A Divine Exhibition Reveres Hindu Deities

[Guest guest]

Hinduism in Ohio! On Sunday (yesterday), Cleveland's Plain Dealer

featured a beautiful article on the U.S.'s first major exhibition of

Hindu bronzes of the Chola Age. In addition to some absolutely

lyrical art criticism, there is a sensitive and accurate attempt here

to gently introduce the reader to the belief system behind the

artwork. It's worth a read:

 

A DIVINE EXHIBITION REVERES HINDU DEITIES

By Steven Litt

Plain Dealer Art Critic

 

They smile with holy wisdom. They gaze with all-seeing eyes. They

sway in dancelike poses. And while they allow themselves to be seen

by mortals, they point to a supreme reality beyond the senses,

governed by cycles of creation, destruction and rebirth.

 

These are the bronze sculptures of Hindu gods and goddesses in "The

Sensuous and the Sacred: Chola Bronzes From South India," a new

exhibition at the Cleveland Museum of Art.

 

With 59 bronzes dating from the ninth to the 13th centuries, the show

is the first in the United States to focus on a seminal period in

Indian art.

 

It's a period when the rich and militarily aggressive Chola Dynasty

ruled over the fertile plains and bustling port cities on the coast

opposite Sri Lanka.

 

Under Chola patronage, Indian artists raised the art of bronze

sculpture to new heights of fluid grace and gemlike detail, creating

some of the most radiantly beautiful images of the human body in the

history of art.

 

It was a peak moment, akin to the adoption of realistic, lifelike

poses by ancient Greek artists in the fifth century B.C., or the apex

of the high Renaissance in 16th-century Italy.

 

This achievement was all the more astonishing given the technical

challenges mastered by Chola artists. They fashioned original

sculptures in wax, sealed them in clay molds, and poured hot bronze

into the molds. In the process, the wax originals and clay molds were

destroyed, making each bronze a unique creation.

 

Artists in China, Greece and Rome were casting bronze centuries

before the Cholas. But the supple, complex shapes and highly

ornamented surfaces of the Chola sculptures - along with their

ebullient celebration of the human form - represented something

entirely new.

 

As the Chola dynasty declined, many sacred sculptures were buried to

prevent their capture by Muslim invaders from the north of India.

 

Some works in the exhibition, including a 10th-century statuette of

the seated Kali, a protector of the faith, have the mottled, green

patina that comes from having been buried. Even so, the Kali

sculpture, on loan from the Rietberg Museum in Zurich, still clearly

shows the frightening snake that wraps around the breasts of the

goddess.

 

Many other works are in a superb state of preservation. These include

the British Museum's gleaming, 10th-century sculpture of Shiva as the

deity who saved the world after a deluge by swallowing a lethal

poison that emerged from the churning ocean.

 

Although many of the most important Chola bronzes remain in Indian

museums, a large number found their way into Western museums, where

they are highly valued.

 

Such works include the Cleveland museum's magnificent, 11th-

century "Shiva Nataraja: Lord of the Dance," which depicts the

graceful, four-armed Hindu god dancing in a whirling pose surrounded

by a circle of flames.

 

The sculpture's lithe proportions and graceful dynamism mark it as a

masterpiece of its type. But until the current exhibition, it has

lacked a broader context.

 

The show, organized by the American Federation of Arts and the Arthur

M. Sackler Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution, places Cleveland's

great Shiva within a group of sculptures similar to that of a typical

11th- or 12th-century Chola temple. In other words, visiting the

exhibition is like encountering a holy Hindu site.

 

More than most exhibitions, "The Sensuous and the Sacred" requires

viewers to stretch. The show ushers you into a world of cosmic

battles, floods and fires, populated by an almost bewildering panoply

of Hindu deities. At first glance, it's hard to keep their stories

straight, much less to savor the evolution of Chola style.

 

For Westerners, the polytheism of the Hindu faith can be a hurdle.

Hinduism posits the existence of a supreme deity, named Brahman. But

the faith also holds that the one God reveals himself in multiple

names and forms, "like a diamond of innumerable sparkling facets," in

the words of an explanatory panel.

 

If it had tried to explain these glittering facets in detail, the

museum could have drowned viewers in oceans of text. But the

exhibition, organized in groups of sculptures devoted to individual

deities, is visually lean. It lets the works speak for themselves,

while providing essential facts.

