HISTART 134A Chapter Notes - Chapter Bogel: Visual Rhetoric, Community Ownership, Gautama Buddha
23 Jan 2017
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Document Summary
The function of icons and visuality as function. Academia contends that icons function through belief believers hold that icons are. Dichotomy: buddhism preached non-attachment while maintaining visual concerns. Icons were made sacred through consecration (rituals that breathed life of the buddha into a physical object, ex: placing relics of the sakyamuni buddha in a statue: reproduction had power . Why do scholars mistrust or hesitate to speak to the power of the very icons which the ritualists conger authority and to which worshippers entrust their prayers? . Patronage was considered proper devotion one would be compensated in the afterlife through their dedication to recreating the buddha"s image: the devotional practice, not the image itself, was rewarding. Adornment provides a visual rhetoric" of praise and splendor for the supreme teachings development of an aesthetic, unrecorded language. Paintings and statuary constituted a main component of buddhist belief and practice.
