The message from mountains
Souren Melikian IHT
Saturday, June 19, 2004

How abstraction survived the figural

PARIS There is an unfathomable mystery about the formative stages of Chinese culture: How did abstract concept come to dominate visual art so early and why did it later leave an indelible mark as figural painting took off?

"Heavenly Mountains: Treasures of China's Museums," at the Grand Palais until June 28, and the accompanying book draw attention to that most intriguing question, even though that is not the declared purpose.

Two marvelous objects symbolize the prodigious break some time around the second to first century B.C. One is a jade blade of the Western Zhou period (1100-771 B.C.), discovered in 1990. It takes a while before the eye makes out the head of a bird at the top of a meandering band and a dragon of sorts. Here, living creatures, real or mythical, are reduced to signs. With the other object, datable to the Western Han age (206-209 B.C.), figuration triumphs. The white jade plaque represents a tiger ambling over rounded shapes, which stand for mountains.

This shift from sign to figuration was not due to newly acquired ability. Admirable animal sculpture was occasionally created in ancient China. A famous bronze rhinoceros of the late 11th century B.C. is in the San Francisco Museum of Asian Art. If abstraction prevailed, it was a matter of choice.

Two bronze mirrors of the Eastern Han age suggest a possible explanation for the massive shift to figuration during that era, roughly 2,000 years ago. Both carry inscriptions relating to figural scenes in low relief and Chinese scholars have traced these back to their literary sources.

On a mirror lent by the Shanghai Museum, the key is given by the Spring and Autumn Annals attributed to Confucius (Kongzi). "Fuchai, King of Wu," as two ideograms call him, sits under a tent. The annals report that Fuchai's minister, Wu Zixu, endeavored to dissuade him from concluding a truce with the neighboring state of Yue, warning him against the duplicity of its ruler, Gou Jian.

Fuchai ignored his minister's advice and invaded another state, to Gou Jian's immense satisfaction. The minister's renewed warnings succeeded only in infuriating King Fuchai, who forced him to commit suicide. This episode is illustrated in shorthand fashion in the second of four scenes. Two men sit together. One, with dilated eyes and unkempt beard signifying intense distress, is named on the mirror: "Wu Zixu, the loyal minister." The third scene depicts Gou Jian's invasion of the Kingdom of Wu and the fourth scene, less explicit, features two ladies of the court possibly gazing at some unseen celebration. The unnamed Shanghai scholar who identified the historical source made a sensational discovery.

The other bronze mirror, lent by the Imperial Palace Museum in Beijing, was probably cast in the same center. Several characters, a tiger and a dragon, echo tales recounted in the "Chronicles of Lushi" according to the scholar Ding Meng.

Interest in narrative literature and figural art thus probably took off together. Figuration became ubiquitous. An early Han incense burner, on loan from the Imperial Palace Museum, illustrates its impact on ritual objects. On the walls of the bowl-shaped receptacle, a mountain range is carved in low relief. The theme continues on the conical cover where peaks cast in high relief shoot up. Two tiny humans carry firewood at the foot of one mount and wild animals spring up elsewhere. The incense burner, Ding Meng explains, conjures up the image of Bo Mount Island, the paradisiac abode of immortals. Here a myth is translated into pure landscape. Figural art now reigned supreme in religious as in royal contexts. Under the Tang dynasty (618-907), the foundations of painting were laid down and as the Song (960-1279) took over, the aesthetics that would henceforth prevail were defined in treatises.

But the enduring legacy of ancient Chinese myths left its imprint on the new art. One of the oldest cosmic myths in Chinese thinking, the Five Sacred Mounts, continued to inspire painters. An Eastern Zhou mirror probably from the fifth century B.C., on loan from the Palace Museum, reveals its early rendition, in thoroughly abstract fashion - the character for mountain is repeated five times. Other similar examples bear witness to the resonance that the myth then had.

The theme retained its appeal 1,300 years later when it was handled on a Tang mirror, this time in visually explicit fashion, and remained in favor as painting developed from the 10th century on. Lu Chenglong of the Palace Museum notes that the 16th-century artist Song Xu dealt with it several times. On a signed handscroll, rippling lines hemmed by myriad dark accents that stand for trees make up a dreamlike vision.

Did the Five Mounts myth have a part in the evolution of painting by detaching it from physical reality? Jacques Giès, a senior curator at the Musée Guimet who organized the show with a museum research assistant, Pénélope Riboud, observes in his preface that "mountain and water painting" is the Chinese phrase for landscape painting. Later, Giès, using the words of a fourth-century artist, says that landscape painters increasingly emphasized the "spiritual attraction" of "mountain and water." Most of the landscapes in the show certainly confirm that descriptive figuration was at best a secondary concern with Chinese artists even when they purported to be painting famous sites.

In the 14th century, Wang Lu, painting the 40 leaves of his "Collection of Mount Hua Views," dashed off vibrant strokes that break at sharp angles. These convey mental perceptions rather than physical reality.

Even when artists made sure that the site was distinctly identifiable, as Ye Cheng did in the 16th century when painting the "Yandang Mounts," they rejected descriptive realism. Here, linear rhythm is the point. In most landscapes, material details - boats on a river, tiny mountain pavilions - are perfunctorily jotted down. They serve as markers.

