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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Humble_Gursevak" data-source="post: 46160" data-attributes="member: 602">The New York Times has a great review of the Sikh Exhibition with wonderful art images.  Monday, September 18, 2006Inside NYTimes.comArt Review | 'I See No Stranger'<<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/18/arts/design/18sikh.html" target="_blank">http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/18/arts/design/18sikh.html</a>> Government Museum and Art Gallery, Chandigarh<<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/18/arts/design/18sikh.html" target="_blank">http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/18/arts/design/18sikh.html</a>> A king pays homage to Guru Nanek in an exhibition of early Sikh art atthe Rubin Museum.<<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/18/arts/design/18sikh.html" target="_blank">http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/18/arts/design/18sikh.html</a>> The Wonders of Sikh Spirituality---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Art & Design <<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/pages/arts/design/index.html" target="_blank">http://www.nytimes.com/pages/arts/design/index.html</a>> Wonders of Sikh Spirituality Come Alive By HOLLAND COTTER<<a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/holland_co" target="_blank">http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/holland_co</a>tter/index.html?inline=nyt-per> Sikhism, the world's fifth-largest organized religion, has more than 20million followers. Many thousands live in New York City. We can spotSikh men on the street by their turbans and upswept whiskers. And manyof us will recall that two decades ago Sikhs were at the center of the news when the Indian Army stormed the Golden Temple at Amritsar, killinghundreds of Sikh separatists, and, soon after, Indira Gandhi wasassassinated by her two Sikh bodyguards.But what about Sikhism itself? Few Westerners have even basicinformation.How many people are aware that it was conceived as a universalist,open-door religion?Or that its view of society was radically egalitarian? Or that its holybook, the Adi Granth, far from being a catalog of sectarian dos anddon'ts, is a bouquet of poetic songs, blending the fragrances of Hinduragas, Muslim hymns and Punjabi folk tunes into a music of spiritualastonishment?This is precisely the information delivered by the small and absolutelybeautiful show titled "I See No Stranger: Early Sikh Art and Devotion"at the Rubin Museum of Art in Chelsea. Vivid but concentrated, itpresents, mostly through paintings, a culture's version of its ownorigins, the image of history shaped far more by hard work, pluralisticpolitics and mysticism than by militancy.Sikhism was founded at the end of the 15th century in northern India,when a young, high-caste Punjabi Hindu named Na nak had a revelation. Itled him to believe that God was a formless spiritual force shared by allreligions, and that social ranks based on faith, class, caste, gender orrace were illusory. Unity was reality. The Other was just another. "Isee no stranger, I see no enemy, I look upon all with good will," is howSikh scripture phrases it.Eager to share his vision, Nanak took to the road, accompanied by aMuslim musician named Mardana, who played the stringed instrument calleda rabab. Together they traveled, according to official accounts ofNanak's life, from Sri Lanka to Afghanistan, and west to Baghdad andMecca, composing and singing devotional songs as they went.They lived at a high devotional moment. The mystical brand of Islam called Sufism was in full flower, as was the corresponding Hindumovement call Bhakti. Saints of all sorts and sects wandered northernIndia, bumping into and bouncing off one another, turning a subco ntinentinto a kind of giant love-in. Orthodox thinking was turned inside out.Hierarchies were up-ended. Students taught and teachers learned. Thename Sikh - pronounced sick with an enunciated H at the end - comes froma Sanskrit word for disciple.The exhibition, organized by the art historian B. N. Goswamy of PanjabUniversity, and Caron Smith, chief curator of the Rubin Museum, conveyssomething of the flavor of all this through dozens of miniaturepaintings in Hindu and Mughal court styles illustrating the life ofNanak, or Guru Nanak as he came to be called. In them he emerges as afigure of commonsensical wit, unassuming piety, superhuman power andincreasing physical bulk.He's a trim, soft-faced schoolboy in one 18th-century painting, standingin class and holding out a writing board - it looks like a boxy camera -to a teacher. Already by this time Nanak has been lecturing his parentson the