Chapter Three: NOT THE REALITY OF SIGHT, BUT THE REALITY OF INSIGHT
"Colour is a power which directly influences the soul."
— Wassily Kandinsky [6]
On Saturday, June 4th, at 8:20 in the morning, Sri Chinmoy sat on his porch adding the last details to a fascinating drawing. It was a vertical work, 20" x 25-1/2", on a solid golden-yellow background. A grid of 39 x 100 boxes had been superimposed upon the page.
Sri Chinmoy responded to the geometric law of this grid to create a wide border at the top and bottom of the page. Then he allowed his pen to trail across the sunset-glow of the paper to produce sprawling and unbounded birds in green, purple and red ink.
Reproductions of the drawing were made that same day and were available in the evening when Sri Chinmoy displayed the drawing at a local school. He introduced it by announcing, "With this particular drawing, I have crossed the barrier of two and a half million birds."
Then, offering a unique insight into the inner significance of the drawing, he continued, "Green and purple are very powerful here. When I look at the green and purple, I feel God's Justice-Light, and when I look at the other colours, I feel His Compassion-Height. This is not the actual significance of the colours, but it is my inner feeling."
The drawing yielded 21,059 birds. More than ever, it confirmed the new direction that Sri Chinmoy's art was now taking. The cloudlike, vaporous forms that seemed to coalesce and separate before our eyes were such a huge departure from the Zen-like shapes of the first 100,000 drawings. In that initial series, the artist delineated one bird per page. Its territory was defined by this contained space, which served to preserve and even magnify the individuality of each creation. The uniqueness of each bird held our contemplative gaze.
Now, three years later, after exploring rows of horizontal birds, geometric patterns and the larger birds of his family series, Sri Chinmoy had arrived at a kind of tableau vivant of birds, or rather, of flecks of colour. The tip of his ballpoint remained almost continuously on the page, creating a continuum of linked, knotlike shapes. Taken individually, few have the detail of his earlier birds, yet the image they compose collectively is alive with expressive detail.
In many ways, it is like examining a Seurat painting. What at first seems solid and well-defined has, on closer inspection, a shifting, luminous quality. The major bird-shapes, which are themselves composed of thousands of miniature birds, have a suggestive and other-worldly lightness of being.
Frequently, it is the positioning of the bird's eye—the final touch—that seals our identification between these shapes and birds, for the shapes represent the utmost in simplification. In his adherence to his inner vision, the artist gives little importance to external likenesses. Beaks, wings and feathers have somehow been absorbed by the aesthetic purity of his newly emerging contours.
As we search for a context in which to discuss this form of sacred art, we are inevitably led back to the very roots of civilization and the historical evolution of writing. The first inscriptions made by man were actually pictograms—easily recognizable signs or symbols. When several of these were combined, it was possible to express a rounded thought or idea.
Thus it may be said that Sri Chinmoy's miniature bird shapes are pictograms which, like their forebears incised in stone, dissolve the barrier between art and the need for expression. They reflect the urge to make form synonymous with meaning. When Sri Chinmoy multiples his bird notations by the thousands, we can see his work taking on an almost calligraphic dimension. In ancient Indian art, to cite an interesting comparison, there are visual renderings of gods and goddesses which are composed entirely of Sanskrit letters or words repeated over and over. It adds a unique mystical depth to the experience of viewing these drawings to realise that each detail is composed of a sacred word.
Similarly, in the Muslim religion, there is a zoomorphic calligraphy that is exceedingly beautiful and elaborate [7]. In each case, the artistic refinement of a sacred sign or symbol creates works that feed the soul on many different levels. Sri Chinmoy's sanctification of the bird image, through his exclusive use of it in his drawings, falls naturally within this historical perspective.
