Raga Svara Aesthetic

Art and design are central to everything that I do. To me artistic beauty is inextricably linked to moral goodness. Even though it is fluid and subjective, the aesthetic remains connected to and contributes to the experience. The aesthetic, and here I fall back again on Dewey who has  had a great influence on me, becomes a kind of judgment, an attitude and an experience. Aesthetic experience is not only about the visual art perceived from a detached vantage, but also includes, especially at Raga Svara, the therapeutic experience, the architectural experience, the culinary experience and the cultural and philosophical experience.

The following picture shows one design motif that represents Raga in and  its philosophy in certain ways. Gond art is a form of folk & tribal art that is practiced by one of the largest tribes in India — the Gond —  who are predominantly from Madhya Pradesh, but also settled in Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, and Odisha. The work of Gond artists is rooted in their folk tales and culture, and thus storytelling is a strong element of every painting.

With the help of our team of designers and artists, we are creating original  works of art that represent the aesthetic experience at Raga Svara. Each piece of work has been made to represent an element of Raga.

One of my goals is to ensure that aesthetic experience does not, in Dewey’s  words, “become isolated from the human conditions under which it was brought into being and from the human consequences it engenders in actual life experience.

Mohit Patel, Varsha Ritu, July 2019