Indian art

“ It is long since the connoisseur of Indian art awakened from the dream that India has been an isolated country. The fact is, that it lies in the way of all commerce between the far East and the West, and that it can be, and has been, approached as easily from land as from the sea. ”

“ In the potter's art the Indian people often exhibit great taste, and the tribes of the Mississippi valley and the Pueblo Indians had made exceptional progress in plaster design. As has already been mentioned, the mound-builders displayed considerable skill in metalwork, and the stamped plates of copper taken from the earthen pyramids which they raised strikingly illustrate the fact that Indian art is the growth and outcome of centuries of native effort and by no means a thing of yesterday.
In weaving, needlework of all kinds, bead-work, and feather-work the Indians show great taste. ”

“ Indian art, religion, and poetry are so closely united that it is impossible to understand the one without a79 diligent study of the other two. We have in Indian art the first attempts of humanity to step out of childhood. To children, wisdom is best communicated in symbols, mystic signs, fables, legends, and fairy-tales, and therefore Indian art is distinguished by these characteristics. ”

“ The general attributes of Indian art as displayed in the museum are richness of decoration, great manipulative skill, good taste, brilliancy, harmony of color, intricacy of decorative forms, and the due subserviency of both color and design to [Pg 543] decorative effect. Nearly all these qualities are illustrated by the textile fabrics, the dresses and turbans, the horse and elephant caparisons, the carpets and the rich canopies of the howdahs. These are the tissues that spread the fame of India on every side. It is not known how long it has possessed the art of weaving. ”

“ They are planning to send an artist to India to help the cause of Indian Art in general, but especially in its practical application, and to protect it from the strange influences, above all those imported from Europe, which would contaminate its true character. ”

“ Protected by their isolation from other tribes, they worked out their ideas undisturbed—with every incentive for excellence they had reached a height in basketry when the American first disturbed them which has never been equaled—not only by no other Indian tribe, but by no other people in the world in any age. These stolid Indian women have a knowledge of materials and their preparation, a delicacy of touch, an artistic conception of symmetry, of form and design, a versatility in varying and inventing beautiful designs, and an eye for color, which place their work on a high plane of art. ”

“ She is an earnest thinker and worker, and realizing that the Indian is being educated out of his customs and costumes, out of his native haunts—out of everything except history and a few well-written descriptions of his life and character and the poetry of his nature—she has joined the rank of painters who are preserving some of the picturesque aspects of Indian life on the plains. ”

“ It seems probable that in several processes which the Indian artist borrowed, he followed Japan, without allowing himself slavishly to copy. The art of India as represented in porcelain manifests itself in a high technical skill, in the most exquisite delicacy, and in a close attention to all the minutiæ of detail. Indian figure-painting owes to these three qualities its superiority alike over those of Persia and of the extreme East. In the beauty consisting of delicacy and careful precision of finish, neither country makes even an approach to an equality with it. ”

“ It is the same way in Indian art and in all Oriental art inspired by Indian idealism. The artist, through a process of severe mental discipline, is taught to discriminate the essentials in forms and appearances, and to see clearly with his mind's eye before he takes up brush or chisel. ”

“ They have left their sign-manual upon the walls—specimens of Indian art in the shape of sundry{168} sprawly sketches of man and beast. For, as it is well known, the Indians are fond of drawing, and will draw on anything and with any kind of material that will make a mark. ”

“ Indian art provides such a striking parallel to the ideas of modern European painting that it will be useful to return to it when discussing the new movement. It is sufficient here to say that an examination of Indian landscape drawings will reveal an interest in mountains similar to and no less vivid than that of the Japanese. ”

“ The Painter of the Plains at Work
THE INDIAN AS AN ART SUBJECT
There is still infinite opportunity to make the subject of the Indian an important factor in American art. His decorative costume gives an element of color, while his life of action gives rhythm and movement, and the background of prairie and mountain provides dignity and grandeur for the composition. ”

“ An outline, in black or some dark colour that harmonizes with the ground, or else worked in gold, is common in Indian work, not only for the purpose of isolating the colours of the design, but also to give a uniform tone to the whole surface of the texture. Their traditional arrangements of tints were thoroughly satisfying to the eye. But degenerated by European commerce, the artistic sense of beauty itself is disappearing throughout our Indian Empire. ”

“ The architecture of India will not then appear as a bewildering museum of marvels belonging to a bygone age, but as a still living tradition of practical craftsmanship constantly readapting itself to the spiritual and material needs of the age, and bearing witness to the wonderful constructive work of our Aryan predecessors, who three thousand years ago, occupying the same position in the East as their successors do to-day, laid the whole foundation of Indian civilisation upon which we are attempting to build. ”

“ Indian art has been greatly neglected by archeologists and connoisseurs at the expense of the so-called classic style, and explorers seem to be more interested in the geographical and political conditions of the country, or even look down with contempt and lack of understanding on the early artistic monuments of India, although they have enriched our European middle ages. ”

“ The Indian produces beautiful designs with nothing but that spiral. You cannot better his powers of design, but you may make them more civil and useful by adding knowledge of nature to invention.
Suppose you learn to draw rightly, and, therefore, to know correctly the spirals of springing ferns—not that you may give ugly names to all the species of them—but that you may understand the grace and vitality of every hour of their existence. ”

“ It may be artistic to imitate nature and even try to improve upon her, but we Indians think it very tiresome, especially as one considers the material side of the work—the pigment, the brush, the canvas! There is no mystery there; you know all about them! Worst of all is the commercialization of art. The rudely carved totem pole may appear [149] grotesque to the white man, but it is the sincere expression of the faith and personality of the Indian craftsman, and has never been sold or bartered until it reached civilization. ”

