I finally, finally got around to processing the some of the photos from one of my many trips to the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, which remains one of my favourite museums, anywhere, and mainly for their excellent permanent collection.

At top, Shiva and Parvati.  I recently went through a mind blowing, worldview altering study of Indian art, and although I think the galaxy of Hindu symbols is too vast to really sum up there are some aspects that I keep returning to as being “key”.  There’s a lot going on in the above image, but there are two things about it that I enjoy is the idea of a functional family unit as an object of worship.  The first is that unlike any other religion I know of, the presence of gods/avatars as couples is probably the most psychologically healthy model I can imagine for a religion to promote.  Only in Hinduism is there a constant reminder of the value of the family, that the world of the divine truly mirrors the real world. As I interpret it, the world of spiritual experience is definitely here and now, in this life, as opposed to on the other side of death.  The second thing of primary value is that if Shiva and Parvati are both aspects of the ultimate divine, and can be combined into the same avatar of that divinity as Ardhanarishvara, then Hinduism, more so than any other major world religion contains models that could potentially avoid extreme patriarchal or matriarchal beliefs.

As usual, there’s a bunch more images in this Flickr set of Indian Art at the AAMSF, which right now is “all Hinduism, all the time”, but which might get some Buddhist and Jain images thrown in later.  Below the break are a few more images that I’d like to highlight.

Continue reading Hindu Sculpture at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco