Rasa Renaissance
Reawakening to the Aesthetic Perspective of Rasa
The domain of contemporary art is laid barren by meaningless abstraction, compulsive self-inflicted distortions and ridiculous installations. Art has lost its credibility. It is prima-facie irrelevant. Art lovers are becoming cynical about the intellectual pseudo-spiritual props that must hold up all contemporary art. We are all becoming cynical that auction houses have become the arbiters of what is good taste and what is beautiful. There exists no theory of aesthetics that would provide us with reasonable criteria to gauge the relative merits of works of art. All art-criticism has become subservient to the market-place and entirely impotent. Art has lost its romance.
Rasa Renaissance brings us the good-tidings that the barren void in Art and Spirituality will once again resound with the passionate calls of cuckoos maddened by mango blossoms and hordes of bumblebees lusting after honey.
Far away from the haloed portals of academia, auction houses and galleries
It has taken one man’s courage to stand up to the onslaught. In Mumbiram’s estimate, contemporary art has been languishing in a never-ending reaction to a post-industrial shock. It is as if the realm of human emotions stands negated forever. Contemporary Art is hiding its own head in the sand and turning us all into cynics.
Far away from the haloed portals of academia, far away from the auctions and the galleries, transcending the din of the market place (lit.), here one sees art reawakening to the personal realm.
Artist Mumbiram is bringing in the Rasa Theory of Aesthetic Criticism into the domain of contemporary visual arts. Rasa Theory is not at all new. It has existed since antiquity that produced great classics of Sanskrit literature that have endured through the millenniums.
Mumbiram’s Rasa Art expresses eternal aspirations of the human spirit.
It has this mood that transcends mere cultural variety and puts one on the sublime plane of a universal aesthetic.
Rasa Renaissance is a universal approach where the joy, beauty and essential equality of all living entities shines gloriously through all the confusion of the material world.
“Art needs to put human emotions at the forefront of all human endeavour. Only then can art realize the mighty force it can be in shaping destinies of individuals and societies.”
(Mumbiram)
Mumbiram is bringing the Rasa Theory of Aesthetic Criticism into the domain of contemporary visual art. Rasa Theory is not at all new. It has existed since antiquity and produced great classics of Sanskrit literature that have endured through millenniums.
Rasa Theory is about the qualitative shades and textures of emotions aroused in the personalities appearing in a work of art or literature as also the emotions that are aroused in the viewers or readers of such works. The nuances of such arousal of emotions as also the bodily and behavioural symptoms of such ecstatic states are the subject matter of Rasa Theory. Rasa Theory enables us to evolve a noble ideal for critical appraisal of qualities of personalities. It is a Personalist Theory of aesthetics.
It is not at all necessary to know Rasa Theory to relish Art of Rasa Renaissance just as one can thoroughly enjoy classical Indian raga-music without knowing the names and characteristics of the raga-classification.
Catalogues of Rasa art ensembles
