FORMS & AESTHETICS

FORMS PART-I 46
LIGHT
SHADOW
COLOURS
CONTRAST
PAINTING
SCULPTURE
ARCHITECTURE
MUSIC
DANCE
THEATRE
LITERATURE
CULTURE
MATTERS
ELEMENTS
FORCE
NATURE
TIME PART-II 56
SPACE
UNIVERSE
SCIENCE
BODY
MIND
DREAM
MEMORY
SOUL
VISION
IMAGE
CREATION
COMPOSITION
WISDOM PART-III 63
LIBERTY
BEAUTY
LOVE
CONSCIOUSNESS
TRUTH
THE DIVINE
CINEMATOGRAPHY
 Forms and Aesthetics

“ The philosophy of expression is based on the science of human nature. The

science of human nature involves a knowledge of universal and eternal nature. The
microcosmos is an epitome of the cosmos. Man when thoroughly comprehended is
a key to eternal nature, but again who fails to comprehend nature fails to
comprehend himself.”
The basis of all form is motion. The basis of time is also motion. This basis
primarily of form, motion & time is numerical or mathematical. This profound
truth were wrought out by Greek philosopher Plato.

The raindrop falling from the cloud, the mottled lead from the tower, each assumes
the form of spheres before reaching the ground. The celestial bodies, it will be
remembered, also approach this from.

Development of life is primarily central. All organic forms of which the entire
history is known setout with a symmetrical arrangement of parts around a center.
From the central development, we pass insensibly to that higher kind of
development for seems ‘axial’ seems the most appropriate name. All mechanical
forces and powers are rotary in action. Even the liver act upon the same principle,
for when wielded by the hand of man
it describes a segment of a circle, and like a gesture, produces a circuloid shape
through the atmosphere, thus coming under the head of abstract form. Motion is
the form of force. Rotation of the earth is necessary for development of life. It is,
therefore, the type form of Nature-dominated by art in its inceptive or embryotic
state. Motions are the essential forces of art acting upon substance. The law of the
square and angle, of the line, the point, and the cube all are contained in the
spherical egg, just as all
of the ‘potencies and possibilities of life’ are contained in the human embryo.
The elementary principle of form, weight motion and number, as in mechanical
movements , are all embodied in the human organism, and are outwardly exhibited
by mechanism, artistic and scientific works.

Form is the outward expression of inner meaning. Form & Harmony

must rest only on a corresponding vibration of the Human Soul. One
of the elements in the Harmony of Form must be decided only by a corresponding
vibration in the Human Soul. - Wassily kandinsky
All our knowledge has its foundation in our senses. All our knowledge has its
origins in our perceptions. – Leonardo Da Vinci

FORMS
All forms of life that can not bear the change must disappear, all
that can bear it will survive and enter in to the kingdom of spirit.
- Sri Aurobindo
When patterns of shape or color are considered as form – that is, as images
representing some content – the question of artistic ‘invention’
or ‘imagination’ comes up, because it is by means of this gift that the artist creates
form. Imagination is sometimes misunderstood as the invention of new subject
matter. In that view an imaginative artist is
one who creates situations of which no one else has thought before or which have
never existed or never could exist. Actually the achievement of artistic imagination
could be describe more correctly as the finding of
new form for old content, or - if the handy dichotomy of form and content
is not used - as a fresh concept of an old subject. The invention of new things or
situation is valuable only to the extent to which they serve to interpret an old – that
is, universal – topic of human experience.

Imaginative form doesn’t spring from the desire to offer ‘something new’ but from
the need to revive the old. It springs from the original view that an individual or
culture will take spontaneously of the inner and outer world. Rather than distorting
reality, imaginative form reaffirms the truth. It is the unsought result of the attempt
to reproduce an experience as accurately as possible.
Imagination is indispensable, because a subject itself does not offer the form
needed to represent it. Form must be invented; and since no form invented by
someone else will fit an artist’s own experience, he himself has to do the inventing.
– Rudolf Arnheim

LIGHT
Light is primarily a spiritual manifestation of the Divine reality illuminative and
creative; material light is a subsequent representation or conversion of it into
matter for the purpose of the material energy. Our sense by its incapacity has
invented darkness. In truth there is nothing
but light, only it is a power of light either above or below our poor human vision’s
limited range.

