Bøger af Peter van Ham

A fresh look at a unique masterpiece of Indo-Tibetan art. Over one thousand years old, the Buddhist monastery complex of Tabo and its exquisitely preserved works of art rank among the most fascinating cultural and historical treasures of mankind. The new edition of this richly illustrated volume shows the beauty of these legendary sanctuaries for the first time in the highest digital resolution and describes in detail the entire gamut of Western Tibetan artistic styles. The monastery of Tabo, located in the northern Indian Himalayan region and founded in 996 AD, is the oldest temple complex in the Tibetan cultural area that has been preserved in its original state. Tabo's main temple, the Temple of the Enlightened Gods, is a unique work of art: one-thousand-year-old sculptures and paintings, created in an incomparably fine style by Indian and Western Tibetan artists, together form a walk-in, horizontal mandala. With special permission, Peter van Ham was able to spend decades photographing the temple halls, which are otherwise off-limits to cameras. Most recently, he was able to capture them in the world's highest digital resolution. With four hundred images--150 of them new to this edition--the book provides detailed background information and the latest research findings on the spectacular yet endangered sanctuary.

Hailing from the cultural realm of India, the mandala signifies in its original sense a sacred circle. It serves as a meditation aidand at the same time reflects an ancient symbolism of strictly geometric basic forms accompanied by an interpretation of itssacred content. As an expression of the awareness of higher affinities, the symmetrically arranged geometry can be found ina variety of pictorial works and the architecture of various epochs and cultural realms, for example in medieval book illumination,the floor plan of the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, in Kazimir Malevich's Black Square, or in various objects of the indigenous peoples of Africa, Asia, Australia, and the Americas. Based on these and other masterpieces from renowned museums andprivate collections and illustrated in fascinating photographs of unique buildings and rituals, this publication offers an impressivefirst analysis of the phenomenon of sacred geometry in art and architecture and their underlying ideologies.

East-West trade and technology transfer have always been linked to the issue of "national security". The author identifies many different Western doctrines on East-West trade, demonstrating that two basic belief systems underly these doctrines.

A vivid comparison of life in the Naga Hills in India in the 1920s and '30s and the present.

This is the first book to look at the process of European integration by drawing on both established and new trends in post-modern thinking and analysis.