The majority of the murals at Dunhuang that depict Maitreya are dominated by his three assemblies, thereby emphasizing the salvific power of the future Buddha after he has descended to earth. This article examines scenes from the Maitreya murals, highlighting details appearing across the murals that allow us to understand how adherents imagined life in an earthly paradise. Most scenes in the murals accentuate the magnificence of life in Maitreya's terrestrial Buddhaland, characterized by manageable yet rewarding labor and a long life that never ends suddenly, all in a clean urban environment. Hence, in this realm some labor is still required and social hierarchies are maintained. Unlike the celestial realm of Amitābha Buddha, Maitreya's land is ruled by an ideal leader, the Wheel-Turning King Saṅkha. The article concludes by examining the tension between the power of the religious leader and the political ruler, evident even though the paintings do not include representations of Saṅkha himself. Rather, they depict his regalia, his gift, and his family in prominent positions, near Maitreya, thus suggesting that the future Buddha absorbed Saṅkha's political power, which parallels contemporaneous political and religious developments.
{"title":"Envisioning Paradise","authors":"April D. Hughes","doi":"10.1215/0066637-9302495","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/0066637-9302495","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The majority of the murals at Dunhuang that depict Maitreya are dominated by his three assemblies, thereby emphasizing the salvific power of the future Buddha after he has descended to earth. This article examines scenes from the Maitreya murals, highlighting details appearing across the murals that allow us to understand how adherents imagined life in an earthly paradise. Most scenes in the murals accentuate the magnificence of life in Maitreya's terrestrial Buddhaland, characterized by manageable yet rewarding labor and a long life that never ends suddenly, all in a clean urban environment. Hence, in this realm some labor is still required and social hierarchies are maintained. Unlike the celestial realm of Amitābha Buddha, Maitreya's land is ruled by an ideal leader, the Wheel-Turning King Saṅkha. The article concludes by examining the tension between the power of the religious leader and the political ruler, evident even though the paintings do not include representations of Saṅkha himself. Rather, they depict his regalia, his gift, and his family in prominent positions, near Maitreya, thus suggesting that the future Buddha absorbed Saṅkha's political power, which parallels contemporaneous political and religious developments.","PeriodicalId":41400,"journal":{"name":"ARCHIVES OF ASIAN ART","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45929487","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-04-01DOI: 10.1215/00666637-8866698
R. Whitfield
abstract:This paper discusses the roles of Shen Yuan, an artist at the Yongzheng court, who produced the monochrome cartoon of Qingming shanghe tu, and of the five court artists who produced the final version in colors on silk. Their respective contributions show that Shen Yuan used details from Zhang Zeduan's Songdynasty original and later versions to create an entirely new composition. The five court artists adhered closely to Shen Yuan's cartoon, while adding some embellishments. The unusual honor accorded to the cartoon, bearing seals of Prince Bao, and mounted with the same brocade as Qiu Ying's version, highlight Shen Yuan's seminal role, despite his name not appearing in the finished painting.
{"title":"A Word for Shen Yuan","authors":"R. Whitfield","doi":"10.1215/00666637-8866698","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/00666637-8866698","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:This paper discusses the roles of Shen Yuan, an artist at the Yongzheng court, who produced the monochrome cartoon of Qingming shanghe tu, and of the five court artists who produced the final version in colors on silk. Their respective contributions show that Shen Yuan used details from Zhang Zeduan's Songdynasty original and later versions to create an entirely new composition. The five court artists adhered closely to Shen Yuan's cartoon, while adding some embellishments. The unusual honor accorded to the cartoon, bearing seals of Prince Bao, and mounted with the same brocade as Qiu Ying's version, highlight Shen Yuan's seminal role, despite his name not appearing in the finished painting.","PeriodicalId":41400,"journal":{"name":"ARCHIVES OF ASIAN ART","volume":"71 1","pages":"123 - 129"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46886798","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-04-01DOI: 10.1215/00666637-8866689
Ranjusri Ghosh
abstract:Koṭivarṣa, a sacred place and an administrative unit that is mentioned in early medieval Indian religious and epigraphic sources from 700 to 1200 ce, is the area of focus of this essay. As an administrative unit, it was almost coterminous with the old Dinajpur district of Bengal, which is now divided into the present Indian state of West Bengal and Bangladesh. At one point in time, its headquarters came to be known as Devīkoṭa, underscoring its rise as a prime place for Devī, the Mother goddess. Sculptural arrays of the Mother goddess from this place point to the domineering presence of her fearsome principles; they parallel textual descriptions about the sacred importance of a wrathful form of the Mother, normally referred to as Cāmuṇḍā. The religious texts, however, do not speak of the ascetics who might have performed the rituals to propitiate the Mother. We do not yet know if any new dimension was added to the corpus of rituals, and the ŚivaŚakti power equation after the Saiddhāntika Śaiva preceptors affiliated with Golagī great monastery of Durvāsas lineage entered Devīkoṭa at the end of the tenth century. This essay searches for answers in the visual elements on the lower registers of stone steles, such as the devotees/donors, other individuals in the service of the Mother Goddess, potfuls of offerings, and the environment of cremation grounds in which worship took place. The main deity and associated figures occupying the larger space in the middle of the steles have tantric content. Icons of Śaiva ascetics from West Bengal, including the three newly discovered examples, are important subjects for this essay, which concludes with the transformation of Devīkoṭa to Bangarh, where Śiva emerged as the chief god par excellence. The Devī had lost her koṭa, her bastion, forever.