Practically … all form is only an operation of consciousness impressing itself with

presentations of it’s own workings. We see color because that is the presentation
which consciousness makes to itself of one of it’s own operations; but color is only
an operation of Force working in the form of light, and light again is only a
movement, that is to say an operation of force.
– Sri Aurobindo
Light is the manifestation of force, the nature of the force
Being indicated by the color of the light. – Sri Aurobindo

SHADOW
That bore black fruit of suffering, death and bale.
Out of the chill steppes of a bleak unseen
Invisible, wearing the Night’s grey mask,
Arrived the shadowy dreadful messengers,
Invaders from a dangerous world of power,
Ambassadors of evil’s absolute. [‘Savitri’]

Black, as the equivalent of darkness, leaves the organ in a state

of response; white as the representative of lights, excites it.
- Goethe
“Life is a journey in the darkness of the night. Wakeup to the inner light.”

COLOURS
Color and light are always close to each other – color being more indicative, light
more dynamic. Color incandescent becomes light.

White light is the divine power of purity.

Blue the light of spiritual consciousness.
Gold the hue of the supramental knowledge.
Violet light is that of the divine Compassion,Grace.
Purple is the color of vital power.
‘Red’ the color of Physical consciousness.
Yellow is the characteristic color of mind.
Pink or pale rose of the psychic.
These are colors corresponding to the main forces of mind,
psychic, vital – they are not the colors of the beings.

Color is not so much a symbol of an emotion as a sign of what the emotion has
done to the character’s perception of the world.
-- Michelangelo Antonioni
The colors in the middle of the rainbow mingle together. The bow in itself is not in
the rain nor in the eye that sees it; though it is generated
by the rain, the sun and the eye. – Leonardo Da Vinci

CONTRAST
Beauty comes from contrast. I love contrast, either the lack of it or the abundance
of it. I love hot things in the frame when it’s appropriate. It gives the image some
sense of reality. Reality is not always perfectly balanced. I love it to be over the top
in a lot of instances, either too
dark or too light, to give it energy and a dynamic range.
– Conrad L. Hall
Explore contrast. Extreme contrast. Let the bleached whites and crushed blacks
give home to fear, to mystery, to the unknown. Single source lighting, pools,
fragments of the single source. Broken bleeding hot whites framed by pitch black.
Black as infinity. Sculpt with black.
Direct the eye. Further, create the mystery in the blacks and, with more difficulty,
the bleached whites ….. - Robert Richardson ASC

PAINTING
The first merit of manipulation … is that delicate & ceaseless
expression of refined truth which is carried out to the last touch,
and shadow of a touch, and every gradation full of meaning.

The second quality of execution is simplicity. The more unpretending, quiet &
retiring the means, the more impressive their effect.

The third is mystery. Nature is always mysterious and secret in her

use of means; and art is always likest her when it is most inexplicable.

The fourth is inadequacy. The less sufficient the means appear to the
end, the greater … will be the sensation of power.

The fifth is decision; the appearance, that is, that whatever is done,
has been done fearlessly and at once; because this gives us the impression
that both the fact to be represented, and the means necessary to its representation,
were perfectly known.
The sixth is velocity. Not only is velocity, or the appearance of it,
agreeable as decision is, because it gives idea of power and knowledge;
but of two touches, as nearly as possible he same in the other respects,
the quickest will invariably be the best. This is qualities are the only
perfect legitimate sources of pleasure in execution.

I might have added a seventh – strangeness, which in many cases

is productive of a pleasure not altogether mean or degrading, though
scarcely right. – John Ruskin
Have a painter’s eye. The Painter creates by looking.

The pistol-shot of painter’s eye dislocate the real. Then the painter puts
it up again and organizes it in that same eye, according to his taste, his methods,
his ideal beauty. -- Robert Bresson

SCULPTURE
In the same way, the choice of using fragment allowed Rodin to com-
bine his desire to portray the body as a morsel of life with his study of
the dynamic relationship between volume and space. All the energy of movement
is concentrated in one isolated fragment of the body and the gaze is drawn along
lines of force that have been decontextualized by the
suppression of all bodily attributes and clues. This can be seen as a way of
neutralizing the emotional force of the body, which Rodin considered overly
conventional in sculpture, and of underlining the importance of the volume &
overall orientation of the human form.
– critics on ‘The Kiss’
Your spirit should conceive of every surface as the extremity of a volume which is
pushing it from behind. Imagine the shapes are pointing towards you. All life
springs forth from a center, then germinates & spreads from the interior to exterior.
It is the same in a beautiful sculpture, one can always see the signs of a powerful
inner impulse.

