Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy

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Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy, 1916

Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy (abbreviation AKC ; born August 22, 1877 in Colombo , † September 9, 1947 in Needham , Massachusetts ) was a historian and philosopher of Indian art and the history of art and symbols in Asian culture. He was one of the early interpreters of Indian culture in the west.

He was the son of of Sri Lanka derived Tamil scholars Mutu Coomaraswamy and his English wife Elizabeth Beeby. In 1917 he became the first curator for Indian and Muslim art at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston . He emphasized the spiritual element in Indian art . As a metaphysician he was a representative of the Philosophia perennis . Together with René Guénon and Frithjof Schuon , he is considered the founder of the traditionalist school .

His second wife was the English singer Alice Richardson , who performed under the pseudonym Ratan Devi. From 1922 to 1930 Coomaraswamy was married to the American dancer and illustrator Stella Bloch in third marriage . The couple traveled to the Far East together . In the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections of Princeton University about 650 letters from Coomaraswamy be kept at his wife.

Publications

  • History of Indian and Indonesian Art. 1927
    • German edition: History of Indian and Indonesian art. KW Hiersemann, Leipzig 1927; Hiersemann, Stuttgart 1965.
  • The Transformation of Nature in Art , Cambridge (Mass.), Harvard University Press, 1934 (latest edition New Delhi, 2004)
  • Of the one and only transmigrant. In: Journal of the American Oriental Society. Supplement. Number 3, April – June 1944 (German translation by Felix M. Bieri: online ).
  • Coomaraswamy. 3 volumes. Edited by Roger Lipsey. Bollingen Foundation Collection. Princeton University Press, Princeton 1977, ISBN 0-691-09931-6 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Marco Pasi: Aleister Crowley and the temptation of politics . Ares-Verlag, Graz 2006. P. 45, P. 64 and P. 268-269.
  2. ↑ Guide to the Stella Bloch Papers, 1907-1999, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts (PDF; 211 kB)
  3. ↑ Entry on Stella Bloch at the Houghton Library, Harvard College Library ( Memento of the original from July 3, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / oasis.lib.harvard.edu
personal data
SURNAME Coomaraswamy, Ananda Kentish
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Coomaraswamy, Ananda; AKC
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American historian and philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH August 22, 1877
PLACE OF BIRTH Colombo
DATE OF DEATH September 9, 1947
Place of death Needham , Massachusetts