There are exceptions. An Zhengwen, a Ming artist, drew the Yueyang Pavilion with architectural precision. But there is no volume, no physical reality to the ethereal outline that emerges from a visionary mountainous setting.

This was the result of choice, not inability. An astonishing handscroll by Mi Youren (1074-1153) reproduces a panoramic bird's-eye view of low mounts and waterways. It reveals an understanding of perspective that Western landscapists would only match in the late 16th century. Yet, Mi Youren made no attempt at realistic rendition. As the art historian Li Shi points out, Mi Youren's "suggestive strokes" aim at an impressionistic effect. His purpose is to convey an atmosphere, not to describe. Here too, the broad impact of literature must have played a role.

The collective book analyzes the links between painting and poetry. Jean-Pierre Diény studies the poems composed for handscrolls, some referring to the painting, others to other paintings. They could be calligraphed into the painting, resulting in a complex interplay, or on a section of the scroll preceding the image.

Poems for paintings became a literary genre. They were collected in anthologies, many surviving without the paintings that prompted their composition.

The exhibition is fascinating for some little known works from Chinese museums and the book important for its new insights. Would that the lighting of objects were not so inadequate, nor much of the prose so convoluted as to be unreadable. Few will have the patience to prod through the abstruse morass, thus missing a novel message.

International Herald Tribune
http://www.iht.com/articles/525612.html

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Guan Xianglin: Chronicle of a Folk-Art Protector
2004-6-15 15:45:24 www.crienglish.com
A new travel book tells the story of one man's journey around China to study and collect traditional arts and crafts.

'Walk Alone' is a travel book written by 45-year-old Guan Xianglin. The book is the product of a 300, 000km journey around China spent collecting more than 10,000 pieces of rare folk artworks from all 55 of China's ethnic minorities.

Made up of almost 30 short episodes, the book records Guan's difficult and often lonely journey around the country. His story starts off in Shanghai in 1983. Setting off on a bike with just over 30 yuan in his pocket, Guan originally planned to take photographs as he travelled. But after a chance encounter with the head of a museum of folk art in Zhejiang province, he began to notice that folk arts and crafts were rapidly disappearing in the countryside, and the authorities' preservation work seemed wholly inadequate. As his journey continued, he came across more and more evidence that precious woodcarvings, stone carvings and paper cuts that had been listed as protected were rapidly disappearing.

"The person who impressed me most was a 69-year-old woodcarver from the coastal part of Zhejiang province. Despite being partially paralysed, his level of skill was amazing and he could carve fishing scenes, or people planting crops or even people feeding a dog on a short piece of wood only 2 to 3 inches long. However, this precious art was in danger of dying out as the old craftsman was the only person left in his area who knew how to do it. I could tell how sad he was about this when he said no one wanted to learn the craft any more. My opinions about Chinese folk art began to change, and I realized that it is in no way inferior to art from other parts of the world. Over the course of my trip, my interest turned completely towards folk art, and I gradually saw protecting it as my responsibility."

Despite the hardships of his journey, Guan continued and he writes that it was meetings with people like the woodcarver in Zhejiang, and Ku Shulan that gave him the inner strength to continue. Ku Shulan, now recognized as China's foremost paper cut artist, was then living a difficult life in the countryside and the 81-year-old woman had to do laborious housework and take care of her husband who was in bad health.

As many of China's ethnic minorities live in remote mountainous or sparsely-populated regions, Guan's journey was at times dangerous, and he tells of once being surrounded by a pack of wolves, encountering robbers three times in one day, and of being trapped by heavy snow for 48 hours.

Guan describes his feelings of loneliness and fear during his journey.

"One night I slept in an unused hut on a remote mountain. I lay down in my sleeping bag, and just hoped I could keep quiet and safe in the darkness so I wouldn’t be discovered by wild animals. I dared not light a fire to make food, or even use my flashlight. It was pitch dark, and the wind was blowing in the trees and I could feel that my shirt was totally wet. And then the familiar feeling of loneliness came to me again..."

The first part of Guan's journey came to a premature end in 1986 after a near-fatal car crash in the predominantly Tibetan province of Qinghai. Returning home to recuperate, Guan got married and returned to his work unit, but never gave up his plan, and continued to collect materials about Chinese folk arts.

In 1998, he set off again on his journey. This time he was better equipped and he travelled with a car and video and photography equipment. He says "some folk arts will never return once they die out" and has taken 60,000 pictures, shot 6,000 minutes of video, and written more than 1,800,000 words to help preserve what's left of traditional art in China.

Looking ahead, Guan Xiangling says he will continue his travels, and hopes to set up a museum for the folk art of all of China's 56 nationalities.

http://channels.crienglish.com/culture/content.aspx?cid=859

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Ancient Chinese technical tango
Harvard student identifies 2,500-year-old device as oldest known to combine two types of motion
By Steve Bradt
FAS Communications

Distinctive spiral grooves carved on ornamental jade rings used in Chinese burial rites some 2,500 years ago appear to have been created with a highly precise machine, a Harvard University graduate student reports in the June 11 issue of the journal Science.

