“Was not their mistake once more bred of the life of slavery that they had been living?—a life which was always looking upon everything, except mankind, animate and inanimate—‘nature,’ as people used to call it—as one thing, and mankind as another, it was natural to people thinking in this way, that they should try to make ‘nature’ their slave, since they thought ‘nature’ was something outside them” — William Morris


Saturday, April 16, 2011

Anamorphic Buddhas


As Graham and I affirmed, a group trip to an art museum creates powerful synergies. Sharing the appreciation of things is a good good thing.

I discovered the anamorphic art of Kuang-Yu Lee. Disturbingly distorted Buddhas and Buddhist mudras (ritual gestures). These disturbances brought back to life the compassion dimension of perception that stereotyped Buddhist statuary is prone to edit out, if you see enough. The forms also spoke to a certain kind of ablism in Buddhist art.

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