Читать книгу Seven Little Known Birds of the Inner Eye - Mulk Raj Anand - Страница 10

Preface

AS A YOUNG student of philosophy in London in 1925, I was much preoccupied with the problem of perception. All the old ideas were in question. And I found that the psychology of perception was adopting revolutionary hypotheses, outdating most of the 19th-century concepts under the influence of scientific investigation. Lord Russell's reductio ad obsurdum of every percept to "sensation," based on sense data, held sway in philosophical discussion; and Clive Bell's "aesthetic emotion," to be derived from "significant form," were the slogans of the English art world. Of course, in ordinary life, in the museums and art galleries, the impact of the new analysis had not been registered. But I felt that most people, including myself, looked at paintings and sculptures but did not see them.

So in 1926 I began to do research, under the guidance of Professor Spearman in the psychological laboratory at University College, London, on the reactions of all kinds of people to works of art. I "exposed" 200 men and women intellectuals—doctors, nurses, technicians and students from the Slade School of Art—to reproductions of Leonardo's Last Supper, a Rembrandt Self-Portrait, The Dying Princess from Ajanta and other important pictures. The results seemed to confirm my idea that people saw pictures either as illustrations or as decorations, but very seldom as perceptions-apperceptions.

I heard my own professor's lectures on Hegel and Croce, and later I wrote an exposition of the Hindu view of art; and I found that in the past many people had built up aesthetic theories merely as coherent philosophies of beauty, without much relevance to art forms. Through my talks with two artists, Eric Gili and William Rothenstein (the former standing for art as part of religion and the latter for free form), I tried to develop my own hunches about total experience of works of art. Herbert Read, whose opinions I sought then, shared the feeling that I was working in the right direction if I wanted the autonomy of the art object to be established in India, where art had been the "handmaid of religion."

Since then I have subjected my hunches to examination before a vast number of works of art, of all ages and all countries, in many badly arranged museums and galleries and studios. And I have written fewer words about paintings and sculptures, but have tended to collect more reproductions and picture postcards for my private contemplation. I have increasingly felt that the "poetry by analogy" that is painting, which suggests rhythms, gestures and energies, is different from "poetry in words," which suggests feelings, ideas and meanings. And I have adopted only tentative positions about particular works of art and refuse to write generalised art history.

In 1963, I was appointed Tagore Professor of Fine Art and Design at the University of Punjab. My commission was to encourage art appreciation. I found that my students were mostly raw young people from the north who had never seen any art object quo art object.

Consequently, I found myself digging up my notes of the research done under Professor Spearman. And I began to expose my pupils to certain pictures. From their responses, it seemed clear that, while the potential search of vision and love of colour, line and form was in them, they had always regarded paintings as portraits, "photos" as they called them, which were put in houses for sentimental reasons. I then evolved the metaphorical hypothesis of the seven birds flying off from the onlooker to the picture and back, if the experience of art works was to be valuable.

I could hold the students' attention in this way, keep everything on the poetic level which the Indian young prefer, as well as give th em scientific data of all kinds. The architecture of the newly planned city of Chandigarh and the paintings of Le Corbusier and of the new artists of the model city, as well as children's drawings, supplied the materials for discussing the relative deficiencies of looking as against the benefits of seeing.

I have lectured in many schools of art on this thesis, from notes compiled during my occupation of the Tagore chair. I gave a summary of my notes as a contribution to a session of the International Association of Art Critics. I find that naive, fresh, new sensibilities, without vested interests in ideas, respond to my hypotheses and ask questions. These challenges have helped me to write my notes into this book, which is being offered for further discussion.

As with my very first books on art, in this compilation I had the advice of Herbert Read. He was cordial and considered that this essay had gone much deeper than the usual "gallery-going as art" discussion in the West, to supply the sources of aesthetic appreciation. And he offered to write a long letter by way of introduction to the book. The passing away of this doyen of art criticism has robbed the reader of his mature reflections on this theme. But, in putting the book into print, I cannot help recalling the many friendly hours when he helped me, even during the last phase of his illness, sort out my ideas and make the writing less assertive, especially where the claims of the Tantric philosophy had been advanced a little too enthusiastically.

I have received advice and criticism from Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, Pierre Jeanneret, B. P. Mathur, Nihar Ranjan Ray, Andre Masson, Joan Miro and C. V. Raman, as well as from the various other authorities I have quoted in the text. The painter K. K. Hebbar devoted much time to the drawings of the metaphorical birds, and many museums and galleries, as well as educational agencies throughout the world, have generously supplied the photographs of art works reproduced in this volume. And my colleague, Dolly Sahiar, was instrumental in planning the layout, as well as in getting the book ready for the press. Without her devotion much of my writing could not have appeared in print. One of the finest art publishers in the world, Charles Tuttle, is bringing out this little volume, which he read at one go and accepted for his program during a cherry-blossom weekend in Tokyo. My debt to all these helpers is merely acknowledged here because it cannot be paid back.

For various reasons, certain pictures which I had hoped to include could not be reproduced here. I am nevertheless indebted to the artists of these works for teaching me a great deal. I wish particularly to acknowledge my debt to Paul Klee. His work and his inspiring comments lent support to my theories about the impact of lines and forms on the spectator.

M. R. A.

Khandalla