BY DHARAM BIR VOHRA

Our remote and pre-historic ancestor, the cave-man, is said to have amused himself by etching crude drawings on the walls of his strange dwelling-place. At that early period of human evolution, even the instrument of language was probably not yet invented and men had very inadequate means of communicating their thoughts and emotions to each other; they had little chance of enriching their mental resources by mutual intercourse and had to remain content with their own narrow and individual interpretation of the experiences of life. Even so, however, the impulse to art was manifestly present in them; and not only passively present but present as a vital, living force in their lives. When their other faculties were, at best, in a nebulous and amorphous condition, this one faculty, the faculty of art, had taken more than recognizable shape.

And what is more, the pursuit of art has persisted among the human race right from the days of the cave-man to the present age. Despite innumerable standstills necessitated by natural and social circumstances, and further, despite the inhibitory restrictions of various religious creeds, art has not only maintained its existence but has at times actually and vigorously flourished. Even now, in a most uncongenial atmosphere of machine-ridden uniformity, it continues to defend and expand its boundaries. The truth is that art is one of the most fundamental and natural activities of the human mind. Whether we will or not, we often find ourselves driven, if not to the creation of art, at least the appreciation of it. Our being at times seems to feel a need which only art can satisfy–and this is sufficient warrant that art will not be extinguished from this planet so long as we are human.

Of course, primarily, the artist pursues art for its own sake. For him, art is valuable because it satisfies an inner craving or because it enables him to deliver himself of something which gives anguish to his spirit. For him, therefore, art is life itself, entirely indispensable and entirely insistent. But though it is thus a completely personal and individual activity, it does not in the end remain confined to the person or the individuality of the artist; it transgresses these narrow limits and takes within its fold an increasing bulk of outer humanity. It arouses in un-numbered human beings the feelings and sensations which stirred the breast of its lone creator and thus becomes a faithful messenger of the human mind. The powerful influence of artists on society has, in fact, been noted since the earliest times. Many an ancient bard is known to have spurred on warriors to battle or to revenge; or to have kept alive the memory of heroes for ages and ages after they would have ordinarily been lost to oblivion. Musicians of all times and climes have at will governed the feelings of vast masses of people, arousing hatred, fear, or pride by no other agency than the cunning rhythm of their songs. Poetry also, the bearer of the passions and the delicate sensibilities of poets, has on countless occasions vindicated the rights of suppressed people and faced tyrants with the furious indignation and the mighty determination of those who had been trampled mercilessly under the iron heel.

But these and similar influences of art, though supremely impressive and potent, are only of secondary importance; they do not by any means give a true picture of the social aspect of art. For it is the effect, more enduring and fundamental, which art has on our individual being, that really matters. Political and other changes brought about through the agency of art, though they may be spectacular, have only a transitory character; while the changes produced in the individuals that compose society possess a far greater importance, whether theoretical or practical. Now true art, by its very nature, cannot have any but wholesome influences on individual character. For what makes the artist what he is, is his capacity to see life from a higher plane. He perceives realities to which we are ordinarily blind, and sees things in a light which gives them a novel significance. Then, through the medium of his art, he conveys to us, in however inadequate a manner, the experience through which he has passed, and enables us to have a glimpse, however fleeting, of the great truth which he has felt. Thus he raises us for a while from our accustomed plane of life and makes us realize poignantly the bondage into which we have wormed ourselves by our worship of trivialities and by our pettiness. In a word, the artist carries us to new spiritual heights–heights from where we can view our everyday existence, our deceitfulness, our injustice, our moral degradation. We therefore emerge from our experience of the artist’s art with a realization, and, perhaps, with a secret detestation, of our unregenerate ways. And this realization is, or can easily become, the first step to a more elevated standard of conduct.

To be truly effective, however, an artist’s work must be carried out in favourable conditions. In this connection it is important to remember that art is primarily an individualistic activity; the artist being concerned above all to record his own peculiar emotions and thoughts. Of course, these emotions and thoughts can by the nature of things never be divorced from the social influences in which the artist lives, and can, therefore, be regarded as taking their origin partly in society itself. But though this is in a sense true, the supreme fact remains that society only conditions, and does not determine, the artist’s sensibilities. It is this limitation that makes art possible; it is precisely because society cannot suppress the artist’s individuality that art manifests itself. But society can suppress the artist’s expression of his individuality by withholding popular recognition from such expression, or even more certainly by positively forbidding him to exercise his talents outside a narrowly restricted field. To do this is to deny the artist’s individuality the free play that alone can give rise to art, and thus artistic creation suffers; for as soon as any attempt is made to impose a preconceived control on art, true art vanishes and only a vile parody of it remains. Art, in fact, is like a fairy flower that perishes at the touch of human hand.

