The Buddhist Icon and the Modern Gaze

This essay is an attempt to reconsider what vision of-that is, what discourse on-Buddhist icons is possible for a Westerner (or Westernized Asian). Buddhist icons have been essentially the domain, or rather the preserve, of art historians. But Buddhist art, if there is such a thing, is perhaps too important to be left to art historians alone. Is there a Buddhist "art," a subcategory of Asian art, itself a rubric within world art, one among the many rooms in AndrC Malraux's famous "musCe imaginaire"? Or are we not dealing primarily with Buddhist images, whose artistic value is at best derivative? Even though art history is beginning to take a broader, even anthropological, perspective with regard to Western images and visual culture, it is still necessary in the Asian context to shift the focus from traditional concerns about the history and aesthetics of art to the history, affect, and function of ritual images or icons. Even if we want to retain the notion of aesthetic value, to the extent that a narrow aestheticism precludes our understanding of the anthropological and phenomenological dimensions of Buddhist icons, we must question this emphasis on the aesthetic object. I want to focus precisely on the vision of icons, on the asymmetrical exchange of glances that characterizes icon worship. I have elsewhere examined the various techniques of animation of the Buddhist icon.' Because they are, in a manner, alive, and not sim-