Title: Dancing Gopi (Maiden)/Jamini Roy (1887-1972)/Medium: Gouache on paper.
Folk elements are the root through which the spiritual tree branches out aesthetically. Not only the skill of the artist, not only the technical precision of the hands and the brush strokes but its also the mind that delves into the embroidered carpet of our mythological past, into the visual narratives of our spiritual revelations that becomes cardinal when it comes to depicting the aesthetic taste of the whole human race. It’s the ‘delight’ of the senses, of the bodily movements that breathe ‘in and out’ the Prakriti (the Nature) in its various moods, not by being captive but by being free is what draws out the sublime in man through his creative rendition of the unity of the dance of forms. Here, of course, the dancing Gopi alludes to the story of Lord Krishna and his sweet rendezvous with the loved ones, it also brings out the all surrendered love of the maidens for the Divine, for the Truth, for the Love, for the Light and for the Immortality. The posture of her hands, the mudra is something that we associate with healing and also with the flow of the life-force, so, here, it embodies the beauty of nature in its graceful form that not only appeals to the eye of the viewer but also to his vital being thereby, helping to reinvigorate the receptivity of the mind by a subtle ritualistic cleaning that takes place by the mimesis of the dance through the art within us. Thus beauty is restored in its primal form, here the form of folk invokes the charm of the psychic hidden inside the subliminal depths of the being. Art, therefore, helps to evolve our consciousness as we undertake the journey of spiritual revelation through the many mystic doors and corridors that keep opening before us for a higher realization that awaits humanity.
As the Mother has said in Pondicherry on the 12th of June, 1954 “The Force is there waiting to be manifested, we must discover the new forms through which It can manifest, with my blessings”.
Folk is one of the primal art forms through which the descent of higher forces can take place on this earth. If we look back at the long process of material and spiritual evolution, we find that its the cave paintings of the bison at Altamira, Spain in the Upper Paleolithic or Late Stone Age some thousands of years ago when man first had the creative spark or the Agni which Sri Aurobindo described in The Secret of the Vedas as one having the “double aspect of force and light” which “builds the worlds” (The Secret of the Vedas, Sri Aurobindo) with perfect knowledge. This mystic fire or Agni is the immortal in mortals and the divine power in man, later, W.B. Yeats invokes the same power in “Sailing to Byzantium” :
“O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul”. (Sailing to Byzantium, W.B. Yeats, 1926)
Jamini Roy’s art not only sings with the singing-masters of the Soul, but in fact, it recreates that aesthetic longing for the creative sublime in man and also finds beauty of forms within the immortality of the spirit and within nature or Prakriti itself.
Consciousness-Analogue: Dancing Gopis
In every form, the divine eloquence hides
within itself , within beauty and truth;
but without the absolute Surrender nothing is revealed
nothing is restored or created
If only the mind breaks open its physical-walls of doubt and reason
It can forsee the palace of the indwelling Spirit.
There Harmony is the mother of all forms and movements:
A simple dance is a quest for life,
for the spiritual unity that love embodies.
– Joy Roy Choudhury
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