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| Home > Types Of Sculpture > Aesthetic Sculpture
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| | Aesthetic Sculpture
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With the help of the aesthetic theory how the of sculpturing techniques function can be explained.The sculptures that are based on aesthetic approach are found at many places. Aesthetic theory is mainly based on a classical Sanskrit text, the Natyashastra of Bharata. This text is probably composed during the fourth or fifth century AD and regarded as divinely inspired. It is a collection of rules and principles for the production of drama and the education of actors.
The rasa and Rasa
The central idea of the text is that the various elements of dramatic arts, which combines the visual and the auditory in a temporal process, are mainly directed towards arousing the audience in the state of consciousness.
Through this, many concepts are put forward for consideration. The concept of rasa is aimed to mean the concrete, intuitive level `juice` or `flavour`, mainly for indicating the intermediary intention of the artist`s at the time of its presentation on the stage. The other concept used to show the condition called Harsha that means `joy` or `exaltation` arising as a response among the spectators to the rasa. Later on, during the synthesis of Bharata`s text with his commentators composed by the great Kashmiri Shaiva theologian Abhinavagupta, in the eleventh century AD, the original concepts of rasa and harsha were mixed with each other to form a new blending named as Rasa. The theory is particularly important as it recognized this new Rasa as a universal and self-transcendent concept. In this Rasa, it was not merely an intensified specific feeling but analogous to the supreme bliss of ultimate release from birth and death.
Meaning of Rasa
This universal Rasa means a special condition of the consciousness that is distinct in itself. It mainly depends upon a series of a well known `Permanent Emotional Modes` called as Sthayibhavas. These modes are in the form of a series of graded emotional states that jointly encompasses an every possible colour of human emotion. The list may appear to others especially to Western ears somewhat arbitrary, but it is serving very well to us.
All such emotional Modes said as exist in each human being in the form of latent traces i.e. vasanas. So each Sthayibhava is there in every human being as a latent form that is a consequence of his life experiences. In the presence of many other classifications systems one can wish to reserve the right to recognize compounded or in-between modes. But for practical use, the actual extent of Permanent Emotional Modality can only be defined as a series of named reaches of emotion.
Every Permanent Emotional Modes corresponds to an appropriate rasa, a `juice` or `flavour` that can be summarized within the scope of that state. While writing the formal list, the special way of writing is preferred. In this, first the Permanent Emotional Mode will be named with a capital letters & followed by the Sanskrit name of it mostly written in brackets, then the corresponding rasa, followed again by its Sanskrit name in brackets.
The first name is usually treated as of the highest value as in it rest closely the bliss of religious enlightenment. The last means the ninth, was not there in Bharatas`s original list but it was included later on. Delight (Rati), the erotic (shringara) : Laughter (Hasa), the comic (hasya) ; Sorrow (Shoka), the pathetic (karuna); Anger (Krodha), the furious (raudra); Heroism (Utsaha), the heroic (vira); Fear (Bhaya), the terrible (bhayanaka) : Disgust (Jugupsa), the odious (bibhatsa) ; Astonishment (Vishmaya), the sublime (adbhuta) ; Peace (Shanta), the peaceful (shama) formed the list. The various rasas are seen to be closely related with certain musical ragas due to their specific emotional qualities.
This point may not be agreed completely that this scale of emotions is of no account of altruistic feelings esteemed in the West, such as `pity`. However, these may be interpreted in a best way as sympathetic emotions, shared experience of the emotions of others, shared sorrow etc. Similarly, religious emotions related with `adoration` or `devotion` must be reduced till their pure subjective elements such as the modes of fear, delight and the sublime are achieved.
One thing must be remembered that between the Permanent Emotional Mode and the rasa the art intervenes nearly at all times & this mechanism of intervention is of greater importance to us.
Karya and vyabhicaribhava
When normal life is considered, every Permanent Emotional Mode is awoken with the help of various causes. Causes that are similar with this usually fall more or less within the scope of the same Permanent Emotional Mode, when allowed for variations. For example, for men in all causes of Delight normally includes a pretty, complaisant girl. However, it must also be considered that some men may find as a cause of delight with just imagining a girl`s shoe, not the girl sometimes termed as fetishism. One other fact is also recognized that some men might find such a pretty girl a cause for disgust, a hideous, snarling face thrust close to our own that normally constitute a reason of fear.
And so on. maybe even more important than these actual `causes`, considering the artistic point of concern are two further classes of concomitants to the Permanent Emotional Modes are made from ordinary life. They are called as the `effects` means karya and the transitory mental state, a vyabhicaribhava. The first group of `effects` consist of the eight involuntary states, generally known as the bodily reactions such a paralysis, fainting, sweating, change of colour, trembling, weeping and change of voice etc. Other specific actions generated in these states would also be included in this such as laughing, running away and so on. And, total of the transitory mental states is thirty-three. This includes discouragement, weakness, apprehension, weariness, contentment, stupor, joy, depression, cruelty, anxiety, fright, envy, indignation, arrogance, recollection, death, intoxication, dreaming, sleeping, awakening, shame, epilepsy, distraction, assurance, indolence, agitation, deliberation, dissimulation, sickness, insanity, despair, impatience and inconstancy.The variety in the above listed categories can also be seen.
All these concomitants exist as our immediate links with the states of emotions. Mainly the mental state that is provoked by any cause becomes evident to others in the forms of our manifestation of the concomitants by all sorts of identified & recognized signs. Now these belong to the realm of ordinary life. It is thus true that when art intervenes it mainly offers images of the concomitants of that period to the audience and the role of cause vis-à-vis rasas are assumed in it. Number of conditions must be fulfilled in order to awaken the rasas, as they are distinct from straightforward emotions. One more thing of importance is that the spectator should not respond to the artistic activities though they look like realities. It is expected that they must remain purely symbolic.
Various devices of theatrical presentation are employed such as the stage sets, properties, lights, make-up, costume, even the atmosphere of the occasion to prevent the spectator reacting to it. He must not behave as he would if he met the actor, or as he would if he met the hero Rama whom the actor is portraying. That means he must not respond to the actor`s apparent feelings as he would towards a real person who was actually feeling those feelings. In fact, he must not fall into any one of the Permanent Emotional Modes. But at the same time, echoes of actual feeling-responses must be measured from the Modes & continually be touched by these very theatrical means. The inhibition of these normal reactions is combined with the deliberate evocation of feeling-echoes that results in the expression of the actor provoking in the spectator`s mind an unusual state.
If the mind is not absorbed in the particular emotions, it doesn`t fulfill the purpose of art. Therefore, the mind becomes conscious of not a simple object of cognition the actor nor a particular feeling, nor a thought, nor a fantasy for the actor and the stage is made indubitably real and not projected from within the spectator.
Truly, the mind becomes conscious of a particular and individual psychophysical state, for which rasa is the adopted term and which we may call an image of the Emotional Mode also.
Thus Abhinavagupta writes:
 "The Erotic rasa is the Permanent Emotional Mode of Delight generalized and made into a matter for direct perception by means of a form of cognition,` The tasting of rasa differs from memory, inference or any form of ordinary self-consciousness. Tasting itself is distinguished from the perception of our particular transitory mental states when they are aroused by the normal objects of experience. It is called `tasting` because it only tastes rasa, whose fundamental meaning is `juice` or `flavour`."
The spectators usually have the experience of each Permanent Emotional Mode within himself. And some selected from these are aroused and made recognized as the corresponding rasa by means of the artist`s skill.
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