METAPHYSICAL ABSTRACTION IN MODERN INDIAN ART: ADVAITA, ŚŪNYAVĀDA, AND THE SEMIOTICS OF SPIRITUAL VISUALITY

Abstract

Modern Indian abstraction is best understood neither as a simple rejection of representation nor as the inevitable visual expression of a single spiritual tradition. It is a historically situated field in which artists have negotiated international modernism, the legacies of Indian visual culture, individual experience, and diverse philosophical vocabularies. This paper examines the metaphysical and semiotic possibilities of Indian abstract painting through selected concepts from Advaita Vedānta, Buddhist Śūnyavāda, Jain Syādvāda, Tantric visual culture, and Indian aesthetic thought. The Upaniṣadic statement “sarvaṃ khalvidaṃ brahma” (Chāndogya Upaniṣad 3.14.1) offers one framework for thinking about the relation between multiplicity and unity, while “neti, neti” (Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 2.3.6) points toward the limits of exhaustive description. These formulations are not treated as universal explanations of abstraction; rather, they provide interpretive questions through which visual form may be examined. The discussion considers the bindu in S. H. Raza, the contemplative surfaces of V. S. Gaitonde, the Tantric orientation of G. R. Santosh and Sohan Qadri, and the material and chromatic inquiry associated with Prabhakar Kolte. A semiotic approach attends to the ways signs, intervals, textures, colour relations, and spatial structures produce meaning without necessarily resolving into fixed symbols. The paper argues that Indian abstraction is internally diverse and cannot be reduced to an opposition between spiritual Indian art and formal Western modernism. Its significance lies in the continuing negotiation between inherited concepts and modern artistic agency, and in its capacity to create conditions for reflective intercultural dialogue.