East & West: Searching out for the Beauty Ideal

This article describes the results of a comparative analysis of the ancient Greek sculpture Doryphoros in the western and eastern art canons, as well as the selected sculptures of the Bodhisattva Bodhisattva Maitreya from Gandharan, Indian, Nepalese, and Mongolian art. The authors also explore and integrate the aspects of the artistic notion of an ideal beauty, including aspects of oriental philosophy, aesthetics, human body’s proportion and compilation theory. This comparative analysis is based on G. Zanabazar’s sculpturing features and his skills through theoretical aspects. Studies have shown that Zanabazar’s Bodhisattva Maitreya is fully compatible with the classic western proportions and Buddhist strict canon. We show that both western and eastern artistic iconography have been developed to produce perfection in anthropomorphic expression. The classic correspondence was in religious art, as the western mentality seems to be the opposite and the imitation of both nature and the beauty of one’s sense of beauty. Keywords: human body proportion relevance with art, corporeality, Buddhist art, Zanabazar, Bodhisattva Bodhisattva Maitreya, golden ratio, artistic canon