The Artist in Art

What happens when Western art criticism is turned inside out and evaluated through Hindu aesthetics? This project reverses the colonial critical gaze - applying Hindu aesthetic frameworks as the dominant lens to examine Western art's evolution, theory, and unspoken assumptions.

aesthetics purva paksha

We have often read value judgements of Indian art in books written by western artists or art critics like: “Hindu painting is unaware of chronological sequence”; and that “Hindu art shows a lack of knowledge of anatomy”. These generalized statements which castigate entire civilization’s art with one sentence are not just stray comments but are part of textbooks that are taught not just in the West, but also in India. Because it is the West, which has so far in modern times, looked upon other cultures and their art and written about them, creating a narrative which shows more the Western mindset than the reality that they claim to cogitate upon.

The present study at Bodha aims to change this paradigm by reversing the gaze. It will look upon the Western art, its evolution and its theories from a Hindu aesthetic perspective. It will construct an aesthetic worldview where the Hindu paradigm is the dominant one and which overlooks and adjusts other traditions within that paradigm, while not letting their strengths or their contributions go unnoticed.