Rituals, rituals

Rituals, in all communities,  are important for the collective spiritual wellbeing. These bind the members together, reaffirming and reinforcing group identity.

The harvest festival, ongoing in many parts of India celebrates the creative powers of Nature in different forms. In Bengal, Ghot Puja (translation: worship of the pot) initiates the ritualistic process. 

The pot filled with water, with a vermilion figurine drawn on it, symbolizes the pregnant womb. The daab (green coconut), the amrapatra (5 mango leaves) placed at the mouth of the pot, flowers, represent Her organic proliferation. This worship of Goddess Durga, Mother Earth, has its roots in ancient Fertility practices. 

People also remember their ancestors during this period, in gratitude for their present existence, reiterating the continuity of familial generations, being and becoming. 

Rituals are meant to give meaning to life and living processes. But, not everybody in the community that follows a ritual believes in it. So, are rituals still important today? 

Why naked and ashamed

Mention ‘modern art’, and many of us might think vaguely of abstract sculptures and paintings that make little sense. Mention ‘erotic art’, and we immediately tune in to expect nude or semi-nude studies. The association of this branch of art with sexuality is strong. In the context of male and female identity development, the imagery could play an important socializing role. However, the focus of the artworks seems to be majorly on the sexual domination of gender instead.

A person’s sexuality would depend on their acceptance of the self, and their coming to terms with feelings and emotions generated in growing up. Knowledge about gender orientations, and acceptance of related social roles and responsibilities are a crucial part of the developmental process. The understanding helps young people become balanced, well-adjusted members of society. Thence, all of creation may be perceived living, breathing works of art. Male and female elements of Nature interact with the environment, secure in their own type of sexuality.

Erotic art imagery exalts nakedness. Nothing wrong with that really, since eroticism relates to arousing or being affected by sexual love or desire. The word originates in Eros, the name of the Greek god of love. Hence, the expression of desire should of course include love. In the present age, however, cynicism has crept in, and love is forgotten. Modernity seems to jump straight into sex instead. 

Erotic art has been made the product of male sexual fantasy. The function of the female form is the sexual service of men. Sculptures and paintings, developed in the West from the nineteenth century onwards, draw attention to the female anatomy thus sexualized.  Women are defined by the 3 b’s – breasts, buttocks, and belly. The artworks build upon the presumption that the modern fertility goddess aches to be touched.

To all intentions, they may as well be mindless and faceless objects. In the essay, Eroticism and Female Imagery in Nineteenth-Century Art, Linda Nochlin writes: 

Whether the erotic object be breast or buttocks, shoes or corsets, a matter of pose or of prototype, the imagery of sexual delight or provocation has always been created about women for men’s enjoyment, by men.

The art seems replete with the subtle derogation of gender. In their imagery, women are props, devoid of individual identity. Consequently, active word associations with them are weak, passive, and sexually available. The exploitation of women within the composition and beyond are just part of the process culture created.

The point of erotic art is ownership – by men, of women. John Berger (quoted in Nochlin's essay) explains the trend that originated in Europe:

She is painted with extreme sensuous emphasis. Yet her sexuality is only superficially manifest in her actions or her own expression … The painting’s sexuality is manifest not in what it shows but in the owner-spectator’s (mine in this case) right to see her naked. Her nakedness is not a function of her sexuality but of the sexuality of those who have access to the picture. In the majority of European nudes there is a close parallel with the passivity which is endemic to prostitution.

Women’s personas are preyed upon, as willing or unwilling actors in the ongoing fantastical narrative of male sexual liberties. Men as a group have the power to enjoy the woman’s innocence, her vulnerability and her inability to protest her plight. Almost in the same vein, women artists themselves are deprecated. They are better known for their external relationships than their intrinsic talent. Naked and ashamed might sum up women’s social subordination in erotic art, and underscore their now characteristic low esteem. 

Nochlin however, appears to blame women rather than men for the situation. She writes:

This is, of course, not the result of some calculated plot on the part of men, but merely a reflection in the realm of art of woman’s lack of her own erotic territory on the map of nineteenth-century reality. Man is not only the subject of all erotic predicates, but the customer for all erotic products as well, and the customer is always right. Controlling both sex ad art, he and his fantasies conditioned the world of erotic imagination as well. Thus there seems to be no conceivable outlet for the expression of women’s viewpoint in nineteenth-century art, even in the realm of pure fantasy.  

No calculated plot? I would beg to differ. Patriarchy has been a social imposition all around the world from an earlier time no longer in memory. Not a bloody revolution, this was a slow, cultural assimilation that wiped off all trace of gender equality. The women's erotic territory that existed, suffered hostile takeover. 

The invasion of the social psyche has been insidious. The organization of community life institutionalized the dominance, and further, conditioned women into becoming the carriers of the culture. The projection of shame has been the most effective weapon to keep them in line and off-balanced, since the days of Eve. Individual men may distance from the perspective, but as a group, they do precious little to fix what, from the male viewpoint, does not seem broken. It is far more expedient to patronize the victim. 

The imagery used carries forward the culture. Which would women viewers identify with - the male perspective, or the low self-esteem? Either way, the patriarchal dominance continues. Women need to find new inspiration, to build a new perspective for the future free of objectification. Perhaps women artists could set a new trend to break the patriarchal stranglehold on their group. Naked is fine in erotic art – as long as the representative women own their sexuality with pride, not in shame, nor in service. 