{"title":"Newly Discovered Śaiva-Ascetic Icons from West Bengal","authors":"Ranjusri Ghosh","doi":"10.1215/00666637-8866689","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/00666637-8866689","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:Koṭivarṣa, a sacred place and an administrative unit that is mentioned in early medieval Indian religious and epigraphic sources from 700 to 1200 ce, is the area of focus of this essay. As an administrative unit, it was almost coterminous with the old Dinajpur district of Bengal, which is now divided into the present Indian state of West Bengal and Bangladesh. At one point in time, its headquarters came to be known as Devīkoṭa, underscoring its rise as a prime place for Devī, the Mother goddess. Sculptural arrays of the Mother goddess from this place point to the domineering presence of her fearsome principles; they parallel textual descriptions about the sacred importance of a wrathful form of the Mother, normally referred to as Cāmuṇḍā. The religious texts, however, do not speak of the ascetics who might have performed the rituals to propitiate the Mother. We do not yet know if any new dimension was added to the corpus of rituals, and the ŚivaŚakti power equation after the Saiddhāntika Śaiva preceptors affiliated with Golagī great monastery of Durvāsas lineage entered Devīkoṭa at the end of the tenth century. This essay searches for answers in the visual elements on the lower registers of stone steles, such as the devotees/donors, other individuals in the service of the Mother Goddess, potfuls of offerings, and the environment of cremation grounds in which worship took place. The main deity and associated figures occupying the larger space in the middle of the steles have tantric content. Icons of Śaiva ascetics from West Bengal, including the three newly discovered examples, are important subjects for this essay, which concludes with the transformation of Devīkoṭa to Bangarh, where Śiva emerged as the chief god par excellence. The Devī had lost her koṭa, her bastion, forever.","PeriodicalId":41400,"journal":{"name":"ARCHIVES OF ASIAN ART","volume":"71 1","pages":"122 - 93"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43052735","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-04-01DOI: 10.1215/00666637-8866680
Yanlong Guo
abstract:Over the span of some two hundred years, from the late Western Han to the late Eastern Han, triad images featuring a prominent central being flanked by two smaller, snake-bodied figures, occurred on murals and carved stones in Henan, Shandong, and adjacent areas. The iconographic schema of the flanking figures, Nüwa and Fuxi, appears mature and stable, with their identities consistently determined by their half-human, half-serpent, and gendered bodies as well as by the divine objects they hold—sun and moon, compass and T square, numinous mushrooms. The iconography of the third being, however, appears far less consistent and somewhat elusive, yielding many different identifications by scholars. The seemingly anomalous pictorial program speaks to the issue of iconographic volatility in Han art. Looking across the corpus of triad images, this essay identifies the volatile third being as the Grand One, and proposes that its figural metamorphoses were predicated on the amorphousness of the supreme deity of Daoist cosmogony. Distilling the three most important formal aspects of the Grand One—a therianthropic being, a forceful facilitator, and a regal icon—this essay argues that the triad images embodied a coherent program depicting the cosmogonic origin of the world that began with the Grand One conjugating yin and yang, associated with Nüwa and Fuxi respectively. The emergence of this triad imagery coincided with evolving Daoist thought during the Han dynasty.
