File:History of art (1921) (14783274515).jpg

Identifier: historyofar02faur (find matches)
Title: History of art
Year: 1921 (1920s)
Authors: Faure, Elie, 1873-1937 Pach, Walter, 1883-1958
Subjects: Art
Publisher: New York and London : Harper & brothers
Contributing Library: PIMS - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: University of Toronto

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re abstract, and thereforemore sober. It was by this route, indeed, that Greecehad entered India, as Rome came later, and Byzantiumand Persia which, from the depths of its history,brought the memory of Assyria, of Chaldea, and per-haps of Egypt. With Persia also came Islam, a spiritu-alizing force that did not love the images and despisedthe idols. Finally, by way of Lisbon and Venice, therecame the Occident of the Gothic age and of the Renais-sance. But India is a crucible so ebullient in its heatthat for centuries it forced Islam to submit to its genius,to cover the walls of its mosques with living arabesques—lotus, flowering vines, figures of men and of monsters.The Greek statue, hastily imitated by the first sculp- INDIA 35 tors, was forgotten as quickly as it had become known.The disquieting elegance of the works that it inspiredwas only a prelude to the retaliation soon to be madeby a sensuality impossible to restrain. Though capti-vated for a moment by the unbounded grace and
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Indo-Mussulman Art (xvii Century). The Taj-Mahal of Agra. reason of the Greeks, India was to manifest its ownpower through the wandering smile of the mouths,through the smothered flame, the enervation, and theascetic thinness of the bodies. When northern Indiacarried its religion into the south, it also brought withit the pure column that had supported the luminouspediments on all the acropolises of the Occident.But the column was to be overwhelmed by the extrava-gant growth of the living forests of stone. India assim-ilated everything, transformed everything, submergedeverything under the mounting tide of her ever-moving 36 MEDIEVAL ART force. Grandiose civilizations passed over her andsowed her deserts and her woods with the cadavers ofcities. What matter.^ Here neither time counts, normen. Evolution returns upon itself at every moment.Like a sea, the Hindu soul is eternally mobile, betweenfixed shores. At no moment can one say, here the raceascends, here is its apogee, here its fal

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