Patience! Do not rely on inspiration. It does not exist. The only quality of artist are
wisdom, attention, sincerity and will power. Carryout your task like an honest
workman. – Auguste Rodin

ARCHITECTURE
I call that living architecture there is sensation in every inch of it, and
an accommodation to every architectural necessity, with a determined variation in
arrangement, which is exactly like the related proportions
and provisions in the structure of organic form. – John Rushin

MUSIC
The visual language is an undulating language. Like music, it has to have it’s peaks
and valleys. Those rhythms are very important. I know which shot to concentrate
on, and it’s often the close-up – you know you’re going to be there emotionally at
that time. – Conrad Hall

Music follows the rule of all things on earth – unless they are turned to the Divine
they cannot be divine.

No, it is the music, and music is not necessarily melody. It is a relation of sounds
which is not necessarily melodic melody is a part of this relation of sounds.
To keep yourself occupied with music & writing is always good for your nature
finds there its inborn occupation and that helps to maintain the vital energy…
– The mother

Silence is necessary to music but is not part of music. Music leans on it.
- Robert Bresson
Anandavardhana is the first theorist of aesthetics to lay down unmistakably that
music has for its meaning nothing but ‘rasadis’ and
that meaning would be lost upon those who have no aptitude, though
they might have receive lessons in the theory of ‘svaras’, ‘shrutis’ etc .

Though the primary context of ‘rasa-bhavas’ happens to be

‘abhinaya’ in ‘natya.’

The ‘Nada Brahman’ of music is given full explanation in the later treatises of
‘Agama’ and ‘Mantrashastra.’ The origin of the universe as macrocosm with its
parallel in the microcosm is fully investigated in
‘shaivagamas which speak of ‘nada’, ‘bindu’ and ‘kala’. The Sarasvati-rahasya
Upanishad deals with it in a concise form, equating aesthetic experience with
‘nirvikalpasamadhi’ of Yoga.
- Rasa Theory

DANCE
When the history of Indian literature is traced from the very beginning of its
existence, innumerable references to the dance are found in almost all religious,
theological, sociological and literary works enabling the historian to reconstruct the
story of dance. Dance began as an elemen-
tary expression of life-force inherent in Man. As civilization advanced, dance
became a vocation and an entertainment. On the other hand it also became a part of
the ritualistic practices of Man’s faith which developed into temple dancing and
later on into classical dancing. Dance is mentioned in ritual, entertainment and as
an accomplishment in the
Vedas. It also used in Vedic imagery such as the famous, oft-quoted
description of Usha the Goddess of dance rising to dispel darkness,
‘resplendent like a dancer.

The Ramayana and the Mahabharata are full of descriptions of specially

constructed dance-halls and of dances of joy performed at royal celebrations.
Ravana was an exquisite dancer and so was Arjuna
who was trained by Chitrasena. In the age of Purans dance developed further and
became a systemized art. The Skanda Purana & the Bhagawata Purana refer
copiously to the art while the Agnipurana
has a separate instructive section dealing with natya based of course
on the Natya Shastra.”
History of Bharata Natyam

THEATRE

After the realization of the Brahman, man can’t return back to this world. The
aesthetic delight in theatre reveals like a close reunion
with the Brahman. After the performance is over people might goes
back to the reality, sometimes they even forget the experience.
All the deeper impacts always have a cast over the mind, for those,
Who likes and blotted the whole performance.”
From the Bengalli lecture of Sambhu Mitra (theatre personality) in 1977

The audience finds in the kabuki a similar concept at work. The actors gesture
doesn’t reproduce reality. A rhythmic and designed ordering of
the gesture observed in actuality. The design emerges on the surface of the gesture
and therein lies its artistic validity. The setting is not conceived as an illusionistic
representation of reality, but terms of a decorative background for actors. The
audience doesn’t go to the
theatre to be moved by images made to resemble those occurring in actuality, but
by images clearly distinguish from reality by the precision of their design.
The visual perception of Japanese people being acute, their artist have expressed
themselves most frequently in visual images. It is significant
That Japanese were made to deny Christianity not by oath but by treading upon a
religious image. All of the kabuki audience, with a possible exception of the child
in arms, is familiar with the poetical form of the Haiku. Whose images are
generally visual.
-- Earle Ernst
LITERATURE
Literature indeed, the mirror of life in all its colors and phases, in all
times. Political & general history is reduced to a mere skeleton when it
is not made vivid with flesh and blood and life by the magical touches
of literature. It is possible to divide our study according to ….
I) the language of expression
II) the dominating religious & philosophical thought
III) the form or category of literature such as – kavya, nataka

Our main interest, however, will lie in the subject-matter rather than
mere form or language; for that is the real substance of our enquiry.
It is to be remembered that both life and literature are a continuous process and the
division suggested are merely convenient for students.
- S. R. Sharma
To understand the language of a text is
To recognize the world to which it refers. – Jonarthan Culler