{"title":"Iconographic Volatility in the Fuxi-Nüwa Triads of the Han Dynasty","authors":"Yanlong Guo","doi":"10.1215/00666637-8866680","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/00666637-8866680","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:Over the span of some two hundred years, from the late Western Han to the late Eastern Han, triad images featuring a prominent central being flanked by two smaller, snake-bodied figures, occurred on murals and carved stones in Henan, Shandong, and adjacent areas. The iconographic schema of the flanking figures, Nüwa and Fuxi, appears mature and stable, with their identities consistently determined by their half-human, half-serpent, and gendered bodies as well as by the divine objects they hold—sun and moon, compass and T square, numinous mushrooms. The iconography of the third being, however, appears far less consistent and somewhat elusive, yielding many different identifications by scholars. The seemingly anomalous pictorial program speaks to the issue of iconographic volatility in Han art. Looking across the corpus of triad images, this essay identifies the volatile third being as the Grand One, and proposes that its figural metamorphoses were predicated on the amorphousness of the supreme deity of Daoist cosmogony. Distilling the three most important formal aspects of the Grand One—a therianthropic being, a forceful facilitator, and a regal icon—this essay argues that the triad images embodied a coherent program depicting the cosmogonic origin of the world that began with the Grand One conjugating yin and yang, associated with Nüwa and Fuxi respectively. The emergence of this triad imagery coincided with evolving Daoist thought during the Han dynasty.","PeriodicalId":41400,"journal":{"name":"ARCHIVES OF ASIAN ART","volume":"71 1","pages":"63 - 91"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45967303","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-04-01DOI: 10.1215/00666637-8866662
Anne N. Feng
This paper reconsiders how and why the representation of landscape became an increasingly central component of Pure Land art in the Tang dynasty. Focusing on the seventh-century Cave 209, I examine the first set of mountain panels at Dunhuang, arguing that those polychrome landscapes represent Vulture Peak, the sacred abode of Śākyamuni Buddha. Cave 209 shows how Lady Vaidehī—the protagonist of the Meditation Sutra—emerges as the first female viewer of landscape in Chinese art. Departing from the Meditation Sutra, painters at Dunhuang resituate Lady Vaidehī, the formerly imprisoned royal consort and model Pure Land adept, within mountain ranges where she converses with the Buddha. I argue that Lady Vaidehī's encounter with the Buddha is mapped onto the space of a Dunhuang cave to enable the viewer to assume her position when facing the icon of Śākyamuni surrounded by Vulture Peak. By grappling with Vaidehī's imprisonment, painters use landscape to develop a new spatial imagery of salvation. I maintain that the striking innovations in landscape representation at Dunhuang—achievements that have been seen to anticipate later Tang “blue and green” landscapes—are in actuality based on an effort to visualize Buddhist soteriology in the early seventh century.
{"title":"The Imprisoned Queen","authors":"Anne N. Feng","doi":"10.1215/00666637-8866662","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/00666637-8866662","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This paper reconsiders how and why the representation of landscape became an increasingly central component of Pure Land art in the Tang dynasty. Focusing on the seventh-century Cave 209, I examine the first set of mountain panels at Dunhuang, arguing that those polychrome landscapes represent Vulture Peak, the sacred abode of Śākyamuni Buddha. Cave 209 shows how Lady Vaidehī—the protagonist of the Meditation Sutra—emerges as the first female viewer of landscape in Chinese art. Departing from the Meditation Sutra, painters at Dunhuang resituate Lady Vaidehī, the formerly imprisoned royal consort and model Pure Land adept, within mountain ranges where she converses with the Buddha. I argue that Lady Vaidehī's encounter with the Buddha is mapped onto the space of a Dunhuang cave to enable the viewer to assume her position when facing the icon of Śākyamuni surrounded by Vulture Peak. By grappling with Vaidehī's imprisonment, painters use landscape to develop a new spatial imagery of salvation. I maintain that the striking innovations in landscape representation at Dunhuang—achievements that have been seen to anticipate later Tang “blue and green” landscapes—are in actuality based on an effort to visualize Buddhist soteriology in the early seventh century.","PeriodicalId":41400,"journal":{"name":"ARCHIVES OF ASIAN ART","volume":"71 1","pages":"1-36"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46777444","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-04-01DOI: 10.1215/00666637-8866671
S. Fowler
abstract:During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a large eleventh-century bronze bell made in Korea became a grand attraction on the grounds of Onoe Shrine in Kakogawa, Japan. Although such bells are made of expensive material that require signif cant fnancial investment and technical skill, most are overlooked as common fxtures inside bell towers at Buddhist temples across Asia. Yet the bell at Onoe Shrine has a particularly complex and fascinating story to tell. Using object biography as an approach to study this unusual monument enables us to see how this bell became the popular subject of legends, travel-diary accounts, gazetteer entries, popular woodblock prints, and souvenirs made in a variety of materials. The bell's legendary life story accorded it the ability to solve human problems and use its voice to demand where it should be located, which fueled people's desire to see it with their own eyes and to make physical contact with it. This examination of the bell's intertwining life tales reveals how, after initially serving as a ritual object at a Korean Buddhist temple, it experienced dramatic transformations into a high-value export (or trafficked) commodity, Japanese poetic trope, shrine treasure, and tourist draw.