It is therefore tragic to see that, in the dictatorial countries today, art is being subjected to the most onerous and offensive restrictions. Every artist, whatever his medium of self-expression, is required to conform rigidly to the official view-point. He must support and corroborate the monomaniacal philosophies and inhuman fetishes that the dictators have popularized; he must aim solely at employing his art to subserve the interests of the government in power. It is clear that what submits to this silly regimentation is not art at all, even though it receives the applause and approval of the dictators concerned. For art, if it is real, demands for its subsistence an entire and undefiled freedom; it refuses to enslave itself to passing fashion or to dictatorial whim. Consequently, even if a true artist should consent to submit to totalitarian authority, he renders himself by the very act incapable, further, of creating anything that may go by the name of art. For the obligation to adhere to a set pattern will inevitably rob his work of spontaneity and sincerity–attributes which constitute the very essence of art. He will degenerate into a mere rhymster, or songster, or draftsman, as the case may be, and the nation will be the poorer for this descent from his original high estate. But even if he refrains from such an apostacy, he will be debarred from fulfilling his appointed social function. For his art, even if practised secretly for his own edification and at his own risk, will have no opportunity of influencing others and consequently of raising the quality of social life. Thus, to art, dictatorship means extinction, virtual if not actual; and with the extinction of art goes retrenchment of beauty and brutalization of humanity.

Those, therefore, who lay any store by art cannot honestly avoid ranging themselves against dictatorships. To them, dictatorship implies a vulgarization of life and a regression from culture. To them, dictatorship is a bondage of the human spirit and a suppression of all that is noblest in man. Consequently, it not only arouses in them a feeling of deep indignation but steels them in a determination to combat authoritarianism of all kinds.

For, ideally, the artist’s paradise is utter and unqualified freedom–which, politically speaking, is tantamount to anarchy. He does not want any sort of government, if government means a restriction of his movements, and would revel in an unorganised society. But after all, he cannot do without government and, therefore, submits himself to it under protest; urging, however, in default of his haven of anarchy, that such government should impose the minimum of restrictions on society and give its allegiance to no dogma or creed whatever. For as soon as the government affirms its faith in a definite philosophy, whether political or otherwise, it loses its plasticity and begins to show the baneful quality of discriminating consciously against other forms of belief–which is, in very truth, the first step to authoritarianism. The artist, therefore, would fain have the State fall into a fixed groove, without the option to change its course subsequently. He would, indeed, like it to incline towards democracy, but feel so without defining this vexed term, and one doctrinaire government is as bad as another.

Even if a government is congenial to art, the latter cannot adequately flourish without continuous and vigorous encouragement, at least until the time that the common people are appreciative enough of the value of art not to allow it to languish in neglect. This is doubly necessary in the present age because our scientific civilisation lays an undue stress on material values and tends altogether to ignore the spiritual values. If, therefore, we are not to allow our mental equilibrium to be wantonly destroyed, we should give art its due share in our lives; for art alone can relieve the drabness and inhumanity of a machine-ridden life. It is obviously for the State to encourage the creation and the appreciation of artistic works; and it can best do this by itself becoming a liberal purchaser of such works, using them for official ornamentation and decoration. Once it succeeds in thus popularizing true art, it need have no fear of the degradation of national life, for art is perhaps the best preservative of culture, of noble ideals, and of worthy conduct. Frequent contact with art by the commonalty cannot but have an ennobling influence on the character of individual and social life, for, as we have seen before, the very essence of art consists in transmitting for a while to the experiencing party the sharpened perception and the acute vision of the artist, thus enabling us to see ourselves and the world around us in better perspective. With this more enlightened perspective there naturally comes a sharp, if short-lived, urge to a higher morality, to justice, to sympathy, and to love. Such urges, following each other at fairly frequent intervals, can scarcely fail to raise the moral quality of a people and elevate its standards of conduct. And if, further, art flourishes in similar profusion among all peoples and all races, human relations cannot but improve tremendously. The character of art would, of course, differ with the native genius of the various peoples concerned, but the ultimate effect would be the same everywhere; for art, whatever its peculiar, circumstantial variety, is always the bearer of the same ennobling and edifying message.

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