“ But it seems clear that Indian art in the Maurya and Sunga periods, whatever may have been the nationality of the artists employed, attained a high standard of merit when compared with anything except the masterpieces of Greek genius, and that it deserves an honourable place in the history of the artistic achievements of the world.
The inscriptions dispersed throughout the empire as described were written either at the capital or at the head quarters of one or other of the viceroys, and then made over to skilled stone—cutters for incision on the rocks and pillars. ”

“ At present our knowledge of the later Hindu schools is almost entirely confined to examples painted on paper, as the painters in the service of Hindu rajas imitated the fashions of the Mogul court in the same way as they now imitate the art fashions of Europe. But nearly all Hindu painters, when painting on paper, followed closely the traditional technique of mural painting, and their paintings are exact reproductions of the frescoes of the Hindu chitra-sāla, or picture-hall. ”

“ THE INDIAN AND ART WORK Even our artists and designers may learn much of great importance from the Indian. While to most of my readers it may come as a surprise that I claim great artistic powers for the Indian, yet no one can carefully study the basketry and pottery of the Amerind and not know the perfect justice of the claim. ”

“ An obscured symbolism of material and colour is to be traced also in the forms of things, even for the most domestic uses. Every detail of Indian decoration, Aryan or Turanian, has a religious meaning, and the arts of India will never be rightly understood until there are brought to their study, a familiar acquaintance with the character and subjects of the religious poetry, national legends, and mythological scriptures that have always been their inspiration, and of which they are the perfected imagery. ”

“ The non-sectarian character of the styles of Indian art has indeed always been conspicuous; so that it is often only by special details that one can distinguish Jain from Buddhist stupas, Buddhist from Hindu sculpture, or the Hindu from the Mussulman minor crafts. ”

“ Beneath the transcendental conceptions of Indian religious art as we see them at Ajantā and elsewhere, there is, however, an undertone of intense realism. Nothing could be more real and alive than the figures with which Buddhist artists peopled what Europeans call the unseen world. ”

“ A few were not backward in their knowledge of the mechanical arts; one or two examples there were of genius as sculptors; a universal love and devotion to the musical art, and some appreciation even of the merits of European composers; but, it must be added, little or nothing is done to develop such capacities as the Indians possess; the field of public instruction is narrowed alike by religious and official influences, and the social tone of the opulent classes, to which alone the Indian can look up, is greatly below that of the Spanish peninsula. ”

“ The art is repeatedly mentioned in the Vedas. The purity of Indian Art is endangered in modern days by the introduction of machine-made goods and European design. (Consult Dr. Birdwood’s Handbook of Indian Art.)
Indian Ink or Chinese Ink. A black pigment for water-colour painting, made from oil and lamp-black, thickened with some vegetable gum, and scented with musk or camphor. Many cheap and poor imitations of it are made.
Indian Ochre. A red pigment. (See Red Ochres.)
Indian Paper. A delicate yellowish paper used for proof impressions in engraving. ”

“ To characterize the Indian Epics in a single word: though often disfigured by grotesque fancies and wild exaggerations, they are yet noble works, abounding in passages of remarkable descriptive power; and while as works of art they are far inferior to the Greek epics, in some respects they appeal far more strongly to the romantic mind of europe, namely, by the loving appreciation of natural beauty, their exquisite delineation of womanly love and devotion, and their tender sentiment of mercy and forgiveness. ”

“ Only when the craftsman's idea is realised will Indian architecture become a subject of living interest, an open book in which the thought and life of India are written from Vedic times down to the present day. ”

“ To the collector these representations suggest fairly developed art, though to the Indian they were mainly, if not wholly, symbolic; for everything indicates that the primitive artisan had not yet broken the shackles of fetichistic symbolism, and had little conception of artistic portrayal for its own sake. ”

“ In some of the later South Indian temple sculpture, during the time when the Hindu kingdoms kept up close commercial intercourse with the Portuguese colony at Goa, the influence of European art can be traced in the direct imitation of classical Greek poses and an elaboration of the muscular system which is opposed to the true Indian ideal. ”

“ One very marked peculiarity of the drawings of the Indians is that within each particular system, such as may be called a tribal system, of pictography, every Indian draws in precisely the same manner. ”

“ They have studied Nature in all her varying forms, and their minds are stored up with a thousand and one designs which they can transfer at pleasure to their basketry, pottery, or blanketry. I have had the pleasure of teaching this basic principle of art work to many white women, and I learned it from the Indian. ”

“ These and many other of the manufactures of this land exhibit remarkably that instinctive— let me add hereditary—artistic taste, and that artistic eye for form, ornament and bloom of colour which have gained for Indian arts the admiration of the world. ”

“ The old traditions of Hindu painting still linger among the temple craftsmen of India, in the ritual of the Hindu womenfolk, and but rarely at the courts of the Hindu princes, though a few descendants of the old court painters still practise their art. A systematic investigation of these living traditions would certainly yield material of the highest artistic and archæological interest, and help the technical development of the important new school of Indian painting which has arisen in the last twenty years at Calcutta under the leadership of Mr. ”

“ The Hindu and Musalman craftsmen worked amicably together without compulsion, and used their inventive faculties to add to the splendour of Indian cities and gratify the taste of their Mogul rulers, who planned their capitals after the traditions of Indo-Aryan royalty, and were themselves generally more than half Indian by birth. ”

“ In the houses of a younger generation you will see large oil paintings by modern Indian artists, in heavy gilt frames and properly hung, although still rather higher than is usual with us. Some are family portraits ”

“ If only the study of Western examples helps to purify the Indian style without destroying its individuality, one would hope that Indian artists will eventually produce pictures which will have a great charm of their own. ”