Art of India

The Art of India is remarkable first for the quality and the choice of its 190 plates, all carefully described and placed. These illustrations, often of little known subjects, help the reader to grasp the complexity of art forms here pictured from their beginnings at Mohenjo-Daro, to the graceful figurines of the Vth century and the miniatures of the 18th. The interesting introduction entitled Traditions of Indian Art is less concerned with conveying historical information, for which we do not lack manuals, than with establishing what the author considers the permanent conditions of artistic expansion. Mrs. Kramrisch emphasizes the primacy of religious forces, she sees in art a sort of projection of metaphysics. This leads her to underscore the pre-dominance of a total art whose essential aspect is in architecture, that is, the temple. “In the fullness of its development, [the temple] establishes in spatial terms the intellectual and actual approach to the Supreme Principle of which the deity is the symbol. “The work of art is the body and the dwelling in which are revealed the Formless, the Beyond form, the Point of Deliverance, and the Source of all Form.” The present volume is therefore important in that it brings together Kramrisch’s considered foundational for the study of Indian art and culture.