Page 22 - Studio Internationa - March 1971

Tantric imagery: Western curiosity with the esoteric mysticism the occidental understanding of the term.
and unique imagery of Tantra has been Tantric images are described as 'tools, aids,
affinities with illuminated by several recent exhibitions and by visual supports or psychological apparatus', used
R.K.Mookerjee's books Tantra Art and to evoke divinities, which, through supreme
twentieth-century Tantra Asana. concentration during meditation, help the
This commentary contains essentially Yogin to visualize Ultimate Reality,
abstract art conjectural analogies between Tantric imagery Enlightenment, or Nirvan.
and its pictorial affinities with western abstract Yantras are 'power diagrams', of an abstract,
Virginia Whiles art. Similarities in form suggest comparisons in geometrical or figurative nature, which reveal
content. However, to correlate elements of the underlying structure of the universe. In
Tantric philosophy with certain metaphysical order to interpret them, it is important to
preoccupations in twentieth-century abstract understand the philosophical context of the
art is dubious, simply because of the imagery.
fundamental differences in the aims and The term Tantra comes from its Sanskrit
environment of two creative languages. roots : tan = 'to expand in continuing, unfolding
Tantric imagery is a system of signs within a process', and tra = 'tool'. Therefore, Tantra =
very specific semantic code, the function of `that which extends knowledge'. It developed

which is essentially religious and spiritual. It from Mahayana Buddhism and Vedanta
follows a strict iconographical canon which Hinduism, and first appeared as an ideological
involves the fusion of the collective and sect during the fourth century AD in north-east
individual consciousness. Western abstract art India, and gradually influenced Yoga from the
manifests a deliberate activity based on sixth century onwards. It flourished
individual consciousness, which is free from a particularly during the tenth to twelfth centuries
collective sign system. It is concerned with the AD, from Nalanda in Bengal. Tantra owed much
individualization of creative activity rather than to early lain texts on astronomy and astrology
with the communication of a collective belief. for its extraordinarily expansive cosmogony. Its
Whereas Tantric symbols have a specific aim is, by way of essentially 'living' rites, to
Astronomical Computation
Painting, Tangra, c. eighteenth century function, those in abstract art conceive of form reach enlightenment in one life and to avoid the
Courtesy: Ravi Kumar as content, so any attempt to correlate the endless cycle of rebirths. The emphasis is on
2 Devi Ambika spiritual implications of the two can only be 'psycho-experimental' methods, involving
from an illuminated manuscript
Rajasthan, c. seventeenth century hypothetical and incidental. highly complex rituals of a physiological and
Private coll. Courtesy: Ravi Kumar It is erroneous to call Tantric imagery 'art' in occult nature under what Bharati has called
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