 

As an additional aid, the museum has provided an excellent study room

filled with books, videos and an interactive computer display. It

helps to spend a few moments inside learning some of the basics of

Hinduism.

 

Shiva destroys the world through his dance of bliss in order to re-

create it. Uma, also known as Parvati, is Shiva's beneficent and

unabashedly gorgeous consort. She is also the mother of their

children: Skanda, the god of war; and Ganesha, the beloved, elephant-

headed god of new beginnings. Nandi, the grinning bull, is Shiva's

royal mount.

 

Vishnu is the god of preservation. He appears in 10 avatars, or

incarnations, including that of a king relaxing upon his throne, as a

boar or a man with the head of a lion.

 

These and other deities are attended by a host of saints, including

the fearsomely emaciated Karaikkal Ammaiyar, who asked to be released

from her once-beautiful young body so she could worship at the feet

of Shiva forever.

 

All these figures are depicted in works that rivet the eye. The most

enthralling works include a 13th-century bronze depicting a fat,

jewel-encrusted Nandi, from the collection of the Asia Society in New

York; and a disturbingly wizened 11th-century Karaikkal from the

Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City, Mo.

 

Despite these strong appearances by supporting players, it is the

gods who dominate, particularly Shiva, Uma and Vishnu in their

various guises.

 

Artistically, the sculptures represent a fusion of opposites. They

combine the smooth and serenely refined silhouettes of a line drawing

by Henri Matisse with ornate and highly detailed depictions of

jewelry that accentuates their bodies without overwhelming their

svelte physiques.

 

Above all, the sculptures revel in the body - the curve of a woman's

breast or hip, the springy muscles of a man's thigh, the graceful

arch of a forefinger, the drape of a strand of jewelry across the top

of a foot. And yet, for all the joyous sexual energy they

communicate, these works convey immense authority, as befits images

of sacred beings. Their goal is not to titillate, but to enlighten.

 

The Cleveland Museum of Art's 25-inch-high bronze sculpture of the

Great Goddess Uma, dating roughly from the year 950, is typical of

this fusion of erotic power and holy grace.

 

The Uma stands with her weight shifted to her right, a pose that

accentuates the curves of her thighs and buttocks. Her legs are

covered with a clinging, richly ornamented textile that hangs low on

her hips. But she is nude from the waist up, her breasts triumphantly

exposed.

 

For Western viewers, the sensuality of Hindu art poses a conundrum.

Judaism is known for its ban against graven images and its emphasis

on words as vehicles of truth. Christianity has a rich visual

tradition, but one that stresses eternal life after death. If the

body appears in Christian art, it is often in the context of

suffering and martyrdom.

 

Hinduism, in contrast, celebrates the body and the senses as gateways

to enlightenment. Hindu worship, called puja, involves touching

sacred sculptures, burning incense, listening to mantras and ringing

bells and eating consecrated food.

 

Visual contact with images of Hindu gods is key. Hindus believe the

sculptures are receptacles of divine energy, portals to see and be

seen, to give and to receive blessings. This explains why the eyes of

many sculptures in the exhibition were re-incised repeatedly by

worshippers to enhance the ability of the gods to "see."

 

To view the exhibition is to be intensely aware that the objects on

display are not only profoundly alluring and important works of art,

but objects of worship. It's also a reminder that Cleveland has a

growing community of immigrants from India, for whom the exhibition

will have special meaning.

 

The museum has emphasized the role of the sculptures in worship by

configuring one gallery like a small chapel with an altar against one

wall, surmounted by an 18th- century sculpture of the dancing Shiva

on loan from the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

 

The sculpture was chosen not as an example of the height of the Chola

period, which ended 500 years earlier, but to convey how such

sculptures are used in the rite of worship.

 

In a private ceremony before the show opened, the museum invited a

priest from the Greater Cleveland Shiva Vishnu Temple in Parma to

drape the Shiva in sacred textiles and to heap blossoms at his feet.

This tableau, along with a recording of a worship ceremony that

occasionally wafts through the galleries, sets a quietly respectful

tone and prepares visitors for a superb exhibition that opens the eye

and the mind.

 

© 2003 The Plain Dealer. Used with permission.

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