About Book
The nine essays in this book are among author's most stimulating. They discuss such matters as true function of aesthetics in art, the importance of symbolism, and the importance of intellectual & philosophical background to the artist, they analyse the role of traditional culture in enriching art, they demonstrate the abstract art and primitive art, despite superficial resemblances, are completely divergent and they deal with the common philosophy which pervades all great art, the nature of medieval art, folklore and modern art, the beauty inherent in mathematics, and the union of traditional symbolism and individual portraiture in premodern cultures. The author is a great Orientalist and has covered the philosophic and religious experience of the entire premodern world, East and West, and for him primitive, medieval European, and classical Indian experiences of truth and art were only different dialects in a common language.
About Author
ANANDA K. COOMARASWAMY was born in 1877, of Anglo-Ceylonese parents. After completing studies in Geology he soon became interested in the arts and crafts of his native Ceylon and India. In 1917 he relocated to the USA where he became Keeper of Indian and Islamic Art at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, establishing a large collection of Oriental artifacts and presenting lectures on their symbolic and metaphysical meaning. An encounter with the seminal writings of perennialist author René Guénon served to confirm and strengthen his view of the Perennial Philosophy. From this period onwards Dr. Coomaraswamy began to compose his mature--and undoubtedly most profound--works, adeptly expounding the philosophia perennis by drawing on his unparalleled knowledge of the arts, crafts, mythologies, cultures, folklores, symbolisms, and religions of the Orient and the Occident. In 1947 his plans to retire to India and take on sannyasa (renunciation of the world) were cut short by his sudden and untimely death. A representative collection of his extensive writings, entitled The Essential Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, was edited by his son Rama P. Coomaraswamy and published by World Wisdom.