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In Sri Aurobindo's and the Mother's vision of integral human development, cultivating a sense of beauty occupies an important place. The Mother said that it is one of the greatest weapons of the Asura at work when we are taught to shun beauty. She added that it has been the "ruin of India."
"The Divine manifests in the psychic as love, in the mind as knowledge, in the vital as power and in the physical as beauty. If you discard beauty it means that you are depriving the Divine of this manifestation in the material and you hand over that part to the
Asura.” (CWM, 13: 372-373).
Taking inspiration from these words, we are dedicating several issues of Renaissance to explore the topic - The Spirit and Forms of Art in India. The series will explore Indian Art and Aesthetic traditions in the light of Sri Aurobindo's and the Mother's vision. As always, we will feature selected gems from the vast ocean that is their written works and conversations. We shall also highlight some writings of other senior
sādhakas and scholars, in addition to a few fresh perspectives and voices. |
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In India, the highest aim of the Art has always been identical to that of the rest of the culture. That aim is to facilitate the spiritual growth of the individual and the collective. But before Art can fulfill this role, it must serve several other purposes. And Sri Aurobindo explains that masterfully in his essay titled The National Value of Art.
He says that the first and the lowest use of Art is the purely aesthetic. The second is the intellectual or educative, and the third and highest is the spiritual. By speaking of the aesthetic use as the lowest, he did not imply that this is not valuable. In fact, this aesthetic purpose is of immense importance to human progress. And until this work has been done, humanity is not really ready to make full use of Art on the higher planes of human development.
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This remarkable letter of Sri Aurobindo, with relevant examples and detailed explanations, is a perfect response to the slogan - Art for Art's Sake. This idea had gained tremendous popularity in the latter half of the 19th century. The phrase represented the philosophy that true art is completely independent of any and all social or moral values and need not serve any utilitarian purpose whether didactic or political.
The Aesthetic Movement in the West further popularised this idea and claimed that art was valuable in itself, and that artistic pursuits were their own justification. The noted author Oscar Wilde, who also promoted the idea went to the extent of saying "All art is quite useless" and "To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim" (from Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray)
Various socialist and communist thinkers offered a critique of this idea claiming that arts must serve the socialist or political agenda. Nietzsche argued that there is such thing as 'art for art's sake'; rather art always expresses human values. But Sri Aurobindo's critique of the idea is based on a deeper, spiritual vision of art and its value for the individual and collective consciousness. |
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We feature a few relevant selections from Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo, as recorded by A. B. Purani. Here we get a deeper understanding of what is beauty, what is its connection with the vital and the psychic, and how is aesthetic refinement is related to spiritual development.
We begin with invoking an important reminder from the Mother - “Pure sense of beauty can be acquired only through a great purification.” (CWM, 15: 233) |
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We feature some excerpts from a lecture delivered by E. B. Havell at Chaitanya Library, Calcutta (now Kolkata), in December 1905. The timely relevance of the key points mentioned in this lecture is truly remarkable, despite the references to the context of his time. If anything, the challenges that he points out -- mindless imitation of the Western styles, commercialism and lack of higher motive in creating Art -- have become even bigger since the time this lecture was delivered.
Sri Aurobindo has spoken of the immense value of the efforts of E. B. Havell and the work of the new school of Indian art he helped establish in Bengal in bringing about an important change in the aesthetic standpoint of Western critics of Indian art. |
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Read excerpts from an essay from Rabindranath Tagore's book titled Sādhanā: The Realisation of Life. The book, as Tagore writes in the preface, presents in a connected form many of the ideas culled from his Bengali discourses that he often gave to his students in Bolpur in Bengal.
These excerpts are followed by the English translation of a beautiful poem by Tagore who penned it in Bangla. Titled
Purnima, it speaks of the poet's deep realisation of beauty on a full-moon night. The translation is done by Narendra Murty. |
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There is no one standard of beauty. It is equally true that there is a state of consciousness in which everything has its beauty. To an artist's vision, something that is outwardly quite plain, even ugly, sordid or repellent can become an opportunity to bring out its innate beauty —through the word, line or colour, through the sculptured shape. But does this mean that there is a place for ugliness in art?
At a certain elementary stage of one's aesthetic development, the ideas of what is beautiful and the what is good or decent may also get interconnected. That which is conventionally or customarily or socially acceptable is confused with beautiful, the rest is deemed to be obscene and hence to be cut off from the artistic and aesthetic experience. This may lead to puritanism and even an anti-aesthetic cultural tendencies.
In this regard, let us recall Sri Aurobindo's words that the progress of ethics in Europe or West has been largely a "struggle between the Greek sense of aesthetic beauty and the Christian sense of a higher good marred on the one side by formalism, on the other by an unlovely asceticism." The good has been associated with virtue which largely drove out the sense of beauty to the side of vice.
In India, on the other hand, where the ideal of satyam shivam sundaram has guided the development of aesthetics and artistic creativity, it is understood that the good must not be subordinated to the aesthetic sense. Rather it must be beautiful and delightful, or to that extent it ceases to be good.
We feature one essay by Nolini Kanta Gupta which addresses some of these and a few other related issues. |
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All are welcome! Please find the necessary details below to join the online celebration.
Zoom: https://bit.ly/3zfSoUK
Meeting ID: 833 8154 5893
Passcode: 627844
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Critical Thinking and Problem Solving – A Session with College Students
5 September, 2024
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On the occasion of Teacher’s Day, September 5, 2024, Mr. Narendra Murty, Research Associate, BhāratShakti, was invited as a Guest Lecturer by the Jindal Global Business School, a specialized institution of O.P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat. He gave a presentation on the topic “The 6 Thinking Hats Approach to Critical Thinking and Problem Solving” to the first-year students pursuing the Bachelor of Business Administration course.
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