| Academic Posts - Art & Archaeology | Buddhist Art and Archaeology |
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| Written by Geoffrey Bamford | |
| Wednesday, 23 April 2008 | |
BUDDHIST ARTBuddhist Art has always been created and appreciated in a context unfamiliar to western traditions of fine art, and even of devotional art. Images are not just objects of awe and wonder. They may support a precise process of visualisation, part of a repertoire of practices designed to improve and indeed transform the quality of experience. Beauty is not for its own sake, nor does it serve to glorify an autonomous, external reality. Rather, it forms part of a process of inducing elevated states of understanding and consciousness, which underpin ethical behaviour.BUDDHIST ARCHAEOLOGYBuilding complexes can serve a similar purpose. The detailed structure of a stupa offers a representation of the phenomenal universe (or, of the mind) as it appears in the perspective of seeking to transform experience. At another level, the ground plan of the building that serves an institution must reflect its social setting and function. A stupa complex concretises the practice of pilgrimage and devotion; a monastic compound gives shape to the organisation and behaviour which produces and sustains its inhabitants and their social role. |
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