Abstract
What are paintings? Is there a distinctive mode of experience paintings enable? What is the value of such experience? This essay explores such questions, confining attention for the most part to a few distinctive moments in Indian Buddhist texts. In particular, I focus on invocations of painting in figures of speech, particularly when paintings are invoked to make sense of events or experiences of particular importance. The aim is not to be exhaustive, but to suggest a meta-poetic orientation: On the basis of moments where authors think with figurations of painting, I want to suggest that in Buddhist texts one begins to find a growing regard for the possibilities of re-ordering and transvaluing sense experience. After suggesting the possibility of this on the basis of a preliminary consideration of some figures of speech invoking painting, this essay turns to the reconstruction of what I call aesthetic stances to make sense of the idea of new possibilities in sense experience. I derive the concept of “aesthetic stances” on the basis of a close reading of a pivotal moment in one Buddhist narrative, the defeat of Māra in The Legend of Aśoka.
Highlights
Painters who use life itself as their subject-matter, working with the object in front of them or constantly in mind, do so in order to translate life into art almost literally, as it were . . .[b]ecause the picture in order to move us must never merely remind us of life, but must acquire a life of its own, precisely in order to reflect life.—Lucian Freud, “Some Thoughts on Painting”As the Buddha, Siddhārtha eventually returned to the city he so dramatically left behind.The experience was confounding for those who loved him, including his father, to take one example—as we are told in the nineteenth chapter of Aśvaghos.a’s Life of the Buddha
In thinking with the help of a painting, Siddhārtha’s father and Aśvaghos.a have raised more than a few questions: When do we think of paintings? And why? What are paintings? Is there a distinctive mode of experience paintings enable? (For example, to view a painting appears to be closer here to remembering than seeing.) What is the value of such experience? I’d like to explore such questions in this essay, confining my attention for the most part to a few distinctive moments in Indian Buddhist texts
Rather, are meta-poetic, if I may put things this way: On the basis of moments where authors think with figurations of painting, I want to suggest that in Indian Buddhist texts one begins to find a growing regard for the possibilities of re-ordering and transvaluing sense experience
Summary
Painters who use life itself as their subject-matter, working with the object in front of them or constantly in mind, do so in order to translate life into art almost literally, as it were. The experience was confounding for those who loved him, including his father, to take one example—as we are told in the nineteenth chapter of Aśvaghos.a’s Life of the Buddha There we find his father, Śuddhodhana, Hastening into the Sage’s presence. Even though the Buddha is present before his father, the latter feels that his son has changed so profoundly that he is not there; he “[dwells] at the end of the world” despite being there in front of him This is to look on the analogy in one direction, as it were. Rather, are meta-poetic, if I may put things this way: On the basis of moments where authors think with figurations of painting, I want to suggest that in Indian Buddhist texts one begins to find a growing regard for the possibilities of re-ordering and transvaluing sense experience. I do so to help bring into view the distinctiveness of the questions we shall go on to track, and to give some indication of how the rest of the essay is structured
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