Indian Sculpture c7.s1: Plasticity
Indian Sculpture c7.s1
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- English
Plasticity
c7.s1.1
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.
c7.s1.2
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.
c7.s1.3
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.
c7.s1.4
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.
c7.s1.5
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.
c7.s1.6
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.).
c7.s1.7
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.