Other Worlds: Utopias in the Art of Late Ancient Eurasia

Abstract

This article examines a profound contradiction inherent in the idea of utopia as conceptually formulated by Thomas More in the Renaissance and clearly implicit in pre-humanist utopian, Arcadian, or paradisal imagery and descriptions, reaching back via early Christianity to Greco-Roman antiquity and resonating equally within Asian Buddhism. The idea of utopia from Greek antiquity to ancient India has evoked an optimism not unconnected to the conviction that there is a better place to which we will go after death, such as heaven. This kind of faith can have no rational basis, but the human condition is susceptible to a good deal more than the mere constraints of reason. Arguably, the only philosophically viable utopia is apophatic—that is, a place or state undescribable by any of the concepts or discourses used to define real spaces. Despite clear awareness across Eurasian cultures of the irrationality of a positive utopia (as we still continue to understand the word), their visual productions proceeded to give full vent to this optimism. This article examines a comparative range of such visual approaches across ancient Eurasia.