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Frithjof Schuon's Paintings
religioperennis.org /FSchuonPaintings.html
What I seek to expressis the Sacred combined with Beauty, thus
spiritual attitudes and virtues of
soul. And the vibration that emanates from the paintings must
lead inward.
Man lives by Truth and Beauty; it is only relatively recently
that Schuon widely recognized for his metaphysicalwritings has
become known as a painter of great skill and unique insight. This
new volume presents for the first time
125 full color plates of Schuons work plus many more in black
and white. The subjects here are predominantly taken
from the fascinating world of the American Indians. Also
included, however, are many canvases concerning the
mystery of celestial and human femininity. The main features of
Schuons art are the nobility of the subject, the
precision of the drawing and the impressionistic reverberation
of the surface or colors. What I seek to expressis the
Sacred combined with Beauty, thus spiritual attitudes and
virtues of soul. And the vibration that emanates from the
paintings must lead inward.
Frithjof Schuon is not a painter who is interested in
metaphysics; he is a metaphysician who from time to time
produces a painting. This distinction is essential because his
fundamental vocation is the perennial wisdom as it is
expressed in his written works, whereas his art appears rather
as an expression of the aesthetic, psychological or
moral dimension of the Philosophia Perennis. In other words,
Schuon is interested not only in metaphysicalprinciples, but alsoby
way of consequencein their cosmic and human radiation; which means,
not that he intentionally
puts this or that archetype or symbolism into a paintingwhich in
fact he does not but simply that his spiritual insight, or
let us say his contemplative mind, manifests itself in his
artistic productions.
The subject of Schuons art is on the one hand the Pla ins Indian
world, and on the other hand the mystery of cosmic
and human femininity; Goethes Eternal Feminine (das
Ewig-Weibliche) or the Hindu Shakti. The first subject has its
roots in his affinity with the fascinating world of Red Indian
heroism and mysticism; the second subject of his
artsacred femininityhas its roots in metaphysics and cosmology;
one could also say, in a more relative sense, in
Schuons affinity with Hinduism. In fact, his representations of
the Virgin Mary are not intended to be Christian icons;
they universalize the celestial Virgin in a manner which makes
one think of Hindu and possibly Mahayanic art.
Towards the end o f this collection, the reader will find a
number of images which are not Red Indian; some of them
represent the Virgin Mary seen in an esoteric light, some others
represent the Hindu mystics Akka Mahadevi and
Lalla Yogishwari, or other women saints of the same type, both
subjects be ing connected with the tantric mystery of
sacred nudity. This last remark also applies to the images of
the White-Buffalo-Cow-Woman who brought the
Sacred Pipe to the Lakota Indians; we may add that the
headdresses she wears in some of Schuons paintings, or
other details, have a symbolic import and do not mean that the
heavenly person actually appeared in that way. In
this context, let us repeat here an opinion of a French author:
the feathered crown of the Red Indians is the most
majestic headdress the human genius ever conceived. In fact, the
Plains Indian genius is like a combination of the
buffalo, the eagle and the sun, symbolically speaking; earth and
heaven, and between them the messenger of the
gods.
You will find on this website some paitings from Images of
Primordial and Mystic Beauty.
Other paintings by Frithjof Schuon have been published in The
Feathered Sun, Plains Indians in Art and Philosophy.
Michael Pollack's Introduction to Images of Primordial and
Mystical Beauty.
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