The Transformation of Nature in Art (Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts) [Hardcover]

Ananda K. Coomaraswamy (Author), Kapila Vatsyayan (Author, Editor), Indira Gandhi National Centre for Arts (Corporate Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1996 | ISBN-10: 8120716434 | ISBN-13: 978-8120716438

Coomaraswamy attempts to explain the theory behind medieval European and Asian art in India. The first principle of his theory is that art does not exist for its own sake; it exists as a mean to some religious conditions or experience.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 214 pages
• Publisher: Sterling Pub Private Ltd (April 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 8120716434
• ISBN-13: 978-8120716438
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.5 ounces
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,918,413 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the 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.