of its constituents. Nature in them is afforded a locality of concentration which it cannot supply itself, but which, through the creative agency of man, reacts upon and impresses the worshipper or onlooker with the sense of the supernatural.

Inner Dimension of Indian Plastic Art

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Plasticity, dynamic coherence and accentless distribution, as well as naturalism, are among the essential and permanent aspects of Indian sculpture. All of these are provoked and confirmed, but not altogether conditioned, by sense impressions. The eye sees the confirmation of ‘nature’ in the appearance of the world, extended and imagined.

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The innervation of ancient sculpture and the plastic rhythm of subsequent ages result from a dynamic balancing; in it that which creates and becomes form is incessantly related to what is, and what has in itself the possibilities of, becoming and creating. It is thus that the Indian craftsman in the main works in a dimension which originates within and has not one direction. This inner dimension does away with the labours and particulars of sense perception. Indian plastic art at all ages, with all its naturalism, is free from descriptiveness for its own sake. Its generalisations are the outcome of its situation on the inner dimension, where, though the eye does not perceive, the whole being lives, balanced in its living integrity and aware of it in the expressive intimacy of creation.

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Any aspect or monument of Indian art visualises a subsistent awareness of life, that is, of ‘becoming.’ The differences at various periods are due to the degree or planes of life that are being experienced.

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In unending rhythm, or with an all-filling and intense compactness, the undifferentiated, the un-formed, is coined into form. This is done in the early phase of classical art, at a stage of expansiveness and awakening.

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Fully awake, with senses sharpened and refined, either of these expressions, abiding in rhythm and linear movement or in the dynamic movement of the mass, are sucked into the funnel of concentration, where the eye closes upon all it ever has beheld, rivetted on the point through which all has now to pass, freed from encumbrances and friction. This inflexion means transubstantiation. Into it are drawn, and by it are comprised, even those aspects which originally are devoid of limited form, namely, light, darkness and space. They, too, acquire a transubstantiated body.

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What remains after this amounts to attempts to safeguard the level attained and to an endeavour further to widen the reach of objects made tangible (p. 101). The process itself of beholding and creating becomes its own object. Its extension touches upon the unattainable. From there form recoils, with the help of definite rules, into clearly defined limits.

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Simultaneously, however, art as a craft proceeds from attempt to accomplishment, not only with the single worker but with each subsequent generation, in the continuity of tradition. This technical process may be retarded or promoted, and is given a special local colour by the ethnical antecedents of each particular school or province.

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Time thus applies in a dual sense to Indian plastic art. Subsisting on the inward dimension, it is an immediate experience of being as becoming, that is, of an inner life movement which goes on permanently. But as far as art is learnt and taught, its tradition subsumes unfoldment or increasing differentiation, together with local conditions that, in the main, are the result of the ethnical past of the particular province. The passing and the subsisting or enduring modes of experiencing time make the dual chronology of Indian art. They, too, are inseparable, and are interknit in a texture of their own. For the experience of duration as an awareness of becoming is the reassurance that each work of art gives in its Indian form. It is the indivisible measure along which Indian art creatively persists throughout the phases which the urge towards form passes on the way from the un-formed to the formless. It is the balance between the permanent state of being (realised as an ever becoming), on the one hand, and the permanent urge of the un-formed towards the formless, on the other. The state of becoming, an oscillation between existence and non-existence, belongs to the movement of the inner life. Whatever its degree of consciousness, it is subsumed by the urge towards form. In this way it becomes art.

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The urge towards form at any moment has an outward direction, but it becomes form only by the corresponding countermovement. This comes about in the following manner: From within the material, from within the creative mind, expression, i.e. form, is sought. Sight is sent forth and by grasping the object it redeems it with a sensation of touch from its un-formed condition. The urge is fulfilled, in that it acquires form by the hand of the craftsman.

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In this way, an oscillation which belongs to life goes on permanently. It inheres in a wider-flung movement, namely that of artistic creation, of which the centrifugal part, once it has reached the object, immediately turns back centripetally in order to become form. This wider oscillation maintains its elasticity as long as the urge of art is given its direction by the unattainable, by the formless and limitless.

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The passing, i.e. external, aspect, on the other hand, is borne by the inner and enduring dimension. The result is that time, in the case of Indian art, is constituted and marked by the points of contact, and simultaneously by the tension between the subsistent and the passing. So it comes about that what is true with regard to peculiar qualities of Indian art also holds good for its process. The notion, for instance, of space not void, but altogether filled by tangible extensions and their dynamic connectedness (p. 22), applies also to the continuity of Indian sculpture.

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Its various provinces may be understood as the active ethnical memory of each special part of the Indian motherland. This impress intermingles with, and partly conducts, the process of art in its unfoldment in the various phases. At the same time, each such phase is connected with, and belongs to, the whole.