The Sacred Bodhi Tree
| Support Type: | Paper |
| Paint Type: | Ink |
| Current Location: | Permanent institutional collections, including the Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. |
| Location History: | This print was historically part of the Max Epstein Archive before being transferred via the Carrie B. Neely Bequest in 1940. |
The Sacred Bodhi Tree (Oldest Tree in the world) strikes me as enlightenment as ecology. The artist, Mukul Dey was trained in painting and printmaking under the mentorship of Rabindranath Tagore, at the Kala Bhavana, Santiniketan, before becoming an innovative pioneer of drypoint etching in India. As reported on by The Philadelphia Museum of Art, Dey’s inspiration for the image derives from the tale of the Buddha achieving enlightenment beneath the bodhi tree in Bodh Gaya. I was moved by the choice to place the Tree, not at the background, but as the fulcrum of moral and civic weight. By depicting humans bowing in awe beneath the tree and with birds and squirrels nesting and chattering above, this image frames the tree as the nexus of life as well as devotion. The composition implies that knowledge is an emergent outcome of compassion, shelter, persistence and interrelationship rather than as apart from life as a process. The print, to me, implies awakening as opposed to exiting the world, to have awareness of all lives, the smallest puff of wind and the gifts brought as integral parts of one interconnected world we all share.