Tantric Corporeality Concept and Indian Modern Artist Jagdish Swaminathan

DOI

10.2991/iccessh-18.2018.119How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Indian Modern Art; Jagdish Swaminathan; body; Tantra; corporeality; yantra; Neotantrism; geometry

Abstract

This article investigates the trend in Indian modern art focused on the search for national identity in Indian traditional art. The early work of the Delhi artist Jagdish Swaminathan (1928-1994) and its connection with Tantric visual culture, a tradition spread throughout Indian subcontinent together with the Vaishnava and Shiva directions of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism since the 5th century AD, is considered. The inseparable connection of this tradition with bodily practices (meditation and yoga) and special ideas about the human and divine body, common to Indian religious and philosophical thought, specify the concept of corporeality, making it possible to reveal the features of a Tantric body reflected on the structure of a sacral object - yantra - as interpreted by Swaminathan. The paper considers the image of yantra, intrinsic to the theoretical and practical doctrines of salvation (tantras). J. Swaminathan's creative and theoretical program and its reflection in his early series "Color geometry of space" (1967) are analyzed. The research reveals how the artist reinterprets pictorial representation of European art, with the help of Tantra and its space and body concepts creating his own version of modernism, based on Indian artistic traditions and the specific symbolism of religious mysticism.

Copyright

© 2018, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Lisa Kuzina
PY  - 2018/07
DA  - 2018/07
TI  - Tantric Corporeality Concept and Indian Modern Artist Jagdish Swaminathan
BT  - Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Contemporary Education, Social Sciences and Humanities (ICCESSH 2018)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 530
EP  - 535
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/iccessh-18.2018.119
DO  - 10.2991/iccessh-18.2018.119
ID  - Kuzina2018/07
ER  -