Peter J. Lu also suggests a basic mechanical design that could have been used to create the etchings in question, a combination of a turntable and a stylus that moved in a concerted fashion. Such a device, which uses technology that existed in some form in 550 B.C., represents the earliest compound machine known to interconvert two different kinds of motion precisely. It would also imply greater mechanical sophistication than had previously been assumed for ancient China's Spring and Autumn period, which lasted from 771 to 475 B.C.

"Most of the carving done on jade or bronze objects during this period of Chinese history is clearly irregular enough to have been hand-drawn," says Lu, a graduate student in physics with a penchant for art history and ancient China. "The spiral grooves on these jade burial rings, though, are highly precise and consistent, and almost certainly must have been created using a machine that linked rotational and linear motion."

When the rings were brought to his attention by Jenny So, a professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, during a visit to examine jade artifacts at the Smithsonian Institution's Sackler/Freer Galleries of Asian Art last summer, Lu immediately guessed the basic pattern carved on them was an Archimedean spiral (although the rings in question predate the birth of Archimedes by several centuries). While the nexus of the traced arcs was obliterated when the central circle of jade was removed to form a ring, Lu was able to determine that all of the arc segments etched on the ring shared a common geometric origin.
[image] With Stan Cotreau of the Physics Department, Lu has built a machine that he believes is like the one that made the carvings he has studied.

Challenged by So to prove his theory, Lu re-created the device that might have been used to etch the jade rings by purchasing a used phonograph above whose turntable he mounted a sliding horizontal bar. When this bar and the turntable are moved in unisonz, a sharp vertical implement attached to the bar traces out a precise Archimedean spiral.

While simple machines are known to have existed 2,500 years ago, all others identified in that era - such as potter's wheels and the water screws used to lift water from the Nile River - used a single form of constrained motion. The machine described by Lu for carving jade rings is the earliest known compound machine to precisely link two different types of constrained motion. The rings were possibly carved by running a sharp implement over the jade material thousands of times using this simple machine to create grooves that follow the ideal mathematical equation within as little as 0.2 millimeters.

Jade rings of the type studied by Lu were commonly used in burial rituals for wealthy or powerful individuals during China's Spring and Autumn period. The oldest such ring known to be authentic came from the tomb of a minister of the Chu culture of ancient China who died in 552 B.C. While this ring was just the size of a quarter, 27 millimeters in diameter, other jade burial rings that have been recovered are closer to the size of a bracelet. The repeating arcs etched on the rings give them an appearance roughly similar to that of a length of rope.

Lu will continue this research in Hong Kong and China this summer with the assistance of a grant from Harvard's Asia Center.

http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2004/06.17/07-etching.html

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TIME asia
June 21, 2004 / Vol. 163 No. 24
Revisiting the Silk Road

A new exhibit shows that the greatest treasures of the legendary trade route were not just silk and spices
BY AATISH TASEER | LONDON

Despite vivid accounts of Eastern wonders relayed by traders along the Silk Road, there was always suspicion in the Occidental mind about whether the fabled bounty of the trade link truly existed. It wasn't until Nicolo Polo and his son Marco returned from their second trip along the legendary route laden with the treasures and innovations that Nicolo had claimed to see on previous journeys that Venetians began to believe the tales. Even then, at Marco's deathbed, a priest came to ask whether he would be willing to confess his falsehoods. "I did not tell half of what I saw," Marco replied. Nearly 800 years after the Polos made their epic journeys along the Silk Road, the romance of this historic trade route has hardly dissipated. Dr. Susan Whitfield, curator of the British Library's new exhibition, "The Silk Road: Trade, Travel, War and Faith," is aware of the beguiling quality of her subject and seeks to ground it. "I want people to leave with a knowledge that the Silk Road is not a faraway, exotic place," she says, "but full of everyday lives and everyday people which have relevance to us today."

This ability to demonstrate the Silk Road's influence over the lives of the people who lived along its path is the great achievement of the British Library's exhibition, which runs until September 12 in London. Unlike the countless adventurers the Silk Road has attracted over two millennia, the exhibition is not after earthly treasures or visions of empire but focuses on the trade route's role as a passage for ideas. Though the exhibition, which has been five years in the making, brings together pieces from museums such as the Musée Guimet in Paris, the Museum of Indian Art in Berlin, the Miho Museum in Tokyo and the British Library's own extensive collection of artifacts, the inspiration comes from Whitfield's extensive studies of early Chinese history over the past two decades. "As I worked more and more in China," Whitfield says, "I realized what a debt medieval China owed to the Silk Road and to the influences coming in on the Silk Road."

This debt ranged from knowledge of wine making to polo and Buddhism but was often paid back in kind. China sent silk, paper, porcelain and gunpowder along the Silk Road. In exchange, astrological findings from its western reaches deepened China's knowledge of the heavens. The principal trade routes lay between 30 and 40 degrees latitude, ensuring that Silk Road kingdoms from the Mediterranean to China saw the same stars and could benefit from shared observations. Manuscripts depicting the movements of the Moon and planets found in Arabic and Indian astronomy, which had been shaped by the discoveries of Babylon, also show up in Chinese studies of the heavens. A likely product of this cumulative knowledge is an early chart of the night sky found in the Chinese city of Dunhuang in Gansu province. The manuscript, which closely resembles a projection developed eight centuries later by the Flemish cartographer, Gerardus Mercator, accurately depicts 1,500 stars that are all recognizable today.

