Displaying Hindu Ritual With
Reverence and Graciousness
Art Review By Roberta Smith
Visitors to ''Meeting God:
Elements of Hindu Devotion,'' which opens tomorrow at the American
Museum of Natural History, may or may not encounter the divine presence
in its galleries. But they can easily enter into the show's mood of
euphoric reverence and spiritual graciousness while also learning quite a
bit about one of the world's great religions. And because nearly everything
on display comes from India, which is 82 percent Hindu, visitors can also
get a palpable sense of the completely fluid fusion of faith, visual
creativity and daily life that saturates Indian culture.
This is an amazing, often moving hodgepodge of a show. It occasionally, but
only occasionally, feels like a walk-in National Geographic article, but
generally, it works. Serene and carefully organized, it should appeal to
believers and nonbelievers of all stripes. The phrase ''Meeting God'' is a
reference to the Hindu word for enlightenment, darshan, which translates
more precisely as ''seeing or being seen by God'' -- and this evocation of
reciprocity and visual experience echoes through the show. It has been
organized by Stephen P. Huyler, a freelance art historian, social
anthropologist and photographer, and Laurel Kendall, the curator in the
museum's anthropology division. Mr. Huyler has spent four months of each
year since 1970 traveling around India, taking notes and photographs, buying
crafts and interviewing hundreds of people, which makes this exhibition the
culmination, so far, of a lifelong passion.
''Meeting God'' is tailored to its moment. It comes at a time when
Asian Indians form one of the fastest growing immigrant groups in the New
York metropolitan region, and Asian artists, with their traditional
indifference to distinctions between high and low, and pop and kitsch, are a
strong presence in contemporary art. It also weighs in on the current debate
concerning the contextualization of art objects in museums, especially
objects from other cultures. It is elegantly pro-context, and while better
suited to a museum of natural history than to an art museum, it suggests
that the argument doesn't really have two sides. In the end all exhibitions
can be judged only on a case-by-case basis.
''Meeting God'' brings together representations of the Hindu deities, which
include tiny animated figures in copper alloy or marble, brightly stitched
textiles and raucous little posters. Outstanding is a silver and wood
figure of Gauri, the goddess of agricultural abundance, resplendent in a
silver-embossed sari and heavy silver jewelry. There are incense burners
and other ceremonial implements, engraved metal tantric plaques called
yantra, cobra-headed lingas that are particularly powerful representations
of the god Shiva. Several objects date from the 17th and 18th centuries, a
few from the early 21st century, which is a startling phrase to see on
labels. One recent addition, in carved and painted wood, depicts small
spark-plug-like figures of Jagannath, a tree-god version of Vishnu; they
might have stepped out of ''South Park.''
The meanings and the uses of these objects are elucidated by wall texts
that don't go on too long, documentary videotapes, bits of music and dozens
of Mr. Huyler's photographs, which keep the Indian love of intense color
lusciously present.
Appropriately, puja, the daily or twice daily worship ritual through which
Hindus seek darshan, is supposed to involve all the senses. The show layers
together different sensations and contrasting notions of value and
permanence from the beginning. In the first gallery strains of a sitar and a
bamboo flute greet the ear while a videotape shows sari-wearing women
bathing in the Ganges River at sunrise, praying to the sun god Surya.
One vitrine contains an early 20th-century statue of Ganesha -- the
elephant-headed son of Shiva -- from the museum's collection, carved in
marble and detailed in gold paint. Next to it is a carved sandstone
sculpture of Lakshmi, the goddess of prosperity, commissioned by Mr. Huyler
especially for the exhibition from a stone cutter in the north central
Indian city of Varanasi. Ritually prepared to be worshiped, she wears a
gold-and-red sari and gold bangles; her palms and soles are dusted with
bright vermilion spice, and she is wreathed in flowers, albeit artificial
ones. Nearby a third vitrine holds a rustic terra cotta planter that also
serves as a shrine to Lakshmi. Quickly and deftly made, it is one of
hundreds turned out by craftsmen from the state of Orissa in east India. Its
twin functions are inspired by the legend of Lakshmi's transformation into a
bush of sacred basil, or tulasi, which is traditionally planted in it and
could be the focus of daily worship.
