PhD Research Scholar, School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Email: neelgai@hotmail.com
Abstract:
In this paper is an attempt, through the lens of visual-rhetoric, towards understanding the origin of the k?rtimukha in ancient Indian art, its iconographic evolution and how this motif functions symbolically at manifold levels- from the ontological (as an essential quality of art, as a negation of the material vulnerability of a religious object or monument, as metaphor for the infinite) to the contextual (to serve a particular myth) and the apotropaic- through a plain visualisation of horror. It is in this evolution of purpose, that it came to be associated with the grotesque.
Keywords: K?rtimukha, ‘grotesque’ in Indian art, evolution of k?rtimukha motif, ‘mythomorphism’.