Coomaraswamy, Ananda Kentish
(1877–1947), Sri Lankan art historian. Anada Kentish Coomaraswamy was an art historian who, in a series of influential books, greatly advanced the understanding of Hindu and Buddhist iconography. Originally trained as a geologist, he gained a Doctorate of Science in that subject from London University (1905). On returning to Ceylon, he felt that the traditional culture had been corroded by Western influences and was in need of a spokesman, which he then became. After about a decade in Ceylon, he left for the United States, where he founded the first museum department of Indian art at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in 1917.
In his writings, Coomaraswamy presented South Asian art as a form of knowledge strongly imbued with a religious feeling. He was strongly influenced by mystics and metaphysicians, considering art "an effective expression of metaphysical theses." He was thus profoundly concerned with the communicative characteristics of art, viewing traditional art not from an aesthetic so much as an inspirational position, in which technical function was fused with symbolic meaning. He discovered the Rajput school of painting, and related it to Indian literary forms. Perhaps his most remarkable achievement was his demonstration of the way in which the Hindu temple represented the body and house of God. He was a pioneer in presenting South Asian art within a similar intellectual framework to that which had long been applied to Western art. In this, he set his thinking in opposition to the conventional dismissals of Indian art that had come from European critics such as Hegel (1835) and Ruskin (1859), who had considered it irrational and unnatural.
Further Reading
Lipsey, R. (1977) Coomaraswamy: His Life and Work. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
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