Indian Sculpture c7.s4: Inner Dimension of Indian Plastic Art
Indian Sculpture c7.s4
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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.