The secret world of the godhead is a world of language, a world of

divine names that unfold the accordance with a law of their own ….
Letters and names are not only conventional means of communications.
They are far more. Each of them represents a concentration of energy
and expresses a wealth of meaning which can not be translated…
- Leonard Orr

The deconstruction, rather, annihilates the ground on which the building stands by
showing that the text has already annihilated that ground, knowing or
unknowingly. Deconstruction is not a dismantling of structure of a text but a
demonstration that it has already dismantled itself.
– Review, criticism as cure

If you have a structure, there may be boundless freeplay among the elements either
out side or inside the structure, bound only by the structure, the center also closes
off the free play it opens up and makes possible.
- Derrida
CULTURE
The vitality of culture last only so long as the best men in the dominant minority of
each generation find self-fulfillment by living up to its fundamental values afresh.
These value can’t be handed down from father to son as if it were a legacy. Every
generation must recapture it afresh by trying to live up to it.
The values of a culture are recaptured for each generation by a subtle process of re-
interpretation, re-integration and adaptation. When the culture is living, the
promising young man & woman of the generation receive the impact of its
fundamental values.
suppose a time comes in India- God forbid – when our young men and women are
lost to the values and ideals of our culture, our culture would be dead. Then they
may become civilized barbarians or second-class
Westerners, but they can never be the torch-bearers of a living Indian
Culture for the age in which they live or for the future.
- K.M. Munshi,

The two types of mind, thus, are complementary: the tough-minded,

representing the inert, reactionary and the tender, the living progressive impulse-
respectively, attachment to the local and timely and impulse to the timeless
universal. In human history the two have faced each other in dialogue since the
beginning and the effect has been that actual progress and process from lesser to
greater horizons, simple to complex organizations, slight to rich patterns of the art-
works whish is
civilization in its flowering in time. – Joseph Campbell

MATTERS
Matter is by no means fundamentally real; it is a structure of energy.
Again matter and mind are the two aspect of the Vedic Agni. It can
then be argued that the matter aspect must keep pace with the mind
aspect for preserving essential unity to let the individuality of man develop
harmoniously. If it is so, matter must refine itself to the stage where continues
good thinking of man becomes a possibility for an
evolved life of the spirit. The spiritual leader of humanity also bear
out of this idea. Sri Aurobindo, for example, conceives of the advent
of the divine forms of a richer mould for divine consciousness to
manifest itself. Plato tells us of the immortal, immaterial forms towards which
material forms are ever advancing to realize them in their highest aim of realizing
the form of ‘Good’. Bishop Barnes thinks of the
intelligent forms other than those constituted of the matter of our
common sense conception and understood by our terrestrial chemistry.
When matter is refined, the vital airs (Pranas) also reap the benefit
of the regenerated material and the glorious character of the bearer.
Noble material mould must harmonise with noble consciousness ;
at least, that appears to be the working of the law in the spheres of
matter. - G. G. Desai

“ Matter shall reveal the spirit’s face. ” - ‘Savitri’

ELEMENTS
Five elements in Indian philosophy, earth-water-fire-wind-ether.

Out of abysmal trance her spirit woke.

Lain on the earth-mother’s calm inconscient breast
She saw the green-clad branches lean above
Guarding her sleep with their enchanted life
And overhead a blue-winged ecstasy
Fluttered from bough to bough with high-pitched call.”
Savitri – epilog
I chant the Fire that is kindled with the word for fuel, the fire that is pure and
makes pure; Fire that is steadfast for ever and marches in front
in the Rite of the path. We desire with his felicities the Illumined, the Priest of the
call, the harmless, rich with many blessings, the seer who knows all births that are
– Bharadvajas’ hymns to Agni

The Yajurveda conceives of Agni’s uniting with the motherly earth and water as
Agnibhasma (ash) and of His taking newer and newer forms in this theatre of
action.
The Agni functioning in the human body as the breath of life to keep it alive, is
gratefully remembered to purify the sacrifices after cutting his roots of evil. The
Vedic seers do not conceive of this Prana (life) as the lone product of the chemical
changes going on in the body but as a part of the immortal vayu (wind) to which it
finally returns when the body becomes a heap of ashes after death. –
G. G. Desai

FORCE
Force is nothing but the power of being in motion.

All phenomenal existence resolves itself into Force, into a movement of energy
that assumes more or less material, more or less gross or subtle forms for self-
presentation to its own experience. – Sri Aurobindo

NATURE
Nature excites me like a lover, supports me like a mother. She shows
the beauty is in everything and is everywhere. He is equally beautiful at dawn, at
midday, in the evening; for she is harmony, balance; in a word, she is life.
-Auguste Rodin

… without lacking naturalness, they lack nature.

