VI FOR DISCUSSION AND THOUGHT In order to stimulate thought the following points are offered to the art-student:— I.1 Modern art is dominated by techenique or in other words the greatest triumphs of modernist art are in the field of technique. II.2 There is too much domination of " theories "— intellectual ideas—and "isms" in modern art. III3 Most productions of modernist art are expressions of the undisciplined subconscient, suggestions from the lower vital world, full of impulses and crude material and other dream-stuff, fancies and random freaks. 1I quote Herbert Read to show how he agrees with me on this point. Says

-008_Sri Aurobindo's Ideas.htm VII SRI AUROBINDO'S IDEAS I give here a few ideas of Sri Aurobindo on art so as to clarify the fundamental issues : — 1.Art is discovery and revelation of Beauty. 2.All is, from one point of view, beautiful] but all is not, reduced to a single level. All things can be seen as having divine beauty, but somethings have more divine beauty than others. " In the artist's vision too there can be gradations, a hierarchy of values.—Apollo's grapes deceived the birds that came to peck at them, but there was more aesthetic content in the Zeus of Phidias, a greater content of consciousness and therefore of Ananda to express and fill in the essential

On Art ADDRESSES AND WRITINGS BY A. B. PURANI Published by NAVA SARJAN SOCIETY, NARGOL (DT. SURAT.) Publishers: NAVA SARJAN SOCIETY, NARGOL (DT. SURAT ) © SRI AUROBINDO ASHRAM First published in April 1955 2nd Edition (enlarged) September 1965 PRINTED AT LALITHA PRINTERS PRIVATE LIMITED, 18, NORTH VELI STREET, MADURAT-1 To Lale Dr. Anand Coomar Swamy who dedicated his life to the service of Art, insisting on and teaching true values, and thus, rendered yeoman's service to the world of Art, this little effort is dedicated in deep gratitude b