{"title":"The Literary and Legendary Lives of the Onoe Bell: A Korean Celebrity in Japan","authors":"S. Fowler","doi":"10.1215/00666637-8866671","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/00666637-8866671","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a large eleventh-century bronze bell made in Korea became a grand attraction on the grounds of Onoe Shrine in Kakogawa, Japan. Although such bells are made of expensive material that require signif cant fnancial investment and technical skill, most are overlooked as common fxtures inside bell towers at Buddhist temples across Asia. Yet the bell at Onoe Shrine has a particularly complex and fascinating story to tell. Using object biography as an approach to study this unusual monument enables us to see how this bell became the popular subject of legends, travel-diary accounts, gazetteer entries, popular woodblock prints, and souvenirs made in a variety of materials. The bell's legendary life story accorded it the ability to solve human problems and use its voice to demand where it should be located, which fueled people's desire to see it with their own eyes and to make physical contact with it. This examination of the bell's intertwining life tales reveals how, after initially serving as a ritual object at a Korean Buddhist temple, it experienced dramatic transformations into a high-value export (or trafficked) commodity, Japanese poetic trope, shrine treasure, and tourist draw.","PeriodicalId":41400,"journal":{"name":"ARCHIVES OF ASIAN ART","volume":"71 1","pages":"37 - 61"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44798935","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-10-01DOI: 10.1215/00666637-8620348
Yurika Wakamatsu
Beauty by Plum and Window, a hanging scroll produced in 1907 by the Japanese artist Okuhara Seiko, calls into question fundamental presumptions about literati art, a mode of art-making often seen as a means of self-representation. Instead of creating a singular subject that indexes the artist's self, this work deploys diverse pictorial and literary tropes to construct multiple personae, enabling the viewer (including the artist) to shift among them. The scroll effects the viewer's movement from one subject position to another, undermining the binary of spectator and spectacle, heterosexual relationship and homosocial bond, and subject and object. Engaging with Bruno Latour's actor-network theory, this article argues that if we do not assume a direct alignment between the subject of representation and the represented subject, a literati artwork can become a mediator of multiple shifting “selves” rather than an extension of a singular, unified “I.” Literati art thus functions not merely as a repository of self-expression but also as a generative mediator of identities and social relations. In staging multivalent modes of engagement, Seiko's scroll ultimately offers an alternative perspective on the role of subjectivity in the interpretation of literati art.
