दृश्यसंवेग — ViSUAL MOMENTUM

The conscious space gives birth to many forms. To create a new form, the form must first absorb space within itself. Thus, in reality, space manifests or becomes embodied within the form. In Kabir’s words: “Inside the pot, outside the pot – the void is one.” The void that seems empty is in truth conscious. Every painting must be experienced as such a space. So it is.

An artist lives without the intention of creating memory, yet sometimes painters or art admire feel the urge to create many works as symbolic imprints of momentary awareness. Therefore, in their consciousness, the painting appears as a narration of fleeting moments. This makes it difficult to locate the pure artistic ‘principle’ (kala-sutra) within a work and hence it has no narrative. To understand the principle, one must convey its vision through stories or examples/narrations but the ‘narrative’ itself is not the principle.

Painting, sculpture, architecture, drama – all must be read with the eyes, heard with the ears, measured by touch, balanced through scent, and tasted through words. Only then can one fully experience the conscious art – the “Visual Momentum” (drushyasamveg).

While viewing the works of individual artists, one must experience the following: in the visual impulse of the forms there lies force, movement, rotation, and dissolution, its effects, direction, and condition are seen in physical visible form of momentum.

This should be observed inwardly.

The rhythm of the surface within space, the rhythm of the areas upon the surface this principle of rhythm is the visual soul of every painter’s work. What one experiences when seeing the pictorial sky, the pictorial space, is expressed in the following lines:

ताल, तोल, लय श्यामश्वेत अंबर, घडे निरंतर हेचि दृश्यध्यान.

“Rhythm, balance, cadence in the black-and-white sky, Forever forming – this is the meditation of sight.”

A painting is the path of a traveller of art, a way that is destined toward art itself.

A painting is not the final destination of art – and this understanding is evident in the works of the artists in th es beyond form becomes known.”

This is the inner pictorial experience of these artists, expressed beautifully in the line:

अंबर ते ध्यान लागे अंबरी, कर अंबरी करोनिया.

“When the sky becomes meditation, The hand becomes the sky itself.”

All these artists are attempting to capture the space within the picture plane, and pictorial consciousness through visual language. Some have used geometry as a basis, some have used textures, others have used lines, and still others have utilized the repetition of pictorial elements or color dimensions. What one feels while viewing their works is captured in the lines:

डोळीयाने जाणा डोळीयाने जाणा, दृश्याची गणना मना कोण करी.

“Know it through the eyes, know it through the eyes, Who can measure the vision with the mind?”

These artists have understood the subtle distinction between bhāva (inner feeling) and bhāvana (emotion). That’s when the lines come to mind:

भावेवीण चित्नशिल्प न कळे निसंदेह, स्वाध्यायवीण दृश्यानुभव कैसाकळे.

“Without inner feeling, sculpture and painting cannot be understood; Without self-study, how can one comprehend visual experiences?”

To sustain the cyclical repetition of the visual experience, it is necessary to con- tinuously engage in the visual contemplation of the seeing:

देखावा वाचावा भाव हा दृश्याचा, आत्मा जो कलेचा दृश्य जप.

Read the scene, understand the emotion of visual for the soul of art lies in preserving the visual.

Today, it seems easy to gain fame before attaining mastery, especially through artificial intelligence. Machine-generated designs are more visible everywhere. Yet these six artists overcome this challenge and strive to transform the flowing visual tradition in tune with time.

Their works reveal the principle of nature’s essence through each creation.