Non Western
Before and Beyond the Image: Aniconic Symbolism in Buddhist Art
108 pages, paperback, 25 x 18.5 cm, 92 illustrations
PRICE: £20.00
ISBN: 978 3-907077-13-9
By Dietrich Seckel
First published a quarter-century ago in German, Dietrich Seckel’s essay remains a vital contribution to a much-debated feature of Buddhist art, its aniconism, its aversion to depicting spiritual entities of the very highest order. Unlike Judaism, early Christianity, and Islam, he explains, the Buddhist faith has not condemned the representation of holy beings or living creatures. Nonetheless it believes that its most crucial spiritual insights lie beyond the power of human imagination to describe or depict; the visual arts can allude to them only obliquely, through omission ort he use of non-iconic figures. This discrepancy between the practical, ritual functions of the work of art and concepts of ultimate sanctity, Seckel suggests, has affected Buddhist arts throughout Asia, particularly those of the Meditation School (Chan, or Zen) in China and Japan.
Dietrich Seckel is generally seen as the founder of the history of East-Asian art in Germany. Till 1976, he was professor at the University of Heidelberg. Deceased at the beginning of 2007, he could achieve the third volume of his opus magnum Das Porträt in Ostasien (The Portrait in East-Asia).
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