{"title":"Imagined Selves","authors":"Yurika Wakamatsu","doi":"10.1215/00666637-8620348","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/00666637-8620348","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Beauty by Plum and Window, a hanging scroll produced in 1907 by the Japanese artist Okuhara Seiko, calls into question fundamental presumptions about literati art, a mode of art-making often seen as a means of self-representation. Instead of creating a singular subject that indexes the artist's self, this work deploys diverse pictorial and literary tropes to construct multiple personae, enabling the viewer (including the artist) to shift among them. The scroll effects the viewer's movement from one subject position to another, undermining the binary of spectator and spectacle, heterosexual relationship and homosocial bond, and subject and object. Engaging with Bruno Latour's actor-network theory, this article argues that if we do not assume a direct alignment between the subject of representation and the represented subject, a literati artwork can become a mediator of multiple shifting “selves” rather than an extension of a singular, unified “I.” Literati art thus functions not merely as a repository of self-expression but also as a generative mediator of identities and social relations. In staging multivalent modes of engagement, Seiko's scroll ultimately offers an alternative perspective on the role of subjectivity in the interpretation of literati art.","PeriodicalId":41400,"journal":{"name":"ARCHIVES OF ASIAN ART","volume":"70 1","pages":"119-149"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2020-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42722990","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-10-01DOI: 10.1215/00666637-8620384
Rob H Linrothe
This is a review article of Janet Gyatso's 2015 award-winning book, Being Human in a Buddhist World: An Intellectual History of Medicine in Early Modern Tibet. The art-historical aspects of the book—mainly confined to the first chapter, “Reading Paintings, Painting the Medical, Medicalizing the State” and based on a perceptive art-historical reading of a set of medical paintings and its copies—had yet to be reviewed by an academically-trained art historian. This review underscores the fine art-historical insights deserving the attention of art historians working in parallel contexts of the often tense relationship between religious and empirical epistemologies. At the same time, the evaluation of certain readings of the visual record lead to suggested revisions in the support they provide to Gyatso's primary argument. In addition, other precedents of depictions “from life” in Tibetan art history are offered to help contextualize claims of originality or uniqueness. Finally, an analysis is presented of less formal, freehand painting versus more formalized, iconometric execution, calibrated with vernacular subject matter versus iconographically predetermined themes. Both of the painting modes and subject types are combined in the painting set analyzed by Gyatso supporting her assessment of the innovation of the artists selected by the patron, Desi Sangyé Gyatso (1653–1705).
{"title":"Hidden in Plain Sight","authors":"Rob H Linrothe","doi":"10.1215/00666637-8620384","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/00666637-8620384","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This is a review article of Janet Gyatso's 2015 award-winning book, Being Human in a Buddhist World: An Intellectual History of Medicine in Early Modern Tibet. The art-historical aspects of the book—mainly confined to the first chapter, “Reading Paintings, Painting the Medical, Medicalizing the State” and based on a perceptive art-historical reading of a set of medical paintings and its copies—had yet to be reviewed by an academically-trained art historian. This review underscores the fine art-historical insights deserving the attention of art historians working in parallel contexts of the often tense relationship between religious and empirical epistemologies. At the same time, the evaluation of certain readings of the visual record lead to suggested revisions in the support they provide to Gyatso's primary argument. In addition, other precedents of depictions “from life” in Tibetan art history are offered to help contextualize claims of originality or uniqueness. Finally, an analysis is presented of less formal, freehand painting versus more formalized, iconometric execution, calibrated with vernacular subject matter versus iconographically predetermined themes. Both of the painting modes and subject types are combined in the painting set analyzed by Gyatso supporting her assessment of the innovation of the artists selected by the patron, Desi Sangyé Gyatso (1653–1705).","PeriodicalId":41400,"journal":{"name":"ARCHIVES OF ASIAN ART","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2020-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43048854","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-10-01DOI: 10.1215/00666637-8620375
Jie Shi
abstract:Dated to 524 ce, the lavishly carved stone sarcophagus of the Northern Wei Prince Yuan Mi exemplifies an early Chinese method using a diagonal gaze as a visual device to construct a three-dimensional space. On the exterior faces of the sarcophagus, the anonymous artist simulated a three-layered space, imagining the deceased’s wooden coffin (the inner layer) contained in his burial chamber (middle layer), which in turn is embraced by a complex three-dimensional natural and supernatural world (the outer layer). In the middle layer, eight figures cast a slant gaze from behind four windows at filial paragons dwelling in the outer layer. This gaze was used as a rhetorical device to bridge the physical and psychological gap between the gazers and those upon whom they gaze. Evoking the idiom found in medieval Chinese texts of “watching the ancients as neighbors,” the artist defined the deceased as a neighbor of the ancient filial paragons who dwell in an ideal landscape as recluses. In addition to the visual analysis of the sarcophagus, this article also examines the epitaph buried along with the sarcophagus. While the carving praises the private virtue of the dead, the text paints another rosy picture of the deceased prince as a good official. Eventually, the image and text were used in tandem to create a perfect image of the deceased.
