Philip Rawson

This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.

Tantra is a set of beliefs and practices that originates in India and combines eroticism, magic and metaphysics. This book provides a lucid account of a much-misunderstood ancient mystical tradition that has long aroused spiritual and artistic curiosity in the West. The first part of the book gives an in-depth introduction to Tantrik rites and beliefs, while the eight Themes sections summarize and develop key topics. The book is illustrated throughout with vivid imagery from unusual and out-of-the-way sources worldwide. This is an illuminating introduction to Tantra and the art that expresses many of its erotic, mythical and mystical beliefs.

Philip Rawson, a distinguished academic and author, practiced as a sculptor all of his life. Sculpture, his final book, completes the trilogy begun with his classic works, Drawing and Ceramics. As in those earlier volumes, Rawson provides a clear, factual description of the underlying principles and structural techniques of the art. Although Rawson discusses sculptures from many places and periods-including Africa, Asia, Greece, Medieval and Renaissance Europe, and twentieth-century Europe and America-Sculpture is not a history as such. Rather, it is an original analysis of sculpture as a fundamental and integral form of human "language" capable of conveying a variety of different insights, offering a wealth of cultural and symbolic meaning. In the course of this analysis, Sculpture explores the full range of expressive techniques available to the sculptor today. Rawson's intent is to reveal possible modes of sculptural thought for practitioners and to enable the nonexpert to better understand and appreciate the emotional and intellectual content of any work.

"It is rare to find a book on art that presents complex aesthetic principles in clear readable form. Ceramics, by Philip Rawson, is such a book. I discovered it ten years ago, and today my well-worn copy has scarcely a page on which some statement is not underlined and starred."—Wayne Higby, from the Foreword