Carmel Berkson gets inspired by India’s sculptural traditions
New York based sculptor Carmel Berkson first visited India in 1970. The first encounter with India’s rich sculptural traditions in its indigenous context left an indelible impression on her mind. Ever since, she has devoted herself to the study of the unique yet universal life of protean sculptural form to be found on fascinating rock temples, in museums, and at various known, unknown sites of the country.
More than three decades later she remains spellbound, never been ceased to be inspired by this art form that has not been surpassed anywhere in the world, at any time, as she affirms.
Born in New York, Carmel Berkson completed her M.A. from the Columbia University. She studied sculpture under Milton Hebald. She worked in clay, wood, plaster, welded copper and steel till 1969 before she came to India.
The artist has vivid memories of her early engagement with Indian sculptural traditions. “Perhaps, as foreigner, because in my generation in the United States we were exposed to the best of Indian sculptures only rarely, my initial confrontation with Indian monuments was more abrupt, more astonishing, more gripping,” she reminisces.
Carmel Berkson feels it’s a privilege to have come to this country, and have made it her home where genius intervened and where highly skilled masters followed their own inner callings to create amazing pieces of art all over India, as she puts it, “We are so fortunate to be able to enter into world where, in contrast to today’s disrupting condition, the ultimate truths of Indian thought – of yearning for the cosmic totality as manifested in the world - may provide the necessary antidote to the contemporary alienations.”
According to her, the ancient Indian artists understood these realities and attempted to reflect, in the microcosm, the entire cosmic order. A quest to deepen her knowledge of it took her to innumerable temples and cave sites. She photographed and read texts concerning the system of proportions and iconographical representations of the religious and mythological subjects.
Carmel Berkson is heartened by the fact that there has been a blossoming of contemporary Indian art of varied trends that are often entirely separated from the uniquely Indian tradition. Though she believes a reconnection with the greatest Indian masters, who have left a rich legacy, needs to be maintained.
Expressing her concern over the fact that many of Indian contemporary artists have a little or no connection with the past, Carmel Berkson thinks that while refusing to get contended with mere copying of the ancients, they also might have missed the opportunities for learning what the traditional sculptors, after centuries of trials, had long ago, achieved, bringing their art to extraordinary heights of expression.
According to her, it is understandable that they are divorced from nature, given the fragmenting conditions into which our urban artists are born today. She reminds them of the archeological sites, the walls and interiors of the greatest structural and sculptural temples and the rock cut caves, not far from the maddening tumult, awaiting those sculptors who have the will and desire to become involved in the deepening experience.
Striving to establish a connection with the glorious past of Indian sculptural traditions, Carmel Berkson has produced authoritative documentations including Elephanta, the Cave of Shiva (co-authored with Wendy O’Flaherty and George Michell; Princeton University Press); The Caves of Aurangabad, Early Buddhist Tantric Art (MAPIN), Ellora, Concept and Style; The Life of Form in Indian Sculpture (Abhinav Publications), and The Divine and Demoniac, Mahisa’s Heroic Struggle with Durga (Oxford University Press).
Summing up the core of her sculptural sojourn, she states, “A society that neglects the major cultural contributions of the past does so at its own peril. Young sculptors can benefit psychologically from a reconnection. Once the connection is made, a burst of creative energy is likely to occur in the heart of contemporary artists, as the essence of the ancient ethos is intuited. There’s a joy in the discovery, in the transpositions and in the continued stimulus of returning to the source.”
