A.K. Coomaraswamy’s writings are some thing of a challenge to any reader and more so to a reviewer, who does not combine in himself/herself, the abilities of an art historian with those of a metaphysician and philosopher. This is specially so in the case of the present volume edited by Roger Lipsey, bringing together essays, which do not deal with specific works of art, but with the philosophy of traditional art and symbolism. Roger Lipsey has done a valuable service to the student of art and philosophy by achieving the difficult task of putting together essays which show a remarkable thematic unity and bring out the most significant ideas of Coomaraswamy on how to approach traditional art of the East and the West. Written in the years 1932-1947, ‘indisputably Coomaraswamy’s high period’, these essays show the significant transformation which occurred in him, when he acquired a new dimension, religious and metaphysical, in addition to his scholarly discipline and breadth of reading and when his writings tended to be theoretical and conceptual.
Jan-Feb 1988, volume 12, No 1