The exhibition is designed to take viewers on a virtual journey along the Silk Road. It begins in the ancient Sogdian capital of Samarkand in present-day Uzbekistan—one of the last of Alexander the Great's conquests before he went south to India—and moves east through the now vanished western kingdoms of Khotan, Kroraina and Miran before ending in China. Over the course of this journey eastward, remarkably well preserved 1,000-year-old manuscripts and icons reveal the growth and evolution of the Silk Road's most illustrious commodity: Buddhism. The merging and morphing of regional beliefs produced versions of Buddhism quite unlike the original that took shape in India.

The Sutra of the 10 Kings, discovered in the Chinese city of Gaochang in Xinjiang province, shows one of the earliest known Chinese depictions of hell and is the exhibit's best example of the evolution of Buddhism along the Silk Road. Composed in the 10th century by a Chinese monk, the sutra illustrates the purgatorial journey of the soul from death to rebirth in one of seven orders of being, ranging from the highest, bodhisattvas (those who have attained enlightenment), to hungry ghosts or, still worse, those who have been banished to hell. The sutra was one of the first attempts to syncretize the Indian Buddhist philosophy of karmic debt with the traditional Chinese belief that the dead simply went to an underground world identical to the one they had left behind. It is a fitting testament to the influence of the Silk Road that it was the carrier not only of commodities and innovations that forever changed daily life but also of ideas that changed the afterlife.

Although the enduring image of the Silk Road is of treasure-laden caravans snaking their way toward distant and exotic lands, its real and lasting impact upon the civilizations of Asia and beyond is even more wondrous than the wildest tales of its traders. Perhaps it was this aspect of the Silk Road on display at the British Library that Marco Polo withheld from his detractors back in Venice.

http://www.time.com/time/asia/magazine/article/0,13673,501040621-650766,00.html

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Feature: Guardian of China's folk art
www.chinaview.cn 2004-06-16 15:41:24

By Xinhua writers Han Qiao, Yao Yujie

NANJING, June 16 (Xinhuanet) -- Sixty-four-year-old Chen Jing is very concerned about the future of Chinese paper-cutting, a folk art genre once popular in millions of Chinese households.

"If people of my age put down the scissors and papers, this kind of folk art might really die away," Chen said.

Paper-cutting, a traditional folk art form, used to be a favorite pastime of Chinese people. Trimming with a pair of scissors and carving with a knife on the paper, artisans could create animated, vivid and fascinating images in diverse patterns,such as flowers, animals, or complicated Chinese characters, for weddings and major festive occasions.

The elaborate paper-cutting seemed not only appeal to Chinese. The art has spread overseas in the early half of the 20th century thanks to efforts made by Chinese craftsmen, including Chen.

Born in a handicraftsman family, Chen grew up in the rich Chinese folk culture. His grandmother was known for her novel paper-cutting skills, while his grandfather had the aptitude for making exquisite decorative lanterns.

"I still clearly remember all the stories depicted on the lanterns in my childhood. When the Lantern Festival came, kids took lanterns from their home, showing to each other and enjoying great fun," he said.

In Chen's eyes, people passed on the folk arts to generations to come in those days with really natural ways, as "it was an integral part of their everyday life."

However, wars and social upheavals, such as the 10-year-long "Cultural Revolution" (1966-1976), interrupted the development of Chinese paper-cutting and other folk arts. Paper cutting, along with other traditional arts, were labeled as "feudalistic evils" during the cultural revolution.

In 1981, Chen read a newspaper story in which it praised the paper-cutting as "a bond of the Chinese and Japanese peoples" and said that even Japan had more than ten associations on Chinese paper-cutting. Chen felt hurt for "China, the home of paper-cutting, did not even have a single group dedicated to the art then."

Knowing that the art could be put at the edge of extinction, Chen proposed to form China's first national paper-cutting research society in 1984 in an effort to help the centuries-old art to regain its glory.

He also collected paper-cutting designs, compiled them into books and trained young artists. With his persistent efforts, the society built up the national recognition soon.

Chen, later praised as guardian of paper-cutting art, is also remembered for his efforts to help old artisans. His aid supported several paper-cutting maestros in need.

Cheng Jianli used to be a famous paper-cutting craftsman from Fuyang in east China's Anhui Province. The time when Chen found him in Jinan, capital of neighboring Shandong Province, Cheng had become a beggar.

To Cheng's surprise, Chen invited him to join the paper-cutting society and consulted him about paper-cutting techniques with full respect. Chen's help made a turning-point in Cheng's life and enabled Cheng to devote to paper-cutting creation.

Jin Yazhen, the late Manchu paper-cutting artist, is one of the 16 Chinese artisans for whom China has applied for the Paper-Cutting Master title to the United Nations Educational, Scientificand Cultural Organization (UNESCO). She was also discovered by Chen. "My family will never forget Chen and Chen's help," said daughter of Jin.

In 1994, Chen obtained a post in the prestigious Nanjing University for teaching Chinese paper-cutting, clay sculpture, embroidery and other folk arts to foreign students.