Bhagavad-Gita and writing m etaphysical verse. Some of thesepoems, we are meant to assume, are on the writing board. And we know hisconfounded teacher will give him an A for Amazing.Another picture shows the adult Nanak asleep on the floor of a mosque inMecca, with his feet pointed, in a scandalous breach of religiousetiquette, toward the Kaaba, God's house, the holy of holies. When anoutraged mullah tries to drag him around into reverse position, theKaaba turns too. The lesson: no direction is unhallowed, because God iseverywhere.In a third painting, Nanak, now in stout middle age and wearing a sortof zany aviator's cap, sits with his book of hymns under a tree.Mardana, tuning up nearby, stares blankly off into space. From the lefta princely figure, stiff-backed and poker-faced, approaches on horseback to pay homage. Clearly the meeting is a significant one, but nobodyseems very into it, or even aware that anyone else is there.The paintin g is paired in the show with the workshop drawing, producedby a master artist, that served as its model. The contrast is striking.In the drawing the prince, far from being restrained, practicallylevitates from his saddle with ardor and leans toward Nanak as if drawnto a magnet. Mardana plays and sings with fervor of a contemporarybhangra star. It is in the drawing, rather than in the painting, thatthe Nanak Effect, so evident in poems and songs, comes through.Guru Nanak had nine successors, and each built on what he had begun. Thefourth guru, Ram Das, established Amritsar as the pre-eminent Sikhpilgrimage site. The next, Guru Arjan Dev, completed the Golden Templethere, built on a platform in the center of an excavated lake. He alsoassembled Nanak's poems, along with others by Hindu and Muslim saints,to create the holy book.Up to this point, at the very beginning of the 17th century, Sikhhistory had been peaceful enoug h despite internal frictions. The site ofAmritsar was a gift outright from the Mughal emperor, Akbar, a spiritualseeker and social philosopher who ruled much of India and was admiringof Sikhism's multicultural character. But after Akbar's death, rapportwith the Mughals disintegrated.In 1606 his son, Jahangir, an observant Muslim, imprisoned and killedArjan Dev. When the next guru was also jailed, the Sikhs adopted astance of defensive militarism and a new social ideal: thesoldier-saint. The 10th guru, Govind Singh, formalized this collectiveidentity in 1699 when he established a ritual of Sikh initiation andcodified a set of communal symbols that included, for men, leaving theirhair uncut, wearing a turban and assuming the surname Singh ("lion"),and for women, using the surname Kaur ("princess") .Govind Singh also took the crucial step of designating the Adi Granth,the holy book, as the next, last, and eternal guru , under the honorifictitle of Guru Granth Sahib. The book became and remains an object ofincalculable charisma, almost a sentient being, enthroned on cushions,swathed in rich fabrics, and handled with tender, punctilious deference.Reciting or singing from it is the defining act of the Sikh worship. Sointense is its sanctity that, while a throne has been prepared for it inthe show, the Guru Granth itself is physically absent.Absence can of course have a presence of its own, as modern Sikh historydoes in this exhibition. An earlier show, "The Arts of the SikhKingdoms," organized in London in 1999, focused on Sikhism from theBritish colonial period onward, tracing the entwined political andreligious developments that led to, among other things, the calamitiesof 1984 in India.The Rubin Museum has late material too, including a splendid set ofBritish-influenced 19th-century drawings of craftsmen at work, and aseries of formal portraits of Sikh warrior-chiefs. Unlike Nanak theseleaders carry weapons rather than hymnals, which points to reconceivedideals of spiritual and temporal power, though these ideals and how theycame about are only suggested here.All-apparent, however, are the poetry and music that pervade andorchestrate the Sikh view of the world. Traditional hymns play softly inthe gallery. A rabab is on display. Certain paintings have the gentle,doleful lilt of evening ragas; others jump and twitch with a bhangrabeat. And running through everything, like the harmonium'sbeginningless-endless voice, are the words of the holy book:Wonderful is sound Wonderful is wisdom Wonderful is life Wonderful its distinctions Wonderful is praise Wonderful is eulogy Wonderful the Presence One sees in the present O wonder-struck am I to see wonder upon wonder. "I See No Stranger: Early Sikh Art and Devotion" remains at the RubinMuseum of Art, 150 West 17th Street, Chelsea, (212) 620-5000, throughJan. 29.</blockquote>

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