It has been imagined in spiritual literature that when a child starts crying as soon as he is born, his cry emits sounds with a meaning like ‘Ko Ham’ (Who am I?).
Along with this, it has also been imagined that the significance of human birth lies in getting the correct answer to this question – i.e. ‘So Ham’ (I am the same).
The intention here is not to enter into the field of Brahmajigyaasa, but it would be appropriate to start the presented topic from the moment of human birth because this is such an important moment which is the beginning not only of human birth but also of all his experiences, curiosities, problems and questions.
The newborn baby’s contact with the external world begins with the sensations he receives from the five senses. To survive, when it breathes and drinks milk, it experiences smell and taste.
His other bodily functions also begin; He hears, sees, touches and all his actions are governed by instincts.
His contact with the external world is of abstract nature in the initial stage; Initially he is unable to recognize objects; For him, mother means only the act of milk supply.
This primary stage of the child, being limited to initial physical activities and sensations, holds special importance considering his entire future life.
At what moment and by what process the fetus becomes alive is a mystery, but as soon as it is born, along with its body, its subtle form of consciousness and its ‘ego’ also starts coming into contact with the external world, through sense organs and activities. Nutrition continues.
This ‘ego’ remains his everything throughout his life and through it he becomes acquainted with the external world; That is, this introduction is as short or deep as the reach of his ego, and its form is also as per the perspective of his ego. It is impossible to even imagine the complete knowledge of the object.
In this way, for humans the external creation is only a mirror or a means of self-introduction. Because ‘I am (i.e. corporeal) I experience the existence (i.e. corporeality) of other things.
With the existence of ‘I’ the universe ceases to exist. Therefore, the basic condition for experiencing form is that the feeling of ‘Aham’ is the primary experience of form. The child gets introduced to different things separately.
Anatomy – Due to similarity, the experience of sensations received from an object, i.e. form, has the same qualities for all human beings except the degree of intensity.
But due to the disability of a particular sense organ, a person may be deprived of the related experience, such as a blind person cannot experience the visual form. Due to pathological deformity, someone may also have an experience contrary to normal, such as a sick person may taste a sweet substance. It may seem bitter.
Generally, green color will appear green to everyone and the effect of other colors will be the same for everyone, although there is a difference in the assessment of the intensity or subtle difference of colors according to the individual perception power.
Different elements of visual form:- Different sensory sensations received from an object are stored in the human brain in the form of memory which helps in identifying the object.
Unless there appears to be some dissimilarity in the sensations received from two objects, they cannot be identified separately. Analysis done by chemical or other scientific methods is also basically dependent on sensory knowledge.
Since the presented discussion is limited to visual arts, here we will consider only the different elements of visual form. The main elements among these are the color of the object, intensity and tone of the color, external shape, coverage, texture of the surface, density, speed and The results produced on it due to external elements like light, environment, distance are the localization of different parts of the object and their influence on each other.
All these are objective elements which help in portraying the scene realistically, apart from these there are some subjective elements which create illusion about the visual appearance of the object.
These are the current state of mind of the audience, psychological states like dream, intoxication, madness, hallucination, stupor, flatulence, somnolence and hypnosis. In such states, visual experiences are helpful in creating surreal and psychedelic art.
These experiences of imaginary forms, despite appearing to be different from the experiences seen in the normal waking state, have a close relationship with them because the development of the inner soul through which they are revealed also takes place in the presence of directly visible creation.
Hence we see that gods, demons, fairies, imaginary animals and other wonderful objects and scenes are created by distorting the forms found in the visible universe.
If we think closely about it then human imagination is also just an imagination.
Sensing a non-existent object due to mirage, not being able to guess the name or location of an object due to optical illusion, and seeing an object changing in color according to scientific light principles like reflection, refraction, absorption are other unusual visual experiences in the desert. The appearance of water on the horizon, the unequal length and width of the parabolic archway of St. Louis city (America) and the Sun appearing large, red and elliptical in the evening are examples of this.
If we move away from the visual experiences found in nature and look towards man-made forms, we see a different world. Man-made forms, despite being based on natural forms, can be simplified – such as in folk art – or distorted – such as in expressionistic art, with the aim of increasing their attractiveness, expression, utility or any other desired effect and considering the dignity and suitability of the medium. In caricatures, it is portrayed by changing the natural form. Even in realistic art, there is no exact depiction, which can be easily seen by comparing the picture with the photograph of the original scene.
