Arts and Culture

Current activities in Auroville

The term "Auroville arts" should necessarily mean 'arts practised in Auroville'. It should not be taken in the sense of a school of thought or a group that has a common agenda or language like many a modern and post modern art-groups may have.

Visual and fine arts

• Aurofilm

Jocelyn, who has written a book called the 'Antithesis of Yoga'has a studio in Auroville where some quasi-traditional art is produced. It is very like the famous Tanjavoor (Tanjore) glass painting style.

Performing arts

Music

• Russian Singing Bells

Dance

There are several Aurovilians dancers who have been trained in Bharatanatyam (Saroja, Prabha and others) and Odissi (Devasmita Patnaik and Kanchana). They conduct classes for children and adults and occasionally stage performances.

Groups involved in cultural activities

• Auroville Cultural Exchange
• The Auroville Theatre Group

Places

• Savitri Bhavan

Savitri Bhavan is open to the public from 9 am to noon and from 2 - 5 pm every day, including Sundays. In addition, evening classes or presentations take place on several evenings each week. A library of books, non-book and audio-visual study materials is being built up to assist students and researchers, and the staff are responding to queries from around the world. Other activities include lectures by guest-speakers; regular study-circles and courses; collection and preparation of study-materials; special events such as study-camps, exhibitions or presentations; and publication of a quarterly journal which is being sent out to addresses all over India and in 35 other countries around the world.

• Pitanga Cultural Centre

Sri Aurobindo on art

It is necessary that every man should have his artistic faculty developed, his taste trained, his sense of beauty and insight into form and colour and that which is expressed in form and colour, made habitually active, correct and sensitive. It is necessary that those who create, whether in great things or small, whether in the unusual masterpieces of art and genius or in the small common things of use that surround a man's daily life, should be habituated to produce and the nation habituated to expect the beautiful in preference to the ugly, the noble in preference to the vulgar, the fine in preference to the crude, the harmonious in preference to the gaudy. A nation surrounded daily by the beautiful, noble, fine and harmonious becomes that which it is habituated to contemplate and realises the fulness of the expanding spirit in itself.

The Mother on art in Auroville

Auroville will be known through the arts.

See Also

• Sports and activities