Ritual

Bala Yantra. Rajasthan, c. 18th
century. Gouache on paper.
90
the interplay of contrasting forces: male and female, active and
passive, spirit and matter; he expressed it himself as the 'static
balance' and 'dynamic equilibrium' which constitutes reality.
Mondrian identified the vertical with the male principle and the
horizontal with the female. In a similar way, Paul Klee explored
spatial energy through the concept of polarity: 'A concept is not
thinkable without its opposite - every concept has its opposite
more or less in the manner of thesis-antithesis.' To express the
eternal dialectic of the static and dynamic in its essence, he aligned
the notion of polarity to geometry, creating an infinitely variable
harmony of coloured planes. These artists' pictorial affinities to
tantric art and their metaphysical ideas suggest a link with tantra's
dualistic philosophy. A striking sculptural similarity is in the
primordial ovoids of Brancusi and the Brahmandas of tantra.
Metaphysically, both forms operate on the same level - the
projection of total unity. Indeed, in 1933 the Maharaja of Indore
commissioned Brancusi to construct a model for the Temple of
Deliverance based on this primordial ovoid form. Kandinsky, too,
recalled the sound-form dialectic in the tantras when he said:
'Sound, then, is the soul of form, which comes to life only through
sound from the inside out.' More recently, Delaunay, Rothko,
Reinhardt, Newman, in the West, and particularly Biren De in
India, have demonstrated a striking visual relationship between