… sans manquer de naturel, manquent de nayure. - Chauteaubriand

Nature, so receptive, so open to the grace! if only we could

be likewise … - The mother

Our lives are all wrong. A person has no need of society, it is society that’s needs
him. Society is a defence mechanism, a form of self protection. Unlike a
gregarious animal, a person must live in isolation, close to nature, to animals and
plants, and be in contact with them.
- Andrey Tarkovsky

TIME
Time immortalizes death.
Time are the forms of Brahman.
Night was born and from night the flowing of ocean of being and on
the ocean Time was born to whom is subjected every seeing creature.
- Rig Veda
For many years I have been tormented by the certainty that the most
extraordinary discoveries await us in the sphere of time.
The one important thing is to find Time within Time…
It is enormously difficult, but it has to be done.
- Tarkovsky
SPACE
Scale, not size, is actually what remains constant in perception.’
Gibson
Visual perception orient itself in pyramidal space correctly and directly without
need for the intellect to translate the findings into what they would mean in a
homogeneous world.’
Within a frontal plane, Space is approximately Euclidean; and up to a few yards of
distance from the observer, shape & size are actually seen
as unchangeable. Our reasoning has taken a simplified conception of visual space.
In the pyramidal world the relation of shape and size are perceived so directly that
it is impossible to ‘see in perspective’ for a naïve observer; because seeing in
perspective means perceiving the inhomogeneous world as a distorted
homogeneous one, in which the effect of depth appears as the same kind of
crookedness that we observe when a twisted thing is seen in a frontal plane.

Art educates the integration of all mental capacities by putting

intellectual insight for the unification of space.

Perceptually and artistically the central perspective violates the basic concept of
the object more strongly than other method of space representation. Central
perspective creates the image of a world that
has a center and compositions have always been grouped around a central motif
furnished by the subject matter. Space itself converges towards a
center. Isometric space is homogenous. It gives no preference to any
one location. Focusing perspective establishes a base, from which
activity irradiates and to which all existence is referred.
- Rudolf Arnhiem
UNIVERSE
The soul of man, a traveler, wanders in this cycle of Brahman, huge,
a totality of lives, a totality of states, thinking itself different from the impeller of
the journey. Accepted by Him, it attains its goal of immortality.
Once we admit this principle that the universe is progressive, the unfolding
progressive, that instead of seeing everything together and all at once, our
perception is progressive , then every thing takes its right place within it. And
inevitably, the future perfection must be felt as
something higher than what was there before. The realization towards which we
are moving must necessarily seem superior to the one which was accomplished
before. And this opens the door to every thing – to
all possibilities. –The Life Divine

SCIENCE
Science in its very nature is knowledge, is intellectuality, and its whole work has
been that of the Mind turning its gaze upon its vital & physical frame and
environment to know and conquer and dominant life and matter. The scientist is
Man the thinker mastering the forces of material Nature by knowing them. Life &
Matter are after all our standing-ground, our lower basis and to know their process
and their own proper possibilities and the opportunities they give to the human
being
is part of the knowledge necessary for transcending them. Life
and the body have to be exceeded, but they have also to be utilized
and perfect. Neither the laws nor the possibilities of physical nature
can be entirely known unless we know also the laws and possibilities
of superphysical Nature; therefore the development of new and the recovery of old
mental & psychic sciences have to follow upon the perfection of our physical
knowledge, and that new era is already beginning to open upon us. But the
perfection of the physical science
was a prior necessity and had to be the first field for the training of
the mind of man in his new endeavour to know Nature and possess
his world.
- The synthesis of Yoga
BODY
The body is a universe, a womb within which all forms are created and evolved.
Only the bearer of this womb knows its mysteries; only a women truly knows the
experience of conception, gestation and birth.