Reference for this post:

Nochlin, Linda. “Women, Art, and Power and Other Essays”. ISBN 0-06-430183-4 (pbk.) Icon Editions. Westview Press, USA & UK. 1989.

Blessed to be born female?

Georgia O’Keefe’s early twentieth century paintings of the Black Iris flower are more readily perceived as her metaphoric preoccupation with female genitalia. It seems to me that the Nature worshipping era of the remote past would have instead perceived spirituality in her artworks. They would have definitely been taken to denote the awesome fertility powers of the Mother Goddess. However, since Freudian interpretations of sexuality impacted social knowledge, connotative associations appear to be grasped first in the global forum.   

Remnant artifacts of Nature worship have been found from the Indus Valley civilization of ancient India dated thousands of years before Christ. Several nations of the Asian sub-continent, independent in present day, share this common heritage. Excavations ongoing mainly in two countries, India and Pakistan, at Mohenjodaro, Harappa and other places, have so far uncovered only a small percentage of the buried cultural wealth. But, although the hieroglyphics of the time have not yet been deciphered, surely the art forms discovered there can tell a story of the time! They could give us an inkling of the stark social differences of mindset and value regarding gender, past to present.  

Various objects made and used by the people have been discovered. Many figurines of the artwork found have accentuated breasts and pelvis. Does this mean women were objectified then as now? No, say the fact-finders, the exaggerations are symbolic. They represent divinity, not humans - the cult of the Mother Goddess, the Earth Mother or Nature – and invoke attributes of bounty of the deity. Made of clay or terracotta, they show kinship with Earth. 

A website collecting historical information about deities explains the point:

As significant and suggestive is her iconography - the large breasts filled with milk, uncovered genital organs, beautifully dressed hair and a good number of bangles on her wrists. This is the iconic perception of the Being who bears, feeds, takes all calamities on her head and covers the born one under her protective umbrella and, at the same time, defines in the modeling of her form an absolute aesthetic beauty. As suggest her bangles, the traditional emblem of marital state, besides a mother she is also a consort. Thus, in her material manifestation, She represents, with absolute motherhood, also the absolute womanhood. She causes life and sustains it, and is also the cause of life, its inspiration and aspiration, and the reason to live.

Social demarcations would thus have dual levels to span the universe – the gods that live in the heavens, and humans on earth, descendent from them or fallen, stripped of powers. A saying in India, that what is fine for the gods is not fine for mortals, reminds the humans of their ultimate fallibility. And that the all-powerful divine beings need to be worshipped for appeasement and blessings, because the humans are too puny to manage on their own against harsh reality.

In this ancient Indian context, the female form has spiritual and religious significance. Because of the association with divine functions, women most likely enjoyed a high position in society. Perhaps to be born female was to be blessed! It is a distinct possibility that matriarchy, which now exists in pockets around the country, was far more pervasive. A ritual originating in fertility rites that to this day  initiates Hindu image worship, is the ghot puja. It is an earthenware pot filled with water and inscribed with a figure in vermilion, which symbolizes the pregnant womb. It invokes the Mother Goddess. The traditional Indian reverence for the mother figure may have its roots therein as well. 

By the third millennium BCE, the people of Indus Valley had learned to cast in metal. The bronze Dancing Girl is the most famous amongst the human and animal artifacts found. The difference from the Mother Goddess is immediately apparent - she lacks the physical exaggerations. Perhaps a little crude in face and limb technically, the statuette nevertheless indicates the status of women of the time. A quote from British archaeologist, Mortimer Wheeler, describes its form and feature:

There is her little Baluchi-style face with pouting lips and insolent look in the eye. She's about fifteen years old I should think, not more, but she stands there with bangles all the way up her arm and nothing else on. A girl perfectly, for the moment, perfectly confident of herself and the world. There's nothing like her, I think, in the world.  

Indeed, attitude is immediately apparent in the body language. The pose – the hand on hip, the cocked stance, the lifted chin, the half-closed eyes, and the slanted look exude the impudence and comfort in skin hard to find amongst women today. Some writers suggest that the figurine is transgender. It is interesting to think, in extension, that gender may not have always been the divisive social issue it is at present. Identifying as female, in the image of the divine, may well have been totally acceptable in society.

Her nudity makes no difference to our appreciation of the artwork. Perhaps we notice it only because we belong to a different era, socialized into a different value system. Maybe in the early times, women were unused to suffering body issues! In remote regions of India, in tribes isolated from the mainstream to preserve their ancient culture, nakedness is their way of life. Jarawa women, for instance, may be more comfortable in the natural than many more civilized others might be fully clothed!

During the age of Nature worship, the people lived in awe of the environment. The power of the Goddess was perceived in every creation in the environment, and they bowed in reverence. Their imagery has been in celebration of the Divine. Against the spiritual backdrop, it is no surprise that temple art - rock carvings and cave paintings - are pretty explicit on the bountiful attributes of Nature.  

From there and then to here and now, how the perspective has changed! We expect that we control the environment today; hence we patronize the past. In the process, we tend to lose awareness of the sociocultural context of the age - and the artistic intent. Women, as a group, are habitually objectified. I remember overhearing some tourists a while ago. Eyes gleaming, the young men conversed raucously about the full figure displays of chicks in the temple artworks. It is not the fault of the artists but of particular sociocultural learning that perceptions of gender channel as they do.