Meeting God

[Guest guest]

NEW YORK TIMES; ART REVIEW

"Displaying Hindu Ritual With Reverence and Graciousness"

By ROBERTA SMITH

 

Visitors to "Meeting God: Elements of Hindu Devotion," ... at the

American Museum of Natural History, may or may not encounter the

divine presence in its galleries. But they can easily enter into the

show's mood of euphoric reverence and spiritual graciousness while

also learning quite a bit about one of the world's great religions.

And because nearly everything on display comes from India, which is

82 percent Hindu, visitors can also get a palpable sense of the

completely fluid fusion of faith, visual creativity and daily life

that saturates Indian culture.

 

This is an amazing, often moving hodgepodge of a show. It

occasionally, but only occasionally, feels like a walk-in National

Geographic article, but generally, it works. Serene and carefully

organized, it should appeal to believers and nonbelievers of all

stripes. The phrase "Meeting God" is a reference to the Hindu word

for enlightenment, darshan, which translates more precisely

as "seeing or being seen by God" -- and this evocation of reciprocity

and visual experience echoes through the show. It has been organized

by Stephen P. Huyler, a freelance art historian, social

anthropologist and photographer, and Laurel Kendall, the curator in

the museum's anthropology division. Mr. Huyler has spent four months

of each year since 1970 traveling around India, taking notes and

photographs, buying crafts and interviewing hundreds of people, which

makes this exhibition the culmination, so far, of a lifelong passion.

 

 

"Meeting God" is tailored to its moment. It comes at a time when

Asian Indians form one of the fastest growing immigrant groups in the

New York metropolitan region, and Asian artists, with their

traditional indifference to distinctions between high and low, and

pop and kitsch, are a strong presence in contemporary art. It also

weighs in on the current debate concerning the contextualization of

art objects in museums, especially objects from other cultures. It is

elegantly pro-context, and while better suited to a museum of natural

history than to an art museum, it suggests that the argument doesn't

really have two sides. In the end all exhibitions can be judged only

on a case-by-case basis.

 

"Meeting God" brings together representations of the Hindu deities,

which include tiny animated figures in copper alloy or marble,

brightly stitched textiles and raucous little posters. Outstanding is

a silver and wood figure of Gauri, the goddess of agricultural

abundance, resplendent in a silver-embossed sari and heavy silver

jewelry. There are incense burners and other ceremonial implements,

engraved metal tantric plaques called yantra, cobra-headed lingas

that are particularly powerful representations of the god Shiva.

Several objects date from the 17th and 18th centuries, a few from the

early 21st century, which is a startling phrase to see on labels. One

recent addition, in carved and painted wood, depicts small spark-plug-

like figures of Jagannath, a tree-god version of Vishnu; they might

have stepped out of "South Park."

 

The meanings and the uses of these objects are elucidated by wall

texts that don't go on too long, documentary videotapes, bits of

music and dozens of Mr. Huyler's photographs, which keep the Indian

love of intense color lusciously present.

 

Appropriately, puja, the daily or twice daily worship ritual through

which Hindus seek darshan, is supposed to involve all the senses. The

show layers together different sensations and contrasting notions of

value and permanence from the beginning. In the first gallery strains

of a sitar and a bamboo flute greet the ear while a videotape shows

sari-wearing women bathing in the Ganges River at sunrise, praying to

the sun god Surya.

 

One vitrine contains an early 20th-century statue of Ganesha -- the

elephant-headed son of Shiva -- from the museum's collection, carved

in marble and detailed in gold paint. Next to it is a carved

sandstone sculpture of Lakshmi, the goddess of prosperity,

commissioned by Mr. Huyler especially for the exhibition from a stone

cutter in the north central Indian city of Varanasi. Ritually

prepared to be worshiped, she wears a gold-and-red sari and gold

bangles; her palms and soles are dusted with bright vermilion spice,

and she is wreathed in flowers, albeit artificial ones. Nearby a

third vitrine holds a rustic terra cotta planter that also serves as

a shrine to Lakshmi. Quickly and deftly made, it is one of hundreds

turned out by craftsmen from the state of Orissa in east India. Its

twin functions are inspired by the legend of Lakshmi's transformation

into a bush of sacred basil, or tulasi, which is traditionally

planted in it and could be the focus of daily worship.

