Major exhibition of Jain art at Rubin Museum of Art

The Rubin Museum of Art presents a glimpse into the universe of the Jains through an exhibition Victorious Ones: Jain Images of Perfection from September 18, 2009 to February 15, 2010.

The exhibition invites visitors to take a leap of imagination, away from Western paradigms and over the millennia, into the world of present- day practitioners of this lesser known ancient and ascetic faith, which dates from the 5th century BCE in India, who aim to live nonviolently, accumulate few material possessions and look at things from the points of view of others.

All of the works of art in Victorious Ones: Jain Images of Perfection portray the founding figures of Jainism. These Jinas, or conquerors are depicted in stone sculptures, bronzes and paintings. Their life stories are told in illuminated manuscripts and the places where they are revered are portrayed in detailed pilgrimage maps and diagrams of the vast Jain cosmos. These diagrams afford a glimpse of a complex universe of multiple continents and encircling oceans, whose outermost reaches harbor temples containing images of the Jinas.

The exhibition also represents some of the highest moments in the Indian artistic tradition, with exceptional works drawn from private and public collections around the world, many of which have never before been on public view. The majority of these objects date from the fifth to the sixteenth century. “We are treating the exhibition galleries as a uniquely Jain sacred space during the exhibition, because, as did their forbearers, present-day Jains pay homage to Jinas, the last of whom is thought to have preceded the historical Buddha,” says Martin Brauen, chief curator at the Rubin Museum of Art.

For Victorious Ones, lead curator Phyllis Granoff has translated medieval hymns and devotional texts from their original Prakrit and Sanskrit into English for the first time. To help evoke the experience of Jain worship, translated quotations from such texts will be displayed adjacent to works of art portraying the Jinas. Here, for example, is how one medieval monk described the image of a Jina, “His glance ripples with tender waves of compassion, while his face is serene and gentle. He seems to be the embodiment of tranquility. Everything around him is calm and his body radiates contentment. Surely he is the god of gods, the only one who can destroy birth, old age, and death, for no other god in this world looks anything like this.”

One of the world’s preeminent experts on Jainism, Dr. Granoff teaches at Yale University as the Lex Hixon Professor of World Religions. She has co-organized Victorious Ones with Becky Bloom, assistant curator at the Rubin Museum.

“Although akin to Buddhist and Hindu forms, Jain art is unique,” says Dr. Granoff. “The images of the Jinas are meant to convey their invincible strength and infinite knowledge. These powerful images are the visual counterparts of one poet’s metaphor that the Jina could no more be moved by the passions than the cosmic Mount Meru could be shaken by a breeze.”

She continues: “Some images, made from highly reflective stone or metal, or surrounded by circles of flames, vividly depict the brilliance of the knowledge of the Jina, which illumines the entire universe, and the heat of his asceticism that burns away all sin.” The Jain hymnists stressed that, unlike Hindu deities, Jinas hold no weapons, for they follow a path of nonviolence and are never accompanied by a spouse, for they have left behind sensual pleasures.

Among the highlights of Victorious Ones are the cosmographs and colorful tantric diagrams that were used in various rituals. One large-scale painting suggests the enormity of the Jain cosmos. It portrays the universe in the shape of a man. His small waist is in the shape of a circle representing the space where humans live and may achieve liberation, containing two and a half landmasses, or “continents,” surrounded by oceans. At one side is a circular map of the cosmos, while on the other we see the graphically depicted the tortures in the many hells that await the unrepentant sinner.

Other colorful paintings, many of them the size of medieval European tapestries, portray pilgrimage sites. These actual temples and locations, such as Mount Shatrunjaya in the Indian state of Gujarat are believed to have been sanctified by the presence of Jinas of the present age. Several of the featured maps record real pilgrimages while also recreating an ideal sacred realm.

In addition to the extremely large paintings of the cosmos and panoramic scenes of pilgrimage sites, Victorious Ones also features texts illuminated with paintings of outstanding quality, many small in scale with images that are flattened and abstracted, but nonetheless vibrant and energetic.

Stone sculptures, many quite massive in size are featured in the exhibition. The earliest is the head of a Jina created in the city of Mathura in the fifth century. This and other sculptures depicting Jinas would have been worshipped in either domestic shrines or public temples.

Jain temples became quite magnificent structures in the Middle Ages. Particularly wellknown are the temples of gleaming white marble in the Indian state of Rajasthan. Helping to give a sense of this ascendant moment in Jain history will be an intricately carved marble arch from the thirteenth century, on loan from the Yale University Art Gallery. This wall-sized architectural fragment is to be joined by another, a tenth-century reddish stone shrine from Madhya Pradesh, a rare loan from a private collection.

Victorious Ones: Jain Images of Perfection also assembles a number of elaborate bronzes with multiple Jinas and attendant figures. The exhibition is made possible by a lead gift from Sital and Suman Jain and family. Promotional support was provided by the Pandya Jain Family Foundation.

[ BY YOGESH KARIKURVE ]