A fresh look at Indian art Book MONA LISA DOES NOT SMILE ANYMORE
(ISBN 978-81-8465-512-4 ) by VIKTOR VIJAY
Viktor Vijay's book
Mona Lisa does not smile anymore published by Studio Vasant Delhi (Mobile 9818301496)
"To paint appearences is to miss out on inner kernel of the world. Increasingly the commercial industrial thought and technologies have spilled over into art domain ; replication of apparent with digital manipulation and, camera use has taken over from the inner creative well of humanity. The technologies are not the blood and marrow of humanity, instead the direction, freedom, the vision from within are the structure of human enterprise. To abnegate the world of stock appearences we need to have inner spiritual cues. Not the knowledge of the external but the saturating unitary experience of the inner. In my art I work with chance and attempted negation of conscious, well planned, control of the artistic expression. I surrender so the Light will shine on creativity. The joining of Chance as a higher order of things with a consciousness that comes from within and transforms our ‘seeing’ is what my art is about. I call it Chance-Consciousness Art or Chancon
The second part of the book is called Mona Lisa does not smile anymore. The painting is a symbol of the so called Renaissance society. In the very time Vaso da Gama journeyed toIndiabegan the story of pain, sufferings and subjugation of Indians—the first experience of Colonialism. The rest of the world would suffer no less—slave trade, forced conversions, atrocities and Inquistion in the name of religion. It was a false Reniassance which caused untold suffering to people all over the world and the Mona Lisa’s smile was not shared by subjugated races. Here I deal with Indian art that was called inferior by Western colonists. This was the ruse of the colonizers to dub everything from the subjugated people to be inferior. The ancient Hinduism has a far deeper humanitarian philosophy at its back and the art created therefrom had a much bigger aestetics root in Humanism. I have argued that the Greco-Roman art that the West inherited was founded on arrogance, war and slavery and was therefore inferior as humanizing instrument. Indian art is poetic, spiritual, secular and with a great wisdom and philosophy behind it. I have toched upon the narrtives of travellers from Europe and China. While the former are very dismissive of Indian, art, religion, culture and people the Chinese on the other were highly respectful and record the flourishing India more truthfully. Chinese travelled as piligrim and seekers of Eternal truth in the religion of Gautam Buddha.
It is important to place all art in the context of humanity and Indian art aquits itself very well where as the same can not be said of West. Hinduism never demonized another faith and Indians had a placid curosity and respect for other faiths"excerpts from Mona Lisa does not smile anymore
