The most striking
characteristic of the forms employed by Indian sculptors is the
fact that all the units of form into which the surfaces of Indian
sculptures are divided are convex, and the only true concavities in
the whole of Indian art are special cases. Apart from the art of
Gandhara, strongly influenced from the West, concavities occur only
in the treatment of the leading ideas of skeletal or demonic
figures, as the eye sockets and belly of a disease goddess, and in
the free- hanging parts of draperies. Nowhere else in the whole
fabric of Indian sculpture are concavities treated as formal units,
as they are by Donatello, Michelangelo or the artists of Gothic
Europe.
The hollows on
Indian sculptures are only the meeting places of convexities, and
so, of course, appear as smooth linear channels. It is possible to
relate this fact to Indian theories of reality. Reality to the
Indian eye, is a form, like a pot or fruit, that gives evidence of
its content of space by its convexly curved surface. The expression
of a visual form is dependent on its containing space. In this way,
Indian sculptures define and limit their own space; they do not fit
into an already existent space continuum in which they can move
freely. The system of relationships used to compose the work
depends upon this.
Plastic forms used
by Indian sculptors, no less than their figure types, are very
general and not very much differentiated. Volume and solidity, the
general effect of rounded mass, are emphasized. Crystalline
faceting is used only to express the horrible and unattractive. The
linear elements that appear as sinuous contours or drapery folds
are themselves subordinated to general pattern- types. Deeply
curved and sinuous outlines, by the method called 'development',
are converted into spatial statements. The line always sets out on
a regularly curving or undulating course, spatially 'complete' as
it were before it starts, keeping close to the general pattern.
Thus the time- element of line, is subordinated to a closed spatial
idea. This is a kind of visual expression of the familiar Indian
concept of time as a series of ever- recurring cycles. One
specially beautiful use of the sinuous and undulant patterned line
in Indian sculpture appears in some of the landscape and vegetation
designs on shrines of all ages.
The meaning of an
Indian work of art depends upon reading this characteristic
approach to form. Upon it depends the method by which single
figures make a total self-contained continuity. They are
built up out of volumes whose deeply rounded sections are
intelligible from the main viewpoint and change smoothly and
continuously. The exterior lines and channels, defining the eyes or
the wrinkles on the belly, for example, appear then, as if one
experiences them from inside the skin of the sculpture, as rhythmic
punctuations in the contained plastic continuum. This is why Indian
sculpture can be understood from inside the stone.
To the critical
Western eye this absence of concavities and, most of all, the
absence of a multitude of inflexions in the outer surface (which
our eye persuades us are important attributes of 'reality') are
disturbing, and prevent many people coming to terms with Indian
art. The Westerner is accustomed to stand outside, over against a
sculpture, and treat it as a separate entity which he assesses
critically from outside. His view of space and reality demands that
the external space-continuum in which both he and his sculpture
exist shall be allowed to impinge inwards, into the main masses of
sculptural form. These are hollows that punctuate the humps,
where he is accustomed in a real object to see shadows. To
the critical eye of a medieval Indian sculptor Western art would
appear to be appallingly lacking in the interior
unity.
To the Indian
sculptor, linear articulation of changing and varied, but simple,
volumes demands that both sides of the volume be clearly
intelligible in relation to each other. The Indian could not accept
the view of, say, the volume of a calf-muscle offered by much
European art, where only part of a contour is visible, and the rest
is lost in a hollow that does not allow its other contours to be
defined.
This consideration,
taken together with the fact already mentioned that Indian
sculpture is fundamentally relief sculpture, accounts for another
of its characteristics. This is the absence of any crossings or
complications of contour on the figures, and the great stress laid
on the recessions of the side surfaces. Indeed, much of the force
of some of the greatest Indian sculpture from the earliest times
has been the result of careful exaggeration of the depth of the
continuous recessions of side surfaces spanning the distance from
the edge of the frontal plane to the bounding contour at the
back. In order to preserve its plastic effect it is
continuous. The result, on the spectator, of this emphasis on the
depth of purely convex forms is a tremendous impression of plastic
force. This visual force would have been totally dissipated
if the sculptor had been obliged, as Western sculptors have been,
to consider a number of other viewpoints from either side and
behind.
So most Indian
sculpture has been made to produce an over-ridingly powerful
impression from a single viewpoint. Striking examples of this are
the figures of musicians on the upper stage of the Surya temple at
Konarak, and the sculptures of the Elephanta cave
temple.
Again, because of
the adherence of Indian sculpture to a background ground, the
conceptualization of the empty, negative spaces between figures and
parts of figures became an important compositional feature. These
negative spaces themselves are often as carefully formulated into
sequences of clearly articulated closed and simple forms as are the
solids. The aesthetic effect of many of the greatest works of
Indian art depends upon the intimate mating together of solid form
and negative space, each carried, as it were, to its highest formal
power.
