In the
sixth-century the following was written in the Visnudharmottara.
A king asks
a sage about the meaning of art:
"Oh
Lord of men," replied the sage,
"he
who does not know properly the
rules
of painting cannot discern the
characteristics
of images."
"Then
please narrate the rules
of painting,"
replies the King.
"Without
a knowledge of the art
of dancing,"
says the sage, "the
rules of painting
are very difficult
to understand."
"Then
please speak to me about the
art
of dancing … "
"The
practice of dancing cannot be
understood
by one who is not
acquainted
with music. Indeed
without
music, dancing cannot exist
at
all."
"Tell
me then first about music … "
"Without
singing, music cannot be
understood,"
replied the sage. "He
who
knows the rules of singing
knows
everything properly."
As the sage continues you come to realise all is connected and that the
arts feed off each other. They of course also feed off our whole life
experience. A sense of balance comes from our peculiar ability to walk on two
legs, our sense of rhythm comes from the constant heartbeat that lies beneath
our chest, our feeling for the dark and light from our experience of the
turning of the Earth away from and towards the Sun every 24 hours. A Guardian
review this week of ‘The body in Indian Art’ reminded me of visiting the ‘In
the Image of Man’ exhibition years ago at the Hayward Gallery. Indian art is
about totalities, it doesn’t separate the body from the mind, doesn’t have a
legacy of Christian bodily evil. Perhaps this is where our obsession with categorising
things comes from. Sex and spiritual transcendence are close companions in the
sensuality of Indian religious art, the body maintaining its centrality to
experience. If the body is neglected or put at the command of a separate ‘mind’
this I believe only leads to repression and eventually some type of madness.
My recent venture back into working full-time on the fine art programme
has convinced me that we have been getting things wrong. (See last post) I am
reminded again of the time I spent with an Indian sculptor, he taught me much
in the period he was over here, perhaps more than I knew at the time. In particular
he told me that when he was working with his ‘master’ he was introduced to a
method of understanding where the seat of the sculptural experience lay. He was
first of all blindfolded, then introduced to a large stone carving by feeling
it. He had to feel the forms of the sculpture and speak as he traced its forms
with his fingers and every time he felt a significant change in the sculpture’s
dynamics he had to explain this to the master. Sometimes the master would
confirm his findings and at other times the master would retort that although
there was a change it was not significant. He did this several times and
several different sculptures were used, each time the master would also recite
particular passages from scripture, intone lines of poetry or hum a particular
rhythm that would be used to guide the young artist towards the wider
consequences and meanings related to the sculpture that was being experienced.
Gradually the young sculptor built up in his mind an understanding of the
‘touch’ of great sculpture. He grasped what it was for one form to meet
another, how the rhythm of the hand-feel corresponded to the ‘life’ of the
sculpture and how strong and weak joints feel. At the time I was very
impressed, and more so now that I am older and look back upon the failure of
atomised educational theory.
When I go back to work next year I will be presenting two new modules to
the first year students and then moving immediately into assessment preparation
for 2nd and 3rd years. I have tried to adjust my
presentations to account for something more than what the modules aspire to,
but I wont be available very often to personally explain or give advice as to
what I meant because of my administrative duties. Perhaps what I resent most of
all is the time taken away from students by the assessment process. What my old
friend taught me was how important the ‘master’ / ‘student’ relationship is.
Sometimes we forget how experienced we are, I have in my time looked at
thousands of art works from many different cultures and spend many hours
contemplating their meaning and how they were made. On top of this I have years
of my own practice behind me and this is communicated at its best in a ‘one to
one’ situation, where I can show what something can be, where I can demonstrate
by miming or humming a tune or linking in a particular piece of music or poetry
or simply pointing out something about life and how art can be made to reflect
it. Life experience is something we don’t value as much as other cultures, as I
was told when I went into phased retirement and questioned why my salary was so
low, “We don’t value experience”. A strange phrase but one that is a product of
a managerial culture, a culture whereby the people who make the decisions don’t
have to be able to practice what is at the core of what is being taught. Once
computers became readily available what they seemed to be used for more and
more was the collecting of statistical information, each human contact reduced
to number-crunched data and here perhaps lays the problem. In order to make
decisions people need information but the only information that appears to
count is quantitative. Qualitative information is either collected as sound-bites
or simply ignored, but only in those ‘one to one’ moments of human contact will
authentic communication take place and those moments are becoming few and far
between.