all content © Rupert Arrowsmith 2021, all rights reserved
‘I cannot remember when I last came upon on a book as stimulating as Rupert Arrowsmith’s Modernism and the Museum: Asian, African and Pacific Art and the London Avant-Garde … Arrowsmith is that rare thing, an art historian who is equally well informed about the traditions of “West” and “East”, “modern” and “pre-modern”’.
‘We’re only in June, but [The Face of the Buddha] must surely be one of the books of the year’.
‘Arrowsmith is well versed in most, if not all, the many aspects of global artistic production … and writes knowledgeably about Asian, African, and Pacific objects as well as about London Modernism … It is a rare scholar who can move with such expertise across these fields, each with its own historiography’.
‘Rupert Arrowsmith's Introduction complements {The Face of the Buddha] perfectly: he is Boswell to Empson’s Johnson, faithfully following in his footsteps, elucidating his intellectual and historical context, and quite as hooked on the subject as the master himself. Occupying practically as much space as the text, it is its indispensable companion’.
Peter Popham
‘… the larger-than-life character of Rupert Arrowsmith, the Burma-based British cultural historian who has been twice ordained as a Buddhist monk, and who got about the festival in crisp white linen, looking and sounding like something out of Evelyn Waugh.’
‘Arrowsmith’s finely written introduction [to The Face of the Buddha] complements Empson’s style in its mix of erudition and wit, and provides a compelling account of a unique journey which has its mirror in many others.’
‘The introductory essay [to The Face of the Buddha] by Myanmar-based scholar and poet Rupert Arrowsmith is a tour de force of insights into [William] Empson, Buddhist art and Buddhism itself.’
© Rupert Arrowsmith 2019, all rights reserved