To further spread the traditional arts to Chinese youngsters, he invited folk artisans to campus and launched China's first folkart course open to all the students.

"The protection of folk arts can not be done by a single person,even a whole generation. It is a mission to be carried on for generations to come," said Chen.

"I am nothing but only do what I can," he said, with a pair of scissors at his hands.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2004-06/16/content_1529461.htm

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people's daily
UPDATED: 16:55, June 15, 2004
Longmen Grottoes: Buddhist site for only empress

After dynasties of carving and centuries of worship and protection, the Longmen Grottoes in central China's Henan Province has gained its unique reputation as a Buddhist site of the only empress in Chinese history.

In the largest cave of Longmen Grottoes, the Fengxian Temple, which is 35 meters wide and 39 meters high, there is a statue called the Grand Vairocana Buddha. Some historical records reveal that it was modeled after the face of Empress Wu Zetian, the only empress in Chinese history, who gained popular support by advocacy of Buddhism and reigned during the Tang Dynasty 1,309 years ago. People also call it Empress Wu Zetian's Statue.

About 17.14 meters tall with the head 4 meters long and the ear 1.9 meters wide each, the statue of Empress Wu is believed the most extraordinary masterpiece of the Longmen Grottoes. According to historical records, Empress Wu supported the construction of the statue with her own money and headed officials to the Buddhist ceremony when it was completed.

Empress Wu Zetian (625-705) is the only reigning female in Chinese history. She was first one of the harem of Emperor Tang Taizong and later the favorite of his son, Gaozong. After Gaozong suffered a stroke, she began to govern China from behind the scenevia him and declared power in 690, when she established the Zhou Dynasty (690-705). At the age of 72 Empress Wu allowed the Tang Dynasty to be resumed and died soon after.

Although it was short-lived, some historians consider the establishment of the Zhou Dynasty the result of better gender equality during the succeeding Tang Dynasty.

Today, Empress Wu Zetian's Statute in Longmen Grottoes is reputed as the "Eastern Mona Lisa", or the "Eastern Venus" for its gentler facial expression.

Located 12 kilometers south of ancient city of Luoyang, the Longmen Grottoes stretch over 1,000 meters on the hillsides along the Yi River. They were first sculptured and chiseled around 493 AD during the Northern Wei Dynasty (386-534), and the entire construction lasted more than four hundred years up to the Song Dynasty (960-1279).

Today there are still about 2,100 caves and niches, 100,000 Buddhist images ranging in size from 0.02 to 17 meters, more than 2,800 inscribed tablets, and 43 Buddhist pagodas remaining at the site.

The Longmen Grottoes were listed by UNESCO as a World Cultural Heritage Site in 2000. They are reputed as among the greatest ancient stone sculpture sites in China along with the Mogao Caves in Dunhuang in northwestern Gansu Province and the Yungang Grottoes in northern Shanxi Province.

"The grottoes and niches of Longmen contain the largest and most impressive collection of Chinese art of the late Northern Weiand Tang Dynasties (316-907). These works, entirely devoted to theBuddhist religion, represent the high point of Chinese stone carving," described the UNESCO website.

Besides worshipping Buddhism and Empress Wu, the Longmen Grottoes also reflect political, economic, and cultural lives in ancient China. The sculptures describe the people in the fields ofarts, architecture, calligraphy, music, dressing and medicine.

Although much of the site has been well preserved, during its long history, some parts were damaged by natural erosion and vandalism. Crevices in the rock bases caused some caves to collapse. Saline sediments resulting from acid rain, train and automobile vibrations and natural disasters have also affected thesite.

To well protect the historical site, the central and local governments have removed the restaurants and shopping stalls from inner scenic area and resettled the nearby Longmen Village to reveal the natural surroundings of the grottoes. Vehicles have been forbidden to enter the area to avoid tremors as well as dirt.The world heritage site is welcoming visitors with a more peacefuland beautiful image.

Source: Xinhua

http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200406/15/eng20040615_146413.html

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München (ots) - Regionale und internationale Künstler treten in den Dialog mit dem Publikum

München, 15. Juni 2004 – Vom 27. Juni bis 21. August 2004 findet das Kunstevent „Rohkunstbau“ im Schloss Groß Leuthen in Brandenburg statt. Dabei gelingt den Machern seit zehn ...

München (ots) - Regionale und internationale Künstler treten in den Dialog mit dem Publikum

München, 15. Juni 2004 – Vom 27. Juni bis 21. August 2004 findet das Kunstevent „Rohkunstbau“ im Schloss Groß Leuthen in Brandenburg statt. Dabei gelingt den Machern seit zehn Jahren, wovon andere Avantgarde-Veranstaltungen nur träumen können: In Groß Leuthen tritt die internationale Kunst-Szene in den Dialog mit den Bürgern.

