Author Description

Art Experience, first published in 1954, is a collection of fifteen remarkable essays on Indian art and aesthetics by Prof. M. Hiriyanna. In about a hundred pages, the learned professor gives the readers the quintessence of two thousand years of study and development of aesthetics in India. In his essays, Hiriyanna focusses on the core concepts of Indian Aesthetics - rasa, dhvani, aucitya, and vakrokti - and not on peripheral issues. He argues that art must not be preachy but should never ignore dharma. Relying primarily on experience, he shows how the Indian approach to aesthetics, which is not divorced from philosophy, has universal relevance.