Studio: international art (82.1921)

HINDU ART AND ITS IDEALS

"VISHNU AS RAMACHANDRA"
WOOD-CARVING, NEPAL
NINETEENTH CENTURY

not the man-like deities of Greek and
Christian art, but by forms superhuman in
grace and ability. The four-armed Vishnu,
the three-headed Brahma, the dancing
Shiva lightly poised on the dwarf Tripura
symbolised Divine powers. Compare the
stolid limbs of Michaelangelo's conception
of God in the creation of Adam with the
exquisite figure of the Nataraja (dancing
Shiva). In the latter there is not the
slightest feeling of the earth earthy. Those
intrinsic qualities of spirit, grace, joy,
beauty, activity, emanate from it just as
they do from nearly all examples of Hindu
art. We find beauty in the perfect human
forms of Phidias and Praxiteles, but there
is more suggestion in the mutilated Victory
of Samothrace than ever the perfect Nike
could have given us. Beauty is essential
to art, but according to the Hindu artist
it belongs to spirit not matter, and is
therefore to be interpreted rather than
copied from a human model. The
"Western critic who judges Hindu art by
Western standards sees in it only dis-
206

torted figures, overcrowded spaces and
disproportionate relative values. But
though his figures of the gods have
shoulders too broad for their " wasp-
like " waists, and rounded legs in very
un-Western attitudes, the Hindu sculptor
has no less skill and a deeper sense of
beauty than the moulder of the Venus de
Milo, because his vision of the soul of
things has enabled him to subjugate form
to the symbol of form. A god or his in-
carnate prototype must display great,
powers. He must have the strength of
a lion (in the shoulders), the swiftness of

" VISHNU." CARVED BLACK-
STONE RELIEF FROM NORTH
INDIA, CA. TWELFTH CENTURY

Victoria and Albert Museum))