Kategoria BISAC: Art >> Asian - General

Ananda K. Coomaraswamy (1877-1947) was a pioneer in Indian art history and in the cultural confrontation of East and West. A scholar in the tradition of the great Indian grammarians and philosophers, an art historian convinced that the ultimate value of art transcends history, and a social thinker influenced by William Morris, Coomaraswamy was a unique figure whose works provide virtually a complete education in themselves. Finding a universal tradition in past cultures ranging from the Hellenic and Christian to the Indian, Islamic, and Chinese, he collated his ideas and symbols of ancient...

Appearing for the first time in paperback and illustrated with line drawings, diagrams, and 26 half-tone plates, this study of the iconographic aspect of Japanese Buddhist sculpture surveys the significance of eight principal and six secondary hand gestures (mudra), in addition to the postures (asana), such as the "lotus," and the symbolic attributes. A pictorial index helps the reader in identifying the gestures.

Buddhist images are ubiquitous in Japan, yet they are rarely accorded much attention in studies of Buddhist monastic traditions. Scholars of religion tend to regard Buddhist images as mere symbols or representations of religious ideals, commemorations of saints and patriarchs, ancillary aids to meditative practice, or the focus of lay piety. Art historians approach these images as works of art suitable for stylistic and iconographic analysis. Yet neither of these groups of scholars has adequately appreciated the centrality and significance of images and image worship in Japanese monastic...

In the 1950s and 1960s, Doris Duke was one of the few Western collectors pursuing Thai artworks, and in 1961 she established the Foundation for Southeast Asian Art and Culture to increase Western recognition and appreciation of these works. By 1964 Miss Duke had acquired roughly 2,000 diverse pieces of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century art primarily from Thailand, Burma, and Laos, ranging from textiles, household furnishings, and jewelry to teak houses and massive statues. She began to display her collection in 1972 at Duke Farms, her large New Jersey estate, and she continued to travel...

Tales from a Charmed Life is the last in a trilogy of works by Hildred Geertz exploring the complexity of Balinese history, religion, and society. A landmark study by one of the most distinguished anthropologists of Indonesia, it centers around the stories and paintings of Ida Bagus Made Togog (1913-1989), an artist and ritual specialist who played a significant role in the history of Balinese ethnography. In the 1930s, Togog was central to Mead and Bateson's pioneering studies of Balinese character and came under the influence of expatriate artists Walter Spies and Rudolf Bonnet to emerge...

The mention of Buddhism in Indonesia calls to mind for many people the Central Javanese monument of Borobudur, one of the largest Buddhist monuments in the world and the subject of extensive scholarly scrutiny. The neglect of scholarship on Buddhist art from later periods might lead one to assume that after the tenth century Buddhism had been completely eclipsed by the predominantly Hindu Eastern Javanese dynasties. Yet, as the works discussed here illustrate, extraordinary Buddhist images were still being produced as late as the fourteenth century. Violence and Serenity offers a close...

Since the mid-1990s Taiwanese artists have been responsible for shaping much of the international contemporary art scene, yet studies on modern Taiwanese art published outside of Taiwan are scarce. The nine essays collected here present different perspectives on Taiwanese visual culture and landscape during the Japanese colonial period (1895-1945), focusing variously on travel writings, Western and Japanese/Oriental-style paintings, architecture, aboriginal material culture, and crafts. Issues addressed include the imagined Taiwan and the discovery of the Taiwanese landscape, which...

New Songs on Ancient Tunes presents a sweeping selection of Chinese paintings and calligraphies from the turbulent century between 1850 and 1950. Drawn entirely from the private San Francisco collection of the Reverend Richard Fabian, the works span the years between the Opium War and the Cultural Revolution. The book includes a survey of the bold style of the late nineteenth-century Shanghai School, as contrasted with the conservative artists of the late Qing dynasty Orthodox School, and examines the impact on artists of the new urban (and international) culture of Shanghai, and...

For over forty years, Tadashi Suzuki has been a unique and vital force in both Japanese and Western theater, creating and directing many internationally acclaimed productions including his famous production of The Trojan Women, which subsequently toured around the world. An intergral part of his work has been the development and teaching of his rigorous and controversial training system, the Suzuki method, whose principles have also been highly influential in contemporary theater. Paul Allain, an experienced practitioner of the Suzuki method, re-evaluates Suzuki's work, giving a...