Indian Sculpture c7.s3: Naturalism
Indian Sculpture c7.s3
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Naturalism
c7.s3.1
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.
c7.s3.2
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.
c7.s3.3
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).
c7.s3.4
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.