I hear the mother Nature,

Seeing the indivisible spirit,
Created the universe
From within herself.
That is why it is said:
‘Within the universe
 All have the nature of women,
Not man.’
- Songs of Kangal

For the aspirant, this body is the great object of delusion. One who can conquer
that, attains to liberation.
There are three states of consciousness in the body. Waking, dream and
dreamless sleep. In the waking state of consciousness, man finds his fullest activity
in the body. He identifies himself with the body, although he is really separate
from it. Dream belongs to the subtle body. It enjoys subtle objects and sees only
what has been done in the wake full state.
In dreamless sleep, when there is no object at all, no pleasure or pain, the soul
shines in its own glory.
-Vivekacudamani

If we cultivate the body by a clear-sighted and rational method, at the same time
we are helping the growth of the soul, its progress and enlightenment
– The Mother

The limitations of the body are a mould; soul and mind have to pour themselves
into them, break them and constantly remould them in
wider limits till the formula of agreement is found between this finite
and their own infinity. – Thoughts and Glimpses
MIND
All human thought, all mental man’s experience moves between a constant
affirmation and negation; there is for his mind no truth of idea, no result of
experience that can’t be affirmed, none that can’t be negated.
It has negated the existence of the individual being, negated the existence of the
cosmos, negated the existence of underlying reality, negated the reality beyond the
individual and the cosmos.
It has to do so because our thinking mind is in its very nature an ignorant dealer in
possibilities, not processing the truth behind any of them, but sounding and testing
if it may get some settled belief or knowledge about them. It proceeds from a
fundamental ignorance and has no hold on assured truth; all the truth on which it
relies for a time are found to be
partial, incomplete and questionable.

DREAM
This self is a self of knowledge, an inner light in the heart; he is conscious being
common to all the states of being and moves in both worlds. He becomes a dream-
self and passes beyond this world and its forms of death…. There are two planes of
this conscious being, this and the other worlds; a third state is their place of
joining, the state of dream, and when he stands in this place of their joining, he
sees both planes of his existence, this world and the other world. When he sleeps,
he takes the substance of this world in which all is and him self undoes and himself
builds by his own illumination, his own light; when this conscious being sleeps, he
becomes luminous with his self-light… All objects – sensations he creates by his
own light.
– Brihadaranyaka Upanishad.

MEMORY
Memory is greater: without memory men could think & know nothing
… As far as goes the movement of memory, there he ranges at will.”
- Chhandogya Upanishad
SOUL
There is only one soul and one existence; therefore we all see one objectivity only;
but there are many knots in the mind and ego in the
one soul-existence, therefore we all see the one object in different light and
shadow. - Thoughts and Aphorisms

The soul is a figure of the Unmanifest,

The mind labours to think the Unthinkable,
The life to call the Immortal into birth,
The body to enshrine the Illimitable.
-‘savitri’

VISION
When you see Light, that is vision; when you feel Light entering into you, that is
experience; when light settles in you and bring illumination and knowledge, that is
a realization. – Sri Aurobindo

Vision is not sufficient; one must become what is inwardly one sees.
The whole inner life must be changed so as to represent perfectly in
all parts of the being what is understood by the intellect and seen by the inner
perception. – Isha Upanishad
I say the power of vision extends through the visual rays to the surface of non-
transparent bodies, while the power possessed by this bodies extends to the power
of vision. – Leonardo Da Vinci

IMAGE
Eye-Spectator-imagination-pre visual experience-focus-abstraction-vision
formulate the image, doubt will arise if there is no eyes to see, how it will

The inductivist ideal of pure observation has proved a mirage in science

no less than in art. The very idea it should be possible to observe without any
expectation, that you can make your mind an innocent blank on which nature will
record its secrets. Language grows by introducing new words, but a language
consisting only of new words and new syntax would be indistinguishable from
gibberish. More is needed than a rejection of tradition, more also than an ‘innocent
eye.’ Art itself becomes the innovator’s instrument for probing reality.
The visual field, I think,’ wrote J.J. Gibson, ‘is simply the pictorial mode of visual
perception, and it depends in the last analysis not on conditions of stimulation but
on conditions of attitude. The visual field
is the product of the chronic habit of civilized men of seeing the world
as a picture … so far from being the basis, it is kind of alternative to ordinary
perception.’ “ You can only discover what was always there. Ultimately we owe it
to this invention that we can now discover for ourselves that the world can be
contemplated as pure appearance and
as a thing of beauty. -- E. H. Gombrich

An image must be transformed by contact with other

images as is a color by contact with other color.

In this language of images, one must loose completely the notion of image. The
images must exclude the idea of image.’- Robert Bresson

At times all looks unreal and remote:

We seem to live in fiction of our thoughts
Pieced from sensation’s fanciful traveler’s tale,
Or caught on the film of the recording brain,
A figment or circumstance in cosmic sleep.
An image of ego treads to an ignorant dream
Counting the moments of a spectral time.
Savitri – book II, canto V
CREATION
The Artist must have something to say, for mastery over the form
is not his goal but rather the adapting of form to its inner meaning.

This is beautiful which is produced by the inner need, which

springs from the soul. – Wassily Kandinsky.