The exhibition's macrocosmic moment is a stupendous trompe-l'oeil
re-creation of a sacred banyan tree, similar to those found in nearly every
Indian village. Produced life size from photographs by the museum's diorama
artists and accompanied by the sounds of chirping birds, it is festooned
with offerings and surrounded by stone gods swathed in red cloth. It rivals
quite a bit of contemporary installation art.
Scattered throughout are facsimiles of household shrines that contain
backlighted photographs of real shrines (by Mr. Huyler), tiny figures,
devotional implements and artificial flowers. Opening the carved-wood doors
of these weirdly comforting Cornell-like simulacra is one of the better
interactive experiences currently available in a museum. As the exhibition
progresses, the same objects recur in different contexts. For example,
19th-century copper alloy niche lamps and holy water vessels are isolated in
vitrines; nearly identical contemporary versions are integrated into the
facsimile shrines, and others are shown being used during videotaped
ceremonies.
Along the way, ''Meeting God'' deflates fears about the so-called return
of beauty to contemporary art. It reminds us that in most religious art
beauty is a demonstration of faith and is profoundly spiritual, not
frivolous. For Hindus, this demonstration can be intensely decorative and
brightly colored and also breathtakingly ephemeral. In addition, the
creation of this beauty is a ritual in itself.
''Meeting God'' may work so well because Hinduism is to a great extent a
one-to-one experience, not unlike art. It is conducted mostly on a private
basis, even in the middle of public temples or thronged processions, between
a single worshiper and a single, personally selected god or goddess. The
exhibition takes pains to dispel the notion that Hinduism encompasses
thousands of deities and stresses that its adherents select a single god or
goddess to worship for life when they reach adolescence. This deity may be
Vishnu, the preserver; Shiva, the god of creation and destruction; Shiva's
wife, Parvati, the embodiment of the divine feminine, or their son, Ganesha,
remover of obstacles and lord of beginnings. But each of the many options
represents only a facet of a larger unknowable divine absolute called
Brahman.
Similarly, the form a puja takes is a personal choice. It may be the
prayerful sunrise dip in the Ganges, or a symbolic dripping of water from a
graceful ewer, as one of the photographs illustrates. It may be a ceremony
conducted before a household shrine centering on the figure of a god or
goddess that is prepared for worship each day, like Lakshmi, by being
ritually bathed, dressed, bejeweled and anointed with spices.
Yet many Indian women begin each day by creating an intricate geometric
design of sprinkled rice powder just outside their front door, a homage to
Surya that will quickly be destroyed. One of the show's best video moments
shows several women covering a long, broad street with these designs just
before a huge procession sweeps through. In another procession, recorded in
photographs, scores of men carry a brightly painted 12-foot statue of
Ganesha into the sea. Made of solid unfired clay, it will dissolve soon
after reaching its destination.
''Meeting God'' has a suitable coda in a small intimate display of
photographs by Steve McCurry showing Hindus, Sikhs and Jains from across the
metropolitan region beside their home or office shrines. Some of these
arrangements are lavish by any standard and resemble enlarged versions of
the facsimile shrines in the larger show. Others are modest and makeshift,
tucked away in closets, cupboards, by office copying machines and, in one
case, behind the counter of a video store.
It is rare for an exhibition to bring so much information, spiritual feeling
and visual beauty into alignment. There are greater -- and certainly older
-- examples of Hindu art on the other side of Central Park at the
Metropolitan Museum of Art. But visit ''Meeting God'' first. It will expand
the way you see them.
''Meeting God: Elements of Hindu Devotion'' is at the American Museum of
Natural History, Central Park West at 79th Street, (212) 769-5100, through
Feb. 24.
Source: NY Times
