Meeting God
Elements of Hindu Devotion
American Museum of Natural
History
September 8, 2001 through March 31, 2002
Visitors to ''Meeting God: Elements of Hindu Devotion,'' which opens
tomorrow at the American Museum of Natural History, may or may not
encounter the divine presence in its galleries. But they can easily
enter into the show's mood of euphoric reverence and spiritual graciousness
while also learning quite a bit about one of the world's great religions.
And because nearly everything on display comes from India, which is
82 percent Hindu, visitors can also get a palpable sense of the completely
fluid fusion of faith, visual creativity and daily life that saturates
Indian culture.
This is an amazing, often moving hodgepodge of a show. It occasionally,
but only occasionally, feels like a walk-in National Geographic article,
but generally, it works. Serene and carefully organized, it should
appeal to believers and nonbelievers of all stripes. The phrase ''Meeting
God'' is a reference to the Hindu word for enlightenment, darshan,
which translates more precisely as ''seeing or being seen by God''
-- and this evocation of reciprocity and visual experience echoes
through the show. It has been organized by Stephen P. Huyler, a freelance
art historian, social anthropologist and photographer, and Laurel
Kendall, the curator in the museum's anthropology division. Mr. Huyler
has spent four months of each year since 1970 traveling around India,
taking notes and photographs, buying crafts and interviewing hundreds
of people, which makes this exhibition the culmination, so far, of
a lifelong passion.
''Meeting God'' is tailored to its moment. It comes at a time when
Asian Indians form one of the fastest growing immigrant groups in
the New York metropolitan region, and Asian artists, with their traditional
indifference to distinctions between high and low, and pop and kitsch,
are a strong presence in contemporary art. It also weighs in on the
current debate concerning the contextualization of art objects in
museums, especially objects from other cultures. It is elegantly pro-context,
and while better suited to a museum of natural history than to an
art museum, it suggests that the argument doesn't really have two
sides. In the end all exhibitions can be judged only on a case-by-case
basis.
''Meeting God'' brings together representations of the Hindu deities,
which include tiny animated figures in copper alloy or marble, brightly
stitched textiles and raucous little posters. Outstanding is a silver
and wood figure of Gauri, the goddess of agricultural abundance, resplendent
in a silver-embossed sari and heavy silver jewelry. There are incense
burners and other ceremonial implements, engraved metal tantric plaques
called yantra, cobra-headed lingas that are particularly powerful
representations of the god Shiva. Several objects date from the 17th
and 18th centuries, a few from the early 21st century, which is a
startling phrase to see on labels. One recent addition, in carved
and painted wood, depicts small spark-plug-like figures of Jagannath,
a tree-god version of Vishnu; they might have stepped out of ''South
Park.''
The meanings and the uses of these objects are elucidated by wall
texts that don't go on too long, documentary videotapes, bits of music
and dozens of Mr. Huyler's photographs, which keep the Indian love
of intense color lusciously present.
Appropriately, puja, the daily or twice daily worship ritual through
which Hindus seek darshan, is supposed to involve all the senses.
The show layers together different sensations and contrasting notions
of value and permanence from the beginning. In the first gallery strains
of a sitar and a bamboo flute greet the ear while a videotape shows
sari-wearing women bathing in the Ganges River at sunrise, praying
to the sun god Surya.
One vitrine contains an early 20th-century statue of Ganesha -- the
elephant-headed son of Shiva -- from the museum's collection, carved
in marble and detailed in gold paint. Next to it is a carved sandstone
sculpture of Lakshmi, the goddess of prosperity, commissioned by Mr.
Huyler especially for the exhibition from a stone cutter in the north
central Indian city of Varanasi. Ritually prepared to be worshiped,
she wears a gold-and-red sari and gold bangles; her palms and soles
are dusted with bright vermilion spice, and she is wreathed in flowers,
albeit artificial ones. Nearby a third vitrine holds a rustic terra
cotta planter that also serves as a shrine to Lakshmi. Quickly and
deftly made, it is one of hundreds turned out by craftsmen from the
state of Orissa in east India. Its twin functions are inspired by
the legend of Lakshmi's transformation into a bush of sacred basil,
or tulasi, which is traditionally planted in it and could be the focus
of daily worship.
The exhibition's macrocosmic moment is a stupendous trompe-l'oeil
re-creation of a sacred banyan tree, similar to those found in nearly
every Indian village. Produced life size from photographs by the museum's
diorama artists and accompanied by the sounds of chirping birds, it
is festooned with offerings and surrounded by stone gods swathed in
red cloth. It rivals quite a bit of contemporary installation art.
Scattered throughout are facsimiles of household shrines that contain
backlighted photographs of real shrines (by Mr. Huyler), tiny figures,
devotional implements and artificial flowers. Opening the carved-wood
doors of these weirdly comforting Cornell-like simulacra is one of
the better interactive experiences currently available in a museum.
As the exhibition progresses, the same objects recur in different
contexts. For example, 19th-century copper alloy niche lamps and holy
water vessels are isolated in vitrines; nearly identical contemporary
versions are integrated into the facsimile shrines, and others are
shown being used during videotaped ceremonies.
Along the way, ''Meeting God'' deflates fears about the so-called
return of beauty to contemporary art. It reminds us that in most religious
art beauty is a demonstration of faith and is profoundly spiritual,
not frivolous. For Hindus, this demonstration can be intensely decorative
and brightly colored and also breathtakingly ephemeral. In addition,
the creation of this beauty is a ritual in itself.
''Meeting God'' may work so well because Hinduism is to a great extent
a one-to-one experience, not unlike art. It is conducted mostly on
a private basis, even in the middle of public temples or thronged
processions, between a single worshiper and a single, personally selected
god or goddess. The exhibition takes pains to dispel the notion that
Hinduism encompasses thousands of deities and stresses that its adherents
select a single god or goddess to worship for life when they reach
adolescence. This deity may be Vishnu, the preserver; Shiva, the god
of creation and destruction; Shiva's wife, Parvati, the embodiment
of the divine feminine, or their son, Ganesha, remover of obstacles
and lord of beginnings. But each of the many options represents only
a facet of a larger unknowable divine absolute called Brahman.
Similarly, the form a puja takes is a personal choice. It may be the
prayerful sunrise dip in the Ganges, or a symbolic dripping of water
from a graceful ewer, as one of the photographs illustrates. It may
be a ceremony conducted before a household shrine centering on the
figure of a god or goddess that is prepared for worship each day,
like Lakshmi, by being ritually bathed, dressed, bejeweled and anointed
with spices.
Yet many Indian women begin each day by creating an intricate geometric
design of sprinkled rice powder just outside their front door, a homage
to Surya that will quickly be destroyed. One of the show's best video
moments shows several women covering a long, broad street with these
designs just before a huge procession sweeps through. In another procession,
recorded in photographs, scores of men carry a brightly painted 12-foot
statue of Ganesha into the sea. Made of solid unfired clay, it will
dissolve soon after reaching its destination.
''Meeting God'' has a suitable coda in a small intimate display of
photographs by Steve McCurry showing Hindus, Sikhs and Jains from
across the metropolitan region beside their home or office shrines.
Some of these arrangements are lavish by any standard and resemble
enlarged versions of the facsimile shrines in the larger show. Others
are modest and makeshift, tucked away in closets, cupboards, by office
copying machines and, in one case, behind the counter of a video store.
It is rare for an exhibition to bring so much information, spiritual
feeling and visual beauty into alignment. There are greater -- and
certainly older -- examples of Hindu art on the other side of Central
Park at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. But visit ''Meeting God''
first. It will expand the way you see them.
Roberta Smith
The New York Times