Buddha-Inspired Kitsch...

...or "the puckish humor of Pop Art [combined] with the serene and cerebral qualities of Minimalism" [link] depending on your point of view.

Stingel's Buddha

An article in last Sunday's Times talks about Italian artist Rudolf Stingel and his association with associations with Buddha and India:

Mr. Stingel's associations with Buddha are longstanding. As a boy in northern Italy, he played with the Buddha figurines that his father, who traveled to India for work, brought home as souvenirs. As a rebellious young man in the early '70s, it was mandatory, he said, to profess an affinity for Buddhist practices: namely, to have a little shrine and practice meditation.

"You had to do it if you wanted to be cool," he said. "But we all faked it. It was all a lie — no one ever really meditated."

And, he added, "I have a problem sitting cross-legged, anyway." [link]

To lampoon those pseudo-Buddhists or "elite Buddhists" (a term coined by prominent Buddhologist Charles S. Prebish) Stingel created a series of east-meets-east sculptures:

...that blended the meditative Buddha with many-armed Hindu deities like Siva or Vishnu. In this new deity's six hands, Mr. Stingel placed the implements he cited in his earlier D.I.Y. manual: a brush, a squeegee, a scissors, a mixer and so on. Cast in rubber and made in 24 candy-bright colors, these gods of Stingelian creation became themselves an instant style-set collectible. [link]

I've talked about this kind of thing before, and the jury is still out on this one. I can't seem to decide whether appropriating these images and modifying them to suit one's purpose (whatever it may be) is disrespectful or not. In the U.S., showing irreverence to age-old concepts is applauded and thus, encouraged. However, in eastern countries, that is not the case. This is not to say that Indians couldn't do with a little irreverence, but at what point is it all right to get outraged?

This doesn't come from nowhere. I have an amateur artist friend who has a few paintings similar to Stingel's art and, knowing him as well as I do, I know that he has little or no understanding of the significance of what he's appropriating other than "Hey! This would look good over here". Even I myself have dabbled in the arts and freely used Indian images from time to time in my own (somewhat limited) creations. And of course, I have appropriated the name of my favorite deity.

The answer, I suppose, lies in Stingel's Buddha or specifically, Buddhism's middle way. It's ok to appropriate these images as long as it is done with a reasonable intent, and with a certain amount of understanding and respect. Now, what constitutes "reasonable intent" and "certain amount of understanding and respect"? Well, the answer to that depends on the situation and this brings us back to square one.

In my earlier posting, I quoted from Subhamoy Das' About.com article on the subject. I think he answers the question well, so I'll quote from it again:

...the entire concept of judging works of art is quite relative... [I]s it morally right to reap creative benefits at the cost of maligning the cultural and religious sentiments of another sect? [I]t remains an open debate... But the bottom line is that it's not as easy to understand the culture, symbols and essence of Hinduism as finding them colourful enough for use in films or fashion. [link]