the infinite universe of art history (part I)

Once there lived a man among the hills who possessed a statue wrought by an ancient master lying at his door downward. One day a man of knowledge passed by and inquired about the buying the statue. The owner laughed that who would be interested in something so dull and dirty? The knowledgeable man gave him a piece of silver and bought it from the willing man and carried it away on the back of elephant. After many moons, the man from hill visited the city to see a large crowd outside a shop declaring to show the most beautiful statue in the world in two pieces of silver.

Thereupon the man from the hill paid two silver pieces and entered the shop to see the statue that he himself had sold for one piece of silver.

My quest with art history becomes with an understanding of this hill man.  

As I began my training as an artist, my mind opened to more than visuals. As time progressed creation of visuals intrigued more than seen. The interest further took me to pursue my masters in history and philosophy which enhanced my world to infinite vistas of knowing. And I thought I now knew art history.

Hardly did I know that my knowing of this field had just begun, as I joined JJ as a faculty. Here I had to teach students who did not know what was theory and whose teachers thought there was no requirement of theory. So my work began by generating interest for the subject rather than teaching it in the first place. I began reading and observing the daily lives and how I could relate my topic to them and surprisingly I didn’t have to. It was all that we lived. Rather more of what we lived that met the eye. Learning art history tells you more of living that any other aspect of learning. History tells you facts, anthropology tells you of development, science tells you of evolution, philosophy hypothises of what might have been the reason of development and evolution, art history mostly tells you of what we actually thought.  It deals with expression is its nascent form, however pretentious the art may be, it still says so much about the society.

And trust me, for this, the history of art is never about dates and facts. It is an exciting blend of aesthetics and visuals. It is never about how tall the marble statue from Greece was or what the concentration of pigment in Ajanta mural was. It is more about why it was the way it was and to remember that the artist/master who created it was a man like any of us is. Unlike the general understanding that art is for elite or esoteric group of people, art is most of not so much of these people.  Art and its history are replication of society in its core nascent form. Understanding why Greeks made physically beautiful sculptures of god with perfect anatomies against the oriental (here for example Indian) depiction of deities with many hands and heads might be equivalent to fathoming of why European models are slim and skinny and why Indians prefer fulsome voluptuous bodies.

 Very frequently do we use images in rangolis everyday depicting the sun, moon the four direction in swastika, the use of bindi, turmeric have some meaning which we hardly pay heed too leaving it to routine, and suddenly realise the significance of yoga after Shilpa Shetty makes a CD for us.

We how somehow very conveniently managed to outlive our lives and those of our ancestors, and closed our doors to history, keeping our art at the doorstep like rangolis. How I wish we could open our eyes to the infinite world of art history, and see through the images how the people actually lived in Egypt, or in times of Mughals or anytime. Miniatures are not just beautiful paintings, they reflect the clothes, the constructions the lifestyles then. 

It’s time we stopped selling the statues at our doorstep, it’s time to bring them in and give them the space they had lost.