Editing The Artist In The Art (section)

==== The Renaissance Introduces the Artist in the Art ====
The modern West abrogated this tradition for the first time and this started with the Renaissance itself. In the Renaissance, the artist enters the art, and thus you know a particular work by the name of the artist: Michelangelo, Raphael, Brunelleschi, Da Vinci, or Caravaggio.

As soon as the Artist enters the Art, the urge shifts from ‘reenacting the classical’ to ‘doing something new’. “In this kind of art, there is always a demand for novelty.” (Coomaraswamy 78) While the urge in the traditional society was to conform to the traditional, to the norm, the urge now was to ‘differentiate oneself from the ancestors as well as the contemporaries. At first, it resulted in a burst of creativity and Renaissance Art is wonderful.

But the introduction of the artist in the art, the introduction of ‘individual novelty’, is a slippery slope. Very soon the artists start running out of ideas to differentiate themselves from their ancestors and from their contemporaries. They start trying to become more and more strange and bizarre in a bid to become different. In a new motive, the strange becomes the new well.

By the time of the Impressionists, most of the novel ideas which could result in the creation of great art had been exhausted and by the Expressionist era, art starts ending up in dead ends. The new pieces of art are unrecognizable by the common people. The idea has become so complex, so bizarre, so strange and so opposite to all the established rules of aesthetics, that it is no longer possible to independently value and enjoy a piece of art. One has to be schooled into ‘enjoying the piece of art’.

This is a natural outcome of putting the Artist in the Art. As soon as a civilization tries it, things start going downhill and run into dead ends. And soon the Art is dead.

Art in the modern West is entire of this kind. It hinges on the individual and ‘individual novelty’. It is not known by the dominant culture, or the region or even nation. It is known only by the name of the individual. The artist is supreme in modern art. Coomaraswamy once again quips about this ‘individual artist’:

“Works of art have been thought of in two very different ways. According to the modern view the artist is a special or even abnormal kind of man, endowed with a peculiar emotional sensibility which enables him to see what we call a beauty; moved by a mysterious aesthetic urge he produces paintings, sculpture, poetry or music. These are regarded as a spectacle for the eyes or gratification for the ear; they can only be enjoyed by those who are called lovers of art and these are understood to be temperamentally related to the artist but without his technical ability.” (Coomaraswamy 78)

Indian Art stands on one end of this spectrum. It does not glorify the individual artist. Rather than investing in individual names it works for creating entire cultures with specific characteristics and it is these cultural characteristics which get reflected in the art as a collective imprint of the civilization.

The Indian artist does not search for novelty. He does not even look for beauty. He looks for truth instead. Whatever means he is working with and whatever piece he is ordered to work upon, he tries to create something which is capable of transporting the viewer to a higher plane of consciousness. The beauty is bound to be created during the course of the creation. Anything pointing towards supreme truth is bound to have an aesthetic value to it. The beauty is a byproduct, not the goal of the Indian artist.