After experiencing the beauty in painting or any passionate music; what is there
effect on us ? your mind is shaken off from its usual ways your peace with yourself
is disturbed. You are led down the lane of deep repressed memories, perhaps
reaching as far back as your past life. that is indeed the spiritualised realm of Rasa,
which like yogic trance, leads you to self discovery as nothing else can. -
Dhvanyaloka

The inner self is of the nature of Ananda [rasa]

You can experience it within your self. -Taittiriya Upanishad

COMPOSITION
A vast possibility of different factors and conditions and way of seeing.
Each correlate with the others, consisting various forms.

Simple composition, which is regulated according to an obvious

and simple form. This kind of composition I call the Melodic.”

Complex composition, consisting of various forms, subjected more or less

complete to a principle form . Probably the principal form may be hard to grasp
outwardly, and for that reason possessed of a strong inner value. This kind of
composition I call the Symphonic.”

A direct impression of outward nature, expressed in purely artistic

form. This I called an ‘Impression.’ A largely unconscious, spontaneous
expression of inner character, the non-material nature. This I call an
‘Improvisation.’ An expression of a slowly formed inner feeling, which
comes to utterance only after long maturing. This I call a ‘composition.’
In this, reason, consciousness, purpose, play an overwhelming part. But for the
calculation nothing appears, only the feeling .
– W. Kandinsky

Light – impose beauty, symbolic, drama, visionary ...

Color – warm, cold, mute, outburst, love, violence, psychological …
Contrast – visual, recreated, appearance of image …
Zones – emotion, visual-harmony, sense of 3 dimensional reality …
Movement – towards-ness, outward-ness, static, blur …

The purest, freest form of insight into existence as it is shows us nothing but
movement. Two things alone exist, movement in space, movement in time, the
former objective, the latter subjective. – Sri Aurobindo

Shape – geometry, visual-rhythm, balance, distortion …..

Balance – light-shadow, big-small, mass-volume …
Space – perspective, isolation, congested, depth-planes …
Graphics – urban, village, circle, triangle, non-uniformity …
Rhythm – in-movement-volume-placing-lines-pattern, curve …

If it is true our rates & rhythm of blinking refer directly to the rhythm and
sequence of our inner emotions and thoughts, then those rates and rhythms are
insights into our inner selves and, therefore, as characteristic of each of us as our
signatures. - Walter Murch

Force – in movement-shape-orientation-camera-action …
Force is nothing but the power of being in motion .
Energy – expression, movement, visualization, lens ...
Harmony – color, shape, graphics, theme …

‘Rhythm & harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul.’
-- Plato

Expression – nature, human, love, virtual-reality, vision …

Texture – nature, masculine, feminine, earth. water ...
Camera – dynamic, invisible, light, movement, virtuality …
Aesthetics – imagination-symbolic-beauty-stylization,
Power in vision-virtual reality-inner sense …
Stand point – art-ethics-humanity-interpretation-truth …

WISDOM
When we have passed beyond knowing, then we shall have
Knowledge reason was the helper reason is the bar.
There are two allied powers in man: knowledge & wisdom. Knowledge is so much
of the truth, seen in a distorted medium, as the mind arrives at by grouping;
wisdom what the eye of the divine vision sees in the spirit.

Later I learned that when reason died then wisdom was born;
before that liberation, I had only knowledge. – Sri Aurobindo

LIBERTY
To observe the law we have imposed on ourselves rather than the law of others is
what is meant by liberty in our unregenerate conditions. Only in God and by the
supremacy of the spirit can we enjoy a perfect freedom.
- Thought and Aphorisms

BEAUTY
Beauty in his foot print showing us where he had passed.

A divine harmony shall be earth’s law,

Beauty and – Joy remold her way to live
-- Sri Aurobindo
LOVE
In the beginning the world was inchoate,
There was nothing but a great
Featureless mass, no earth, sea, stars or moon;
But soon
Sky was set above earth, land ringed with sea,
Chaos retired to its own vacancy,
Forest and air gave beasts and birds their living quarters,
And fish larked deep in the new waters.
Though this lonely, empty place
Wandered the nomadic human race,
Powerful, uncouth brutes
Whose home was the forest, who ate grass and fruits
And bedded on leaves, long shunning one another
Suspiciously, brother ignoring brother.
What softened those fierce natures ? Pleasure, they say.
A man and woman met in a wood one day
And wondered what to do….
-‘The Art of Love’ - Ovid
What is love? I don’t know. Not that I don’t know love,
but I don’t know how to define it. – Andrey Tarkovsky
Love is like a flame that changes what is hard into something malleable and even
sublimates this malleable thing into a kind of purified vapour – it doesn’t destroy,
it transforms. In its essence, in its origin, love is like
a flame which overcomes all resistances. You can experience this in yourself:
whatever the difficulty in your being, whatever the burden of accumulated error,
ignorance, incapacity and bad will, a single second
of this pure, essential, supreme love dissolves it as in an all-powerful flame; a
single moment and a whole past can disappear; a single instant
in which you touch it in its essence and a whole burden is consumed.
-- The Mother
CONSCIOUSNESS
If we go a little way within ourselves, we shall discover that there is in each of us a
consciousness that has been living throughout the ages and manifesting in a
multitude of forms.