In ihrer neuen Ausgabe (Heft 7/2004, EVT: 16. Juni) berichtet die Frauenzeitschrift MADAME über das Erfolgsgeheimnis der Macher: Künstler aus der Region wie die Malerin Cornelia Schleime präsentieren ihre Werke in Groß Leuthen ebenso wie internationale Stars wie Susan Hiller. Dabei suchen die Künstler einen Anknüpfungspunkt zum Ausstellungsort. Cornelia Schleime beispielsweise hat für Groß Leuthen eine Serie von vier Gemälden mit schlafenden Kindern geschaffen, womit sie auf die Geschichte des Schlosses anspielt, das in den vierziger Jahren ein Waisenhaus war. Der chinesische Künstler Chen Shaofeng geht noch weiter: Ohne ein Wort Deutsch oder Englisch zu können, porträtiert er im „offenen Atelier“ die Bewohner von Groß Leuthen und die wiederum ihn, den Maler. Ein Konzept, mit dem der Gast aus Peking sofort Mitglied der Dorfgemeinschaft wurde.

Verantwortlich für „Rohkunstbau“ sind der profilierte Kunstkritiker und Kurator Mark Gisbourne, der zahlreiche internationale Kunst-Stars nach Groß Leuthen holte, sowie der Gründer von „Rohkunstbau“, Arvid Boellert, der selbst aus der Region stammt. Boellert: „Für mich ist es ein Qualitätsmerkmal, Kunst zu popularisieren, ,Rohkunstbau’ ist ortsbezogen, das merken die Leute.“

Für Rückfragen: Brigitte Nennhuber, Redaktion MADAME, Telefon 089/55135-201, Fax 089/55135-215 Mail brigitte.nennhuber@madame.de
ots-Originaltext: Madame

Digitale Pressemappe: http://www.presseportal.de/story.htx?firmaid=33797
http://www.mysan.de/article9023.html

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Dying Yiyang tune listed for preservation
www.chinaview.cn 2004-06-14 15:40:32

NANCHANG, June 14 (Xinhuanet) -- The Yiyang tune, the mother of dozens of Chinese local operas and which is under threat of extinction, was listed for preservation by the Ministry of Culture this April.

This might bring vigor to the ancient type of art, said 59-year-old Yang Dianrong, an official with the cultural bureau of Yiyang County, east China's Jiangxi Province, and also one of the few remaining artists of the Yiyang tune.

Originated in Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279 A.D.), the tune combined operas around Yiyang region with local dialects, Yang said.

The most popular tune at that time, the Yiyang tune played an important part during the development process of Chinese operas, exerting great influences on 44 types including Peking Opera.

Yang said that the Yiyang tune was the absolute forefather of Chinese high-pitched operas, and it was regarded as the overlord of the Chinese opera field together with the subsequent Kunshan tune.

However, fewer and fewer people tended to pay attention to the Yiyang tune today, said the artist.

"We graduated in the 1950s from art schools and all my schoolmates are around 60 years old," Yang said. "We, less than ten, are the only Yiyang tune artists remaining in China."

He said that due to fund shortage, the collection and arrangement of related materials were laid aside for many years, and what was worse, there were not even any troupes or stages that could show the traditional tune to the public.

"The ancient form of art is on the verge of extinction," he warned, "and it will die out in 20 years time unless successors are trained."

Li Yuying, director of the Jiangxi cultural department, appealed this March to the National People's Congress for the Yiyang tune to be given immediate preservation and care, which drew close attention from the Ministry of Culture.

The Chinese government plans to invest in gathering materials concerning the Yiyang tune and to establish a professional troupe specially for Yiyang tune performances.

Besides, a museum of Yiyang tune together with a Yiyang tune opera institute was expected to be built, and this year a seminar on the ancient form of art was set to be held at Yiyang, the birthplace of the tune.

Reading the preservation plan of the Yiyang tune, Yang said he saw hope for revitalizing the traditional art form.

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China Daily
Artists locked in land dispute
2004-06-12 07:01

"Even if I knew my house would be demolished tomorrow, I would still take good care of it today, because it is like my child and I have to be good to it," said Liang Guoyin, 73, a famous painter and professor with the Guangzhou Institute of Art.

He was referring to his villa in suburban Guangzhou, which, together with 100 other villas, is under threat of being bulldozed to make way for a new college development.

Twenty-odd artists including Liang each bought the land use rights of about one mu (667 square metres) of land in 1994 from a local developer to build their villas in Xiaoguwei, an island on the Zhujiang River about 17 kilometres south of Guangzhou, capital city of South China's Guangdong Province.

In China, all non-agricultural land belongs to the State, but a citizen may have 70-year land use rights for their properties on the land.

The artists became the first residents of the suburban villa zone, now known as the Art Village and consisting of 165 unique villas which are mainly home to painters, sculptors, horticulturists, architects and photographers.

But the dreams of these artists to maintain a creative paradise did not last long.

In 2002, the Guangzhou municipal government launched construction of a college development in Xiaoguwei Island. The Guangzhou College Town, with an area of 43.3 square kilometres, plans to accommodate 10 colleges with 350,000 students and a number of faculties.

In April and August of last year, the municipal government decided to take back the land use rights of all three sections of the Art Village in the name of serving public interests according to the China Land Management Law. That's despite the fact the property rights of all villa owners had been authorized by the Guangdong provincial government in 2002.

Municipal government circulars stipulated that all villa owners in Xiaoguwei must vacate their properties by the end of April. They will be compensated in accordance with the standards set by the government.

