Another Perspective as Symbolic Form

Stella Kramrisch’s Writings on the Ajanta Paintings

Abstract

In her 1937 publication, A Survey of Indian Painting in the Deccan, Stella Kramrisch offered a transcultural analysis of the early Buddhist wall paintings at the caves of Ajanta. Kramrisch described a unique technique of “reversed” or “forthcoming” perspective in the paintings. This article proposes that her work can be seen as an oblique critique of Erwin Panofsky’s influential Perspective as Symbolic Form (1924/1927). Kramrisch also connected her analysis of perspective to the avant-garde of early 20th-century art and the work of cubist painters. This article concludes by situating Kramrisch’s claims about the Ajanta paintings within the context of more recent scholarship on Buddhist painting and the environment in South Asia.