During the summer school of 1926 Hazrat Inayat Khan delivered a series of lectures on different forms of art, such as painting, sculpture and architecture, using the theme to trace the role of spirituality in society as it has changed through the ages. These lectures were subsequently published under the title, “Art, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow.” This post begins his explanation of the relationship between art and nature.
Many think that art is something different from nature, but it would be better to say that art is the completion of nature. One may ask how man can improve upon nature, which is made by God, but the fact is that God Himself, through man, finishes His creation in art. As all the different elements are God’s vehicles, and as all the trees and plants are His instruments through which He creates, so art is the medium of God through which God Himself completes His creation.
No doubt not all so-called art is necessarily art. By looking at true art, man is able to see the realization of the prayer, ‘Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.’ Throughout the whole of creation, from one thing to another, the Creator has worked through evolution. In man the Creator has, so to speak, completed nature; yet the creative faculty is still working through man, and thus art is the ultimate step in creation. Although in fact all that man creates, scientifically or artistically, is art – those objects which are produced with a sense of beauty and which appeal to the sense of beauty in man, are the main expression of this creative faculty.
Besides being the creative power of God, art is the expression of the soul of the artist. An artist cannot give out what he has not collected, although man ignores the way this is done. The artist’s soul conceives, and the artist produces only that which his soul recognizes as having been conceived. Once it is understood that the artist not only produces but also conceives, then it is not difficult for a man whose heart is awakened to see into the soul of an artist. Art in color, in line, is nothing but the echo of his soul. If the soul of the artist is going through torture, his picture gives us the feeling of awe; if the soul of the artist is enjoying harmony, we will see harmony in his colors, in the lines. What does this show? It shows that the soul works automatically through the brush of the artist. The more deeply the artist is touched by the beauty that his soul conceives from the outside, the greater is the appeal of that beauty to those who see his work.
What is it in line and color that has such an influence on man’s faculties? The vibrations that the color produces thrill the centers, the centers of the intuitive faculties that are hidden in the body. A person looks at a color and immediately feels thrilled by it. Each degree of vibration that the various colors produce is different, and therefore their influence too is different. Yet, while one person may be open to that effect and influence, another is so blocked that colors make little impression upon him. For the same reason, women are more responsive to color and line than men are. A woman is responsive by nature, and a man is expressive; therefore a woman receives the impression of color more readily than a man, who is apt to repel it. But at the same time, a man with fine feeling, with the intuitive faculty awakened, will respond to color, while a man whose faculties are not yet opened does not.
To be continued…