One could say that only limits make differences – differences in time, differences
in space, differences in size, differences in power. It is only the limits. And as soon
as the consciousness goes outside its limit at any point in the manifestation, what
ever the dimension of this manifestation- yes , the dimension of this manifestation
has absolutely no importance -
at any point in the manifestation, if one goes outside the limits, it is
the Consciousness. -- The Mother

Not only Brahman, but beings and things in Brahman are eternal; their creation and
destruction is a play of hide & seek with our outward consciousness.
- Sri Aurobindo
TRUTH
The artist is a being who strives to master ultimate truth. The artist masters that
truth every time he creates something perfect something whole.
Truth does not exist in itself; it lies in the method, it is -- the way.’
-- Andrey Tarkovsky

We know Saraswati to be that power of the truth, which we call inspiration.

Inspiration from the truth purifies by getting rid of all falsehood, for all sin
according to the Indian idea is merely falsehood, wrongly inspired emotions,
wrongly directed will and action. The central idea of life and ourselves from which
we start is a falsehood and all else is falsified by it. Truth comes to us as a light, a
voice, compelling a change of thought, imposing a new discernment of ourselves
and around us. Truth of thought creates truth of vision forms in us truth of being
and out of truth of being [satyam] flows naturally truth of the emotion, will and
action. This is indeed the central notion of the ‘Veda’.
- Sri Aurobindo
THE DIVINE
‘…Look at a rose, a thing that contains such a concentration of spontaneous beauty
– not man-made : spontaneous, a blossoming; one
has only to see it to be sure that there is Divine. It is a certainty. One cannot… it is
impossible not to believe ….
For me existence is an incontestable proof that there is… that there is nothing but
That – something we cannot name, cannot define, cannot describe, but something
we can feel and can more and more become.
A something that is more perfect than all the perfections, more beautiful than all
the beauties, more marvelous than all the marvels, so that even
The totality of all that exists cannot express it. And there is nothing but that. And it
is not a something floating in nothingness : there is nothing but That.
- The Mother

A glad and strong and helpful submission is demanded to the working of the
Divine Force, the obedience of the illumined disciple of the Truth, of the inner
warrior who fights against obscurity and falsehood, of the faithful servant of the
Divine. – Sri Aurobindo

CINEMATOGRAPHY with Bresson :

Cinematography : new way of writing, therefore of feeling.’

Cinematography is a writing with images, movement and with sound.’

No absolute value in an image. Images and sound will owe their value and their
power solely to the use to which you destine them.’

cinematography films : emotional, not representational.’

Not beautiful photography, not beautiful images, but necessary images and
photography.’

Your camera passes through faces, provided no mimicry gets in bet- ween.
Cinematographic films made of inner movements which are seen.’

Let it be the intimate union of the images that charges them with
emotion. Catch instants. Spontaneity, freshness.

The Future of cinematography belongs to a new race of young solitaries

who will shot films by putting their last penny into it and not themselves be taken
in by the material routines of the trade.

Theatre and Cinema : alteration of believing and not believing. Cinematography :

continually believing .

Cinematography, a military art. Prepare a film like a battle.

The cinematographer is making a voyage of discovery on an

unknown planet .

Let nothing be changed and all be different.

The insensible bond, connecting your furthest apart and most

different images, is your vision.

Someone who can work with the minimum can work with the most.
One who can with the most cannot, inevitably, with the minimum.

Hide the ideas, but so that people find them.

The most important will be the most hidden.

Images chosen in prevision of their inner association.

To be constantly changing lenses in photographing is like

constantly changing one’s glasses.

Model. You illumine him and he illumines you. The light you receive from him is
added to the light he receives from you.

Neither beautifully nor uglify. Do not denature.

It is in its pure form that an art hits hard.

Expression through compression. To put into an image

what a writer would spin out over ten pages.
The most ordinary word, when put into place, suddenly acquires brilliance. That is
the brilliance with which your images must shine.