I think I fell in love with the sacred bronzes of South India for purely aesthetic reasons: the lithe poses, the serene faces and the seemingly jointless fingers and toes. I was excited by the way these forms – frozen in 2-D reproductions – spoke to those I was making in drawings and paintings. A funny connection to make across the divide of 1000 years and half a planet.
The first bronze I saw was in a slide lecture – Shiva as Nataraja, the Cosmic Dancer. In all of the research that followed, most of the sculptures that I came across came in the form of photographs, hardly ever in person.
Arriving in India, I can’t say that I had the clearest notion of what new insight I might gain from immersion in the rituals of temple worship. But I knew it would be different from a visit to the Met or an afternoon on ARTSTOR.
Like most everything in India, a trip to the temple is often crowded and sweaty, but always sensorily extravagant. To see the deity, you walk shoulder-to-shoulder with family, friends and neighbors through passageways and into the dark, humid inner sanctum of the temple. You come with flower garlands and leave with the red “kumkum” dot or a smearing of ash on the forehead, bananas and medicinal herbs in hand.
(photography in the innermost part of the temple isn’t allowed – these are from an outdoor procession at a temple in Mylapore, Chennai)
I’m working with an NGO called REACH (Rural Education and Conservation of Heritage) and have received a pretty incredible amount of help from a man named Chandra. One of my favorite memories thus far has been playing with his 7-year-old daughter and 5-year-old son in his family’s home before heading out to a museum, after I had just arrived in Chennai.
It’s funny to have travelled such a long distance inspired by 1000-year-old sculptures, and find myself deeply engaged in a game of dress-up with Barbie dolls.
Perhaps the immense enjoyment of playing with dolls has something to do with the importance of the body in temple worship. Perhaps it is the active bodily presence of an imagined “character” in one’s own physical space lends that both meaning. Watching Dora the Explorer on television is fine – but packing her backpack for a real life adventure? Infinitely better. Images in a textbook seem perfectly adequate until one is face-to-face with Shiva (or Parvati, or Vishnu) and feels Shiva himself looking back.
iconophilia 