 

The exhibition's macrocosmic moment is a stupendous trompe-l'oeil re-

creation of a sacred banyan tree, similar to those found in nearly

every Indian village. Produced life size from photographs by the

museum's diorama artists and accompanied by the sounds of chirping

birds, it is festooned with offerings and surrounded by stone gods

swathed in red cloth. It rivals quite a bit of contemporary

installation art.

 

Scattered throughout are facsimiles of household shrines that contain

backlighted photographs of real shrines (by Mr. Huyler), tiny

figures, devotional implements and artificial flowers. Opening the

carved-wood doors of these weirdly comforting Cornell-like simulacra

is one of the better interactive experiences currently available in a

museum. As the exhibition progresses, the same objects recur in

different contexts. For example, 19th-century copper alloy niche

lamps and holy water vessels are isolated in vitrines; nearly

identical contemporary versions are integrated into the facsimile

shrines, and others are shown being used during videotaped

ceremonies.

 

Along the way, "Meeting God" deflates fears about the so-called

return of beauty to contemporary art. It reminds us that in most

religious art beauty is a demonstration of faith and is profoundly

spiritual, not frivolous. For Hindus, this demonstration can be

intensely decorative and brightly colored and also breathtakingly

ephemeral. In addition, the creation of this beauty is a ritual in

itself.

 

"Meeting God" may work so well because Hinduism is to a great extent

a one-to-one experience, not unlike art. It is conducted mostly on a

private basis, even in the middle of public temples or thronged

processions, between a single worshiper and a single, personally

selected god or goddess. The exhibition takes pains to dispel the

notion that Hinduism encompasses thousands of deities and stresses

that its adherents select a single god or goddess to worship for life

when they reach adolescence. This deity may be Vishnu, the preserver;

Shiva, the god of creation and destruction; Shiva's wife, Parvati,

the embodiment of the divine feminine, or their son, Ganesha, remover

of obstacles and lord of beginnings. But each of the many options

represents only a facet of a larger unknowable divine absolute called

Brahman.

 

Similarly, the form a puja takes is a personal choice. It may be the

prayerful sunrise dip in the Ganges, or a symbolic dripping of water

from a graceful ewer, as one of the photographs illustrates. It may

be a ceremony conducted before a household shrine centering on the

figure of a god or goddess that is prepared for worship each day,

like Lakshmi, by being ritually bathed, dressed, bejeweled and

anointed with spices.

 

Yet many Indian women begin each day by creating an intricate

geometric design of sprinkled rice powder just outside their front

door, a homage to Surya that will quickly be destroyed. One of the

show's best video moments shows several women covering a long, broad

street with these designs just before a huge procession sweeps

through. In another procession, recorded in photographs, scores of

men carry a brightly painted 12-foot statue of Ganesha into the sea.

Made of solid unfired clay, it will dissolve soon after reaching its

destination.

 

"Meeting God" has a suitable coda in a small intimate display of

photographs by Steve McCurry showing Hindus, Sikhs and Jains from

across the metropolitan region beside their home or office shrines.

Some of these arrangements are lavish by any standard and resemble

enlarged versions of the facsimile shrines in the larger show. Others

are modest and makeshift, tucked away in closets, cupboards, by

office copying machines and, in one case, behind the counter of a

video store.

 

It is rare for an exhibition to bring so much information, spiritual

feeling and visual beauty into alignment. There are greater -- and

certainly older -- examples of Hindu art on the other side of Central

Park at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. But visit "Meeting God"

first. It will expand the way you see them.