Exploring India's Sacred Art: Selected Writings - Softcover

Kramrisch, Stella

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0812211340 ISBN 13: 9780812211344

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983

Synopsis

Stella Kramrisch (1896-1993) was a pioneering interpreter of Indian art and its religious contexts. During her sixty-year career as a creative scholar, teacher, museum curator, and editor, she was been a dominant force in shaping European, American, and Asian notions of Indian culture. Exploring India's Sacred Art presents a selection of her influential essays, along with a biographical essay. The writings collected here emphasize the cultural and symbolic values of Indian art. The first section discusses the social and religious contexts of art. This is followed by essays on various forms of ritual art. The section entitled "The Subtle Body" is derived from her term for the form that underlies concrete shapes; it includes studies of literary and visual symbolism. Further essays concentrate on formal and technical aspects of temple structure and painting in the context of their symbolic meaning.

About this title

Review

"A superb biographcal essay on Stella Kramrisch and a careful selection of her extensive writings present a picture of this extraordinary scholar whose work has, in many ways, shaped the study of Indian art both here and in India itself."--Asia Magazine

About the Author

Barbara Stoler Miller, herself a scholar of Indian literature and art who studied with Stella Kramrisch at the University of Pennsylvania, is Professor of Oriental Studies at Barnard College, Columbia University. Among her published works is Love Song of the Dark Lord: Jayadeva's Gitagovinda.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Publication date: 1983
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0812211340
• ISBN 13: 9780812211344
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 368
• Editor: Miller Barbara Stoler