Part two of my sculptural journey, which began with the Rodin show at the Royal Academy, is the Chola exhibition at the same venue – subtitled “Sacred Bronzes of Southern India”.
These bronze sculptures, dating from around 900 – 1250, not only depict and represent Hindu gods, including Shiva, Vishnu and Ganesh, but were actually believed to be physical manifestations of those gods and were worshipped as such. Prior to the advancements which facilitated the casting of these deities in bronze, they would have been sculpted from stone, heavy and immobile. Now, though, they could be easily removed from temples and carried outside on a tour of their lands, also allowing their followers to see and worship them at close range. The notches and loops where carrying poles and chains would have been fitted are still clearly visible.
On returning to the temple, the idols of the deities were bathed in milk, curds, butter, honey and sugar, before being anointed with sandal paste and dressed in the finest silks. This practice continues today, with the idol being woken up and put back to bed daily.
The condition of the sculptures is stunning, with so much minute detail preserved it’s hard to believe they’re over 1000 years old.
The first thing I noticed while viewing the show is how slender, elegant and sensual these sculptures are. There is a feeling of lightness in each one, of delicate poise, as if each is swaying to a rhythmic breeze passing through the room. Ganesh, the elephant-headed god, appears with his hip jutting at a jaunty angle, his human physique in no way weighted down by his elephantine appendage. Shiva, the Destroyer, appears in many guises, or avatars. But each, whether a warrior, a man-lion or a meditating husband, is as fine-limbed as the next. Not for them the muscled, super-human frame of godlike figures from other cultures – these are all too human, although with none of the fragility present in ourselves.
Thw female figures, however, do seem to have been sculpted to an idealised state of womanhood. The waist, hips and breasts are so gloriously out of proportion that the feminist-baiting Barbie doll springs to mind. The women’s breasts are potent and full, their frames even slighter than the men’s, their near nakedness worn easily and without embarrasment. To relate these figures to Rodin’s creations is to highlight the deification of the Indian sculptures. These are forms to be worshipped, based not explicitly on the human form but on a distillation of it, the result of thousands of years of interpretation of myths, legends and imagination. Where Rodin stared compulsively with the eye to reach the beauty inherent in the form before him, these idols represent the culmination of a culture’s dreaming.
Remember that these are not projections of gods, they ARE gods. And with that in mind I came to appreciate Hinduism, on this evidence at least, as being light of touch, as having humour, as having invested in their deities the all too human characteristics of mischeviousness, of joy, of fun. I thought back to the Catholic statues of my youth circling me in church, and recall an endless series of images of suffering and pain and anguish. It is quite a contrast.
I highly recommend this show. The artworks themselves are a joy, refreshing and surpsingly iconic in the modern sense of the word. And for anyone interested in the wider subject of Hinduism it is a delighfully light introduction to the subject. My only complaint is that the back-story of each god appears in detail in the exhibition catalogue, which I noticed after the show, but is not on display anywhere inside. I think the general public’s enjoyment of these works would be greatly enhanced by making the history and characteristics of each god more visible.
