Ambiguities of art: Paradox of seeing in artist & viewer

One of my clearest childhood memories is of the Ayodhya trio – Ram, Lakshman and Sita, walking through the deep forest, and suddenly finding a vast mountain range looming ahead. Rivers gush through the rocks, animals roam the slopes, birds soar above the trees, and flowers bloom everywhere. On the high peaks wrapped by gossamer clouds, celestial nymphs dance in joy. No, I was not hallucinating, but watching a Ramayan dance drama, produced by my alma mater Kalakshetra, Chennai’s renowned performing arts institution.

Only when I became a theatre director did I realize that the choreographer had created this panoramic spectacle of extreme long shots and tight close-ups, with a single tool: the human eye. Ram, Lakshman and Sita entered the stage, “looked up” to see the cloud-capped pinnacles. Their semi-circular “gaze” sweeping from right wing to left wing, painted the mountain range fold by fold. Then their eyes zoomed in to pick out deer, elephant and peacock.

Finally, heavenly apsaras floated in among the clouds at dizzying heights. Every one of these macro and micro visuals was first conjured up with the performers’ eyes, to which dimensions were added by their gestures and movements. More important, the performers made every spectator see what they saw through the characters’ eyes. 

Sounds simple. However, since art speaks indirectly, suggestively, we cannot automatically register what it says. Ancient cultures identified poets as “seers”. We too have to “see” what artists imply in order to unravel ambiguities, hidden significations, even conundrums. As a writer and director of plays I began to understand why Indian scholars believe that the mind follows the eye, and western philosophers aver that the eye reveals the mind. 

Painters old and new know this secret. Take the two famous Ajanta frescoes of the Buddha in his previous births – one holding a lotus (Padmapani) and the other a weapon (Vajrapani). They image opposing moods: serenity and dejection. How do we know? Through their eyes. 

Artists can convey much more than such elemental and archetypal moods. The iconic Mona Lisa is so complex that commentaries through the passing centuries have clarified less, mystified more. In times closer to ours, Piet Mondrian created a non-representational “neoplasticist” language of primary colours and pure abstractions, but also portrayed the “Girl in Red” with eyes like unfathomable pools. As for Amedeo Modigliani’s women – why, their eyes bore into your soul!

Recently, I came across exhibitions of two artists belonging to completely different eras, countries and styles, whose work made me think about inter-related perspectives: what the portrayed subject sees, what the artist perceives, and what the viewer absorbs. 

Referring to his studies of ballet artists Impressionist Edgar Degas said, “People call me the painter of dancers but I really wish to capture the movement itself.” Obviously, he was talking not just about the dance, but about the throb and rhythm of life itself. Degas paints ballerinas not as they perform on the stage with the flawless perfection that ballet demands, but as they rehearse and prepare, wait in classrooms, stand in the wings, stare at the stage beyond the canvas. His dancers agonize over aching ankles and hurting backs. Many look at their feet as they tie or untie shoes, their legs in ungainly positions, tutus awkwardly pressed against the wall. Through such discomfiting moments Degas makes us see how the spirit can overcome the limitations of the body, and create movements luminous, dynamic, even ethereal. In the dancer, in the painter, in the viewer.

An exhibition, celebrating the 400th birth anniversary of the Spanish master Murillo, centre-staged his two self-portraits with twenty years between them. The change from youth to midlife is seen not only in wrinkles and receding hair, but in the eyes, where swagger is replaced by reflection, and a certain unconscious vulnerability that comes with the waning years. The ageing hand grips the painted frame within the wooden frame, as if it were a window admitting fresh air, and as if the artist is trying to escape from being frozen by art. Elsewhere too, Murillo uses windows to see and show multiple perspectives. A peasant boy rests his arms on the window, smiling at the world outside, eager to engage with what lies beyond the frame. In another picture, two women gaze out of the window, straight into the gallery where you stand watching them. Arm on sill and hand on chin, the young girl twinkles at you. The older woman covers her mouth with a scarf, but her eyes gleam with amusement. Suddenly, you sense the dichotomy, the paradox. As they lock their eyes with yours, you try to enter their world of art, even as they strive to leap out into the living world.           

The author is a playwright, dancer, theatre director, musician and journalist. Views are personal.