{"title":"Image, Body, and Simulation of the Afterlife in the Early Medieval Sarcophagus of Prince Yuan Mi","authors":"Jie Shi","doi":"10.1215/00666637-8620375","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/00666637-8620375","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:Dated to 524 ce, the lavishly carved stone sarcophagus of the Northern Wei Prince Yuan Mi exemplifies an early Chinese method using a diagonal gaze as a visual device to construct a three-dimensional space. On the exterior faces of the sarcophagus, the anonymous artist simulated a three-layered space, imagining the deceased’s wooden coffin (the inner layer) contained in his burial chamber (middle layer), which in turn is embraced by a complex three-dimensional natural and supernatural world (the outer layer). In the middle layer, eight figures cast a slant gaze from behind four windows at filial paragons dwelling in the outer layer. This gaze was used as a rhetorical device to bridge the physical and psychological gap between the gazers and those upon whom they gaze. Evoking the idiom found in medieval Chinese texts of “watching the ancients as neighbors,” the artist defined the deceased as a neighbor of the ancient filial paragons who dwell in an ideal landscape as recluses. In addition to the visual analysis of the sarcophagus, this article also examines the epitaph buried along with the sarcophagus. While the carving praises the private virtue of the dead, the text paints another rosy picture of the deceased prince as a good official. Eventually, the image and text were used in tandem to create a perfect image of the deceased.","PeriodicalId":41400,"journal":{"name":"ARCHIVES OF ASIAN ART","volume":"70 1","pages":"199 - 224"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2020-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48493204","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-10-01DOI: 10.1215/00666637-8620357
S. A. Meegama
This essay examines the transformation of the Asian Civilisations Museum (ACM) into a global art histories museum. An analysis of the new Christian Art Gallery and its objects that date from the eighth through the twentieth century illuminates the ways in which the ACM engages with global art histories in a permanent gallery and not only through special exhibitions. This essay begins with a history of the ACM and its transition from a museum for the “ancestral cultures of Singapore” to one with a new mission focusing on multicultural Singapore and its connections to the wider world. Hence, taking a thematic approach, the ACM's new galleries question how museums generally display objects along national lines or regional boundaries. This essay also brings attention to the multiple mediums and functions of Christian art from both the geographical locations that usually are associated with Asian art and also from cultures that are rarely taught or exhibited, such as Timor-Leste, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam. While showcasing the different moments that Christianity came to Asia, the museum also emphasizes the agencies of Asian artistic practitioners in those global encounters. Although appreciative of the ways in which the ACM's Christian Art Gallery reveal the various tensions within global art histories and break down hegemonic constructions of Christian art from Asia, this essay also offers a critique. Highlighting this unusual engagement with Christian art by an Asian art museum, the new gallery reveals that museums and exhibitions can add to the conversations on global art histories.
{"title":"Curating the Christian Arts of Asia","authors":"S. A. Meegama","doi":"10.1215/00666637-8620357","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/00666637-8620357","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This essay examines the transformation of the Asian Civilisations Museum (ACM) into a global art histories museum. An analysis of the new Christian Art Gallery and its objects that date from the eighth through the twentieth century illuminates the ways in which the ACM engages with global art histories in a permanent gallery and not only through special exhibitions. This essay begins with a history of the ACM and its transition from a museum for the “ancestral cultures of Singapore” to one with a new mission focusing on multicultural Singapore and its connections to the wider world. Hence, taking a thematic approach, the ACM's new galleries question how museums generally display objects along national lines or regional boundaries. This essay also brings attention to the multiple mediums and functions of Christian art from both the geographical locations that usually are associated with Asian art and also from cultures that are rarely taught or exhibited, such as Timor-Leste, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam. While showcasing the different moments that Christianity came to Asia, the museum also emphasizes the agencies of Asian artistic practitioners in those global encounters. Although appreciative of the ways in which the ACM's Christian Art Gallery reveal the various tensions within global art histories and break down hegemonic constructions of Christian art from Asia, this essay also offers a critique. Highlighting this unusual engagement with Christian art by an Asian art museum, the new gallery reveals that museums and exhibitions can add to the conversations on global art histories.","PeriodicalId":41400,"journal":{"name":"ARCHIVES OF ASIAN ART","volume":"70 1","pages":"151-171"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2020-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66078145","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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