VI; Participating in the process of improvisation that guided the m *king of the picture, the viewer selects an itinerary into the pictorial space ^he 'blank' spaces traversed by his eyes are filled up by a gestalt mobile and images linked in a continuum. The rhythm of movement then echoes with rhythms of tribal life. The floral border or Pithoro is a flexible enclosure of the close knit tribal world with a point of entrance (or exit) marked, rather than a frame, hence free from tensions of a physical centre. Indeed the physical centre is effectively neutralised by spreading the imagery all over the pictorial plane. This gives the impression of 'floating' to a mind conditioned by illusionistic principles. The weight ofcentrality, obtained through juxtapositions of vanishing point and physical and pictorial centres crucial to an illusionistic visage, is here replaced by collective equanimity of forms which lends them ease and grace. Such paintings are not conditioned by pre-existing gravitational pulls of architectural units, and hence they are not subject to analysis by geometric vivisections of vertical, horizontal and diagonal halves or fractions. Organically growing alongwith 'fluid' architectural forms, they shape the living space. One knows how murals running over corners of walls in Ajanta transform and dynamise the architectural space. The question of realism and of the degree of human content, often expected in the form of an explicit portrayal of emotions, is similarly located in the context of illusionism and its subsequent manifestations. At^oidingly, so much of the art of the world, more notably Indian, would be considered reticent and even deficient (sic) in 'expression'. It ma\ be asserted here that no art worth its grain is 'unrealistic' in intention. Only the outlook and means to achieve the respective ideals of realism differ. If a highly abbreviated form of a Pithoro image looks shorn of human content and an elaborate one of a Kerala mural looks 'stylised and over-decorativce', the loss is ours.