What we call objective or abstract form is a collection of such sensory sensations like, before being recognized as an object, the baby accepts the balloon; for the baby, before it becomes a balloon, it is round or of any other shape. It is just a spot of some color; The flame of a candle is nothing but a flickering figure of yellow colour.
It is known that children’s painting starts with the strokes of coal, pencil or chalk, which is a completely object-free depiction. According to the principle of recapitulation, psychologists have considered childhood to be similar to the monkey stage of evolved humans.
In 1957, as an experiment, when two chimpanzee monkeys from the London and Baltimore zoos were given oil painting materials and were asked to make paintings, all they created were scribbles similar to objective art.
This experiment helps a lot in knowing the basic nature of objective art.
Therefore, for the fulfillment of his emotional life, it is necessary for every person to get entry into the social field according to his innate tendencies.
The artistic and figurative qualities of the artwork like harmony, rhythm, balance, texture, combination, visualization, marksmanship etc. can impress the audience by providing them with the experience of objective beauty, but it is uncertain whether emotional arousal will also happen along with it.
Such objective artwork may be successful in arousing emotions due to the psychological effect of colors, lines, and shapes and subjective esoteric elements like association, memory disturbance, but this result remains limited to a specific audience and is not so clear, intense and permanent; It depends on education, environment, culture and personal life.
If the artwork depicts real, imaginary or surreal life, then there is no difficulty in evaluating such a work and getting emotional from it, although it would be wrong to believe that it will affect everyone equally on an emotional level.
It is often seen that statements are made to explain an objective work to the audience, which is harmful for art because it is more a product of the critic’s mind than the truth and such statements often seem like advertising rather than appreciation.
Apart from this, since every reviewer gets a chance to express his expertise, there does not seem to be any similarity in such statements in accordance with the promise of ‘Pinde Pinde Matirbhinna’.
The psychological experiments that have been conducted to test the ability of different colors, lines and shapes to evoke emotions like fear, anger, compassion, peace etc. have definitely led to the conclusion that they have such ability but this cannot happen in any real or imaginary scene. As powerful as the power is, it is not present in its pure form, it is also present in symbolic shapes and colors (for example – Swastika cross, green and saffron colours) because with them the elements of prior knowledge and cultural ego exert their influence.
We get an indication of the ongoing conflict in the human mind between affinity for one’s cultural heritage and attraction for newness, in the field of art as well.
Due to intimacy, there is no difficulty in assessing the traditional style of artwork and in arousing emotions from it, but due to familiarity, the attractiveness of its form becomes somewhat less or forgotten.
Seeing the unfamiliar form of a new art style, an unexperienced beauty attracts one towards it, but due to lack of intimacy one is not able to identify with it emotionally.
In a way it is similar to female beauty; A woman may initially attract with her looks but the feeling of intimacy and respect towards her is created by her qualities and good behaviour.
If a new style is adopted and modified to suit the prevalent social life, it can help in awakening the emotions through the process of habituation and assimilation, but it is not easy to replace the age-old tradition and its inner values through new forms. Nor is it a sad feature of pure beauty, which is beneficial from the point of view of social stability, that due to over-familiarity, the attractiveness of its external form decreases.
The search for beauty is like a mirage in which man constantly runs after new forms and is never satisfied. The history of art has mainly been the history of discovery of new forms.
It is true that the search for beauty makes human’s sad life bearable, although saints and some philosophers have considered it as self-deception and the artist as a wanderer corrupted from the path of truth.
But this is an idealistic and impractical idea: it is not possible for a common man to be so dedicated to spiritual life and for him, art is a very important means of living this worldly life happily and can never be considered as sacrificial.
The power that traditional style forms have in providing stability by tying the society together in a cultural thread through a feeling of intimacy is very important.
Without cultural unity, the status of the society will waver. We find foreign pop music and cultural programs very attractive and exciting because of their fun and unique form and it is right to organize them from the point of view of entertainment, human curiosity and study, but they should not be accepted to such an extent that it harms our cultural values. Reached.
Art form and culture are tied to socially accepted life philosophy and influence each other, and unless we abandon our basic life philosophy, our art form will have to remain in accordance with it. The importance of culture and tradition can never decrease in the field of art.