By the end of June 6, more than 60 villas had been torn down but other villa owners, mainly artists, refuse to move out. They said the relocation order will demolish their years of artistic labours and their private property rights.

Exquisite art villas

Due to its poor traffic conditions, Xiaoguwei Island became a natural resort in contrast to heavily industrialized Guangzhou. Its land prices were deemed worthwhile for many artists.

The land deal cost Liang and his wife all their life savings of about 300,000 yuan (US$36,230). They had to wait for three years to make enough money to start building their three-storey villa.

At the end of 1998 when the construction was completed, Liang had to stop for another three years to raise money for the interior decoration. The whole project was finished only in 2002.

"The lengthy construction time gave me chances to repeatedly refine the construction plans, the design, and all the interior decoration," Liang told China Daily.

The villa was carefully built, with a specially designed irregular layout, unique lighting and an elegant garden. Beautiful paintings and prints are embedded into the walls. The living rooms are small and located in corners, with considerable space left for the artist's studio, exhibition room, and guestroom.

Liang was not alone.

"In 1994, when I saw the island on the opposite bank, I immediately decided to buy a piece of land on it," said Zhu Jiaquan, a Chinese-American painter.

Zhu sold his house in the United States and in the following years, he collected the proper tiles, bricks and interior ornaments for his villa during his trips across China. The construction and decoration of Zhu's villa were completed in 2001.

Since 2002, the Xiaoguwei Art Festival has been held annually, attracting thousands of Guangzhou residents and tourists to visit the artists' studios and see their works as well as their uniquely built studios.

The Xiaoguwei Art Village has been put under the spotlight in China's art circles, because artists usually live in rented houses in other cities and they cannot infuse their arts into their dwelling environments, said Chen Jianzhong, a famous French-Chinese painter, during his visit to the second Xiaoguwei Art Festival in 2003.

Land dispute

In September 2002, a public hearing was held by the Guangzhou municipal government to decide whether to keep the Art Village.

Two artists from the Art Village were invited. The meeting record shows that 90 per cent of participants suggested the three villa zones be kept and gradually developed into a cultural section of the college town.

The Art Village is located on the southern bank of Xiaoguwei Island, outside of the massive ongoing projects associated with the college town.

But in line with the final construction plan of the college town, the Art Village is to be demolished.

"In the area (of the villa zones), a highway to the college town will be built and other places will be used for greenery," Meng Qi, director of the Construction Headquarters for Guangzhou College Town, told China Daily.

The artists and other villa owners appealed to the municipal and provincial governments last year to withdraw the relocation order, saying it violates their property rights. After the municipal and provincial governments decided to maintain their original decisions, villa owners sued the governments in local courts in four cases last year and early this year.

They stated that the government decision to take back the land use rights of the Art Village was illegal.

So far villa owners have lost one of the four lawsuits they had launched.

"Article 19 of the Urban Real Estate Law stipulates that the State should not take back the land use rights before the 70-year term is over, and in this case most of the villa owners obtained the land use rights only 10 years ago," said Gao Zhisheng, a lawyer from the Beijing-based Gao Zhisheng Law Firm, who worked for the villa owners.

The newly amended Constitution stipulates that legal private properties of civilians are inviolable. The constitutional amendment has become a new weapon for villa owners to protect their property rights.

Now on the gates of all remaining villas in the Art Village hangs a big red sign that states: The Constitution stipulates that legal properties of civilians are inviolable.

"Our action against the relocation has gone far beyond our own interests," Hua Xihuang, a doctor living in the Art Village, told China Daily. "It is an attempt to maintain the dignity of the Constitution."

What is the solution?

The Guangzhou municipal government claims it has its own legal basis for carrying out the moves.

Guangzhou Land Requisition Office Director Yang Heping stressed that the government has every right to take back the land use rights of property owners in the name of public interests under Article 58 of the China Land Management Law.

And construction of key State and government projects such as the college town is definitely serving the public interests, he added.

The Constitution stipulates that the government has to compensate property owners for taking back the land use rights.

Wang Lei, a law professor with Peking University, said that the public interest needs to be further clarified. In some cases, public interests become a pretext for local governments to develop commercial projects.

"Even if the college town is really for the public interests, is it necessary to violate our private interests?" asked Xuan Qingqiu, a Guangzhou-based publishing designer who lives in the Art Village.

"A lot of vacant land near our Artist Village can be used to build the highway."

In addition, the existence of the Art Village neighbouring the college town, with its art events and communications, is the best example of realizing public interests, Xuan said.

In the relocation notice, three reasons are given for the demolition of the villas: poor planning, inconsistent style and out-of-date public facilities.

The college town construction headquarters officials also said that the plan to build a highway and greeneries in the area of the Art Village cannot be changed because it has been discussed and approved by more than 100 leading designers and architects from across the country.

During the lawsuit, the villa owners claimed that the whole project for Guangzhou College Town has not even received the State Council's approval.

The China Land Management Law stipulates that any project using more than 70 hectares of land must be certified by the State Council.

In fact, the planned college town covers a land area of 1,800 hectares.

Local authorities, however, say the project has been approved by the State Council and all the land use rights have gone through legal procedures.

While trying hard to maintain their legal property rights, some artists are lobbying the municipal government to find other places to "duplicate" the Art Village.

