Why learn art history?

Lets just think of why history? History serves many factions at once. You just have to figure out is to what you seek from it.

It makes us reason, wonder about the immensity, richness, it trains our mind in terms of evidence and logic. Imagine if you did not remember anything about your life. Would you not wonder is to how exactly you got here?

We live in a world full of images, at some point in our human history, probably about 30000 years ago; we began to create pictures and figurines.. Archeologist call this period the "creative explosion." But why did people suddenly decide to start creating images of the world around them? He created images about what he wondered, simply about things he did not always understand. Then man created society..culture and everything was dominated by it- even the arts. Today we have the arts of those people for us to understand how it all began..

If you want to cherish art, you just have to look and observe. It is not always necessary for you to try to figure out and understand what the artist is trying to say. All you have to do is watch. If the painting is to your taste you will enjoy this watching, and you can continue to watch as long as your interest holds out, as long as you enjoy the experience of watching this painting. If the painting evokes only repulsion/ dislike, even then stay and watch and try to identify what it is that is evoking the repulsion /dislike. The painting or a sculpture is an invitation for you to meet yourself, to take a journey into yourself - of self-understanding. As you enjoy the experience of this self-awareness, you are well on your way to appreciating art.

But then as you may begin to see deeper, fine artists have to be trained both in the techniques of their mediums and in art history and their audiences must have some knowledge of art history as well.

For example 

Queen Maya’s dream,

Railing medallion from the bharut stupa

Shunga, 2nd century BCE, red sandstone.

Twenty-five hundred years ago, nestled in a fertile valley along the border between India and Nepal, a child was born who was to become the Buddha. The stories say that before his birth, his mother, the queen of a small Indian kingdom, had a dream.

A beautiful white elephant offered the queen a lotus flower, and then, entered the side of her body. When sages were asked to interpret the dream, they predicted the queen would give birth to a son destined to become either a great ruler or a holy man. One day, they said, he would either conquer the world, or become an enlightened being—the Buddha. We cannot appreciate the carving if we do not know what visual knowledge existed before the artist’s time that made this medallion also if we did not know anything about Buddha and his mother dreaming about her son’s birth.

We could not know that Michelangelo’s sculpture represents David if we were unaware of that. Within the historical tradition of fine art an adolescent male carrying a sling represents this biblical hero. We therefore not only need to know something about the history of artistic styles, but also about historical meanings or symbols. With knowledge of traditional visual symbols, we can easily interpret images that would otherwise entirely elude us. Fine artist take it for granted that their audience is familiar with these symbols. To deny history is to alienate us from our own roots, community, culture, and species.

Measures of beauty

I have been trying to understand human body form in art. It’s amazing how we enhance a few body parts and neglect a few.

British academic Nigel Spivey explains- why is our modern world dominated by images of the body that are unrealistic?  In his T.V. series ‘How Art Made the World’

Neuroscientists theorize this has something to do with the workings of the human brain, and point to a neurological principle known as the peak shift. In essence our brain is hard-wired to focus upon parts of objects with pleasing associations. So if you were an artist, the tendency would be to reproduce human figures with parts that mattered the most to you.

While learning Indian art history I have been going through a lot of such images where certain body parts are measures of a female body.

In India mature women were considered beautiful. Fully grown ladies who are in their 30s, but why? To gain an answer I must learn the living conditions, environment, their beliefs, and their culture.

The Venus of Willendorf is one of the earliest images of the body made by humankind

The people who made this statue lived in a harsh ice-age environment where features of fatness and fertility would have been highly desirable.

Incase of our ’fly whisks bearer‘ (Late Mayuryan, c.200BC.,Chunar sand stone, H. 5 ft4 inches,Patna Museum) same logic can be applied in terms of fertility.

Why then now we have discarded this image’ of a woman?

Every culture develops some kind of art. It has to do with the introduction of various cultures. Imagine a family with 8 children in today’s times.

Today’s Indian culture is – hum do hamre do

In most cases its just one child, for several different reasons. This makes me wonder is may be the woman is not just a child bearer any more thus she may not have to look like one even in artistic images. And very rapidly we have dropped the fact of her looking like one. (Hips the breast being grotesquely big)

Unfortunately we are being faced with the extreme side of her which is – size zero

This is nothing but corruption of feelings, and that reflects in every form of art.

As I say if you are looking at a painting look beyond the paint..

If you are appreciating a woman, look beyond the mere symbols of fertility or size zero.

enchanting folk art

Its funny to notice how they enjoy the attention they get from people.

While i hide in my little hole they always entertain me by coming to my shop often.

People often mistake them for beggars but they are actually called 'songadi' a type of folk artists. They go from house to house in our case shop to shop to collect some food, alms whatever people are ready to give them.

In this art they dress up like gods, animals and play lovely music. Once a man dressed as a cat visited me. He did a cat dance form and also made all the noises of a cat which I thought was amazing.

These days they dress up like police, whistle and scream "they whistle and say chala me arrest karayala aloo ahe!!"(in marathi)

I still prefer the lovely cat and tiger. Its enchanting.

M+P