Ajanta: The Colour and Monochrome Reproductions of the Ajanta Frescoes Based on Photography v1.c4.4

v1.c4.4

The longer one studies the art of the world, the more one prizes, the more one returns to—or so at least is my experience—the art which, whether ostensibly religious or not, expresses or is impregnated with the life of the spirit. A landscape, a group of figures, a painting of flower or tree or animal, may serve for such expression, may move us more deeply than pictures or statues which profess to communicate great ideas. None the less, as we look back over the world's art, are we not longest held and most surely satisfied by those forms which the imagination of a race has assembled to embody the drama of human destiny, the agonies and triumphs of the human soul, and to which the genius of great artists has given embodiment? In such images, such far-descended shapes of myth and symbol, creative design discovers a stimulus and scope far transcending the private reactions of a single mind.