how is British portrait painting different from Indian portrait painting
Answers
Answer: Indian artists often worked in guilds and were not celebrated as individuals with a signature style and an idiosyncratic creative flair, as we often find in the west. Before the 20th century in Indian art (after which individual artists in India began to enjoy greater exposure) there were very few Van Goghs, Michelangelos or Rembrandts – celebrated individual artists. That’s not to say a work of art, such as a temple, didn’t display considerable artists skill or become attached to a single person: but often a royal or religious dignitary would take the credit for commissioning the piece rather than the artist or artists who executed it.
2. In early Indian aesthetic theory, it was the viewer, not the artist, who was the vital component in ‘creating’ the work of art. During the 9th century AD India, a theory of artistic appreciation placed emphasis on the degree to which rasa – literally the juice of a fruit or vegetable, but metaphorically the best part of a thing – could be extracted from a work of art, expressed as a feeling or psychological state experienced by the rasika, the viewer, or connoisseur. A more sophisticated enhancement of this aesthetic theory saw that certain colours were associated with specific concepts, such as yellow with the heroic and so on – a point of comparison with western art, especially following some ideas on colour theory.
3. In early Indian art, many of the processes, styles, measurements, icons and so on were already codified in shared texts, known as shilpa shashtras, which would pre-determine many of choices the artist was faced with. For example, a fish or lotus petal was the idealised model for the elongated eyes found in many representations; the model for the female torso was the hour-glass shaped damaru drum, held by Shiva. I understand there were also models for western painting, especially as part of the academy, but I’m not sure to the extent they were codified or reproduced in artworks in the west.
4. In Indian belief systems, time is cyclical, not linear, and this has an affect on narrative representation. In short, once the constraints of linear time have been forgotten, several periods of time can appear on the artwork simultaneously. This is better illustrated with an image and its discussion.
5. The western approach of dividing Indian art into different periods, or styles, might be less appropriate when thinking of Indian art. As Richard Blurton writes in his Hindu Art, it doesn’t make sense to think of their being a Hindu art, or a Jain art, or Buddhist art; often the same artists and guilds would work on pieces for all religious beliefs and therefore be stylistically identical. Indian religions, too, have features in common and flourish side-by-side.