"The Art Village has become a cultural mainstay of Guangzhou and there is every reason to keep it, even elsewhere," Zhu said.

But insiders said the proposal is impossible because the central government ordered the halt of rectifying all land use rights for villa projects in 2003.

An anonymous official with the Guangzhou Bureau of Land and Resources said that the compensation money being offered has been very high for villa owners. Most of these villa owners bought their land use rights at prices of less than 800,000 yuan (US$96,610) and built their villas for less than 1 million yuan (US$120,770), but they would receive more than 2 million yuan (US$241,540) in compensation, which is enough to buy a decent apartment in the downtown areas.

Nearby Xiaoguwei, a completed villa of about 400 square metres now costs about 6 million (US$724,670) to 10 million yuan (US$1.21 million).

The college town construction headquarters plans to spend at least 400 million yuan (US$48.2 million) alone on the greenery belt and the highway for the college town.

"We do not care how much we get in compensation. What we care about is our dignity as artists, our painstaking efforts in the Art Village and our constitutional rights," Liang said.
(China Daily 06/12/2004 page3)
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-06/12/content_338790.htm

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ART REVIEW; Like a Bird in Flight: Capturing Today's Chinese Culture in Transition
By HOLLAND COTTER
Published: June 11, 2004, Friday

What does a makeover of 5,000 years of culture feel like? Ask China, because that's what's happening there. Ancient cities are coming down; new ones are going up. Urban markets are spilling over with Western-style products. To a sizable segment of a youth-heavy population, the Cultural Revolution is a phantom, the tragedy of Tiananmen Square, yesterday's inexplicable news.

Such developments may register only casually on Western attention. But the reality is that as China is transformed, the rest of the world will be transformed. The effects may be slow to unfold, even for China's still predominantly agricultural society, but they will be profound. You can bank on that.

''Between Past and Future: New Photography and Video From China,'' a perspective-altering show at both the International Center of Photography and the Asia Society, gives a panoramic glimpse of the continuing cultural revolution after the Cultural Revolution. It is the first such glimpse New York has had since Asia Society's 1998 survey, ''Inside/Out: New Chinese Art,'' for which the new show provides a historical update.

The history in question began a few years after Mao Zedong's death, in 1976, when China expanded its contact with the West. Overnight, it seemed, a generation of young artists, many of whom were trained in classical painting and calligraphy but reached maturity during the implacable heyday of Socialist Realism, gained access to Western art, all of it, old and new.

They went wild, scrambling through styles, ideas and forms with a kind of raucous, guerrilla energy. What resulted was less a New Wave than a series of avant-gardist firecrackers going off: big bang, little bang, silence, huge bang and so on. Political Pop painting in the 1980's was like a Socialist Realism in reverse, with Coke bottles instead of Little Red Books. Installation art had a tremendous impact: it was cheap to make, required no special training and embraced all other forms, including performance.

Photography and video had similar advantages, the former, in particular, being easy to show and conceptually versatile: it could imitate painting, adapt to installations or just be itself. Most important, photography's dual capacity for recording and inventing reality made it the ideal medium for an era of experimentation, chaotic variety and whiplash change.

Variety is instantly and somewhat disorientingly evident at Asia Society, where the smaller segment of ''Between Past and Future'' is so tightly installed that intended thematic divisions are hard to see. But one of these sections, ''History and Memory,'' picks up more or less where ''Inside/Out'' left off with images that make provocative references to cultural and political monuments. The Great Wall, for example, becomes a stage for a nude performance by the androgynous artist Ma Liuming, captured in photographs and on video. And the totemic Tiananmen Square portrait of Mao is shot by the Gao brothers (Gao Qiang and Gao Zhen) from directly below, so it looks like a guillotine blade descending.

Mao appears elsewhere, too, as do hints of the kind of political oppression associated with his name. In three pictures, Sheng Qi photographs his own left hand holding a snapshot: one of himself as a child, one of his mother and one of Mao. What's arresting, though, is the fact that the little finger of the hand is missing. The artist cut it off in a gesture of protest before going into political exile at the time of the Tiananmen massacre in 1989.

In a remarkable portrait series by Hai Bo, images come in pairs. The earlier picture in each pair, often a group shot of family or friends, dates from the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), while the second, taken recently, records the artist's attempt to reassemble the original sitters. In some cases, he has been successful: the same faces, now aged, are there. In others, empty chairs speak of lives lost and fates unknown.

Violence, implied in these pictures, becomes theatrically explicit in a second thematic section, ''Reimagining the Body.'' The nude figure, with its erotic potential, carries a disconcerting charge in the context of Chinese classic art, from which it is all but absent. And for that reason, and others, rebellious young Chinese artists have made much of it.

It is presented with a kind of show-bizzy flair in a 1995 shot by Rong Rong of the charismatic artist Zhang Huan, seen bound and bleeding in a performance he gave at the now-demolished artists' enclave on the outskirts of Beijing called the East Village. Along with other figures who emerged as stars from that scene, he gave self-torture an aggrandizing glamour.

By contrast, in so-called conceptual photography, the body plays a supporting role to ideas, literally so in Huang Yan's landscapes painted directly onto his torso. Here he presents himself as a physical vehicle of cