Tuesday 17 July 2012

Art often needs a muse

Art needs a muse, a guiding power. A muse permeates the male artist and brings forth a work from the womb of  his artistic mind. The muse in her purest aspect is the feminine part of the male artist.
It is said of a muse that "she is the anima to his animus, the yin to his yang, except that, in a reversal of gender roles, she penetrates or inspires him and he gestates and brings forth, from the womb of the mind."

Painters don't claim muses until painting begins to be considered as poetry. Andrea del Sarto, an Italian painter in the 15th century, had Lucrezia as his muse, who resembled closely with his ideal that he made 'all his female figures in her likeness'. Sarto later
was famously married to his muse, Lucrezia.
Roman bust of Sappho 
In ancient Greece, the great literature & science of the world had been inspired by muses, this is what we come to know from Geek mythology & poetry. The word 'muse' comes from Latin Msa or Greek Mousa.They say in Boeotia's tradition, the homeland of Hesiod, the Muses had once been three in number for others that there are nine, but the number nine has prevailed, according to Homer and Hesiod. Muses, personifying knowledge and the arts, especially literature, dance and music, were the nine daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, memory taking godly form. But in Plutarch' Quaestiones Conviviviales only three ancient Muses have been taken into account. Roman scholar Varro also relates that there are only three Muses, one is born from the movement of water, another who makes sound by striking the air, and a third who is embodied only in the human voice. Their names are Melete or Practice, Mneme or Memory and Aoide or Song. Sometimes they are referred to as water nymphs, associated with the springs of Helicon and with Pieris. It was said that the winged horse Pegasus touched his hooves to the ground on Helicon, causing four sacred springs to burst forth, from which the muses were born.

However, in the classical understanding, nine muses embody arts and inspire creation with their graces through song, drama, verses, music, and dance. Later Sappho of Lesbos had been proclaimed the tenth muse, by Plato. Sappho's poetry was well-known and greatly admired throughout antiquity. Although has been lost, but her immense reputation has endured through surviving fragments.  
'Muse' has become a somewhat conventional compliment paid to female poets since.

Floral Texture


artist: harsha pore

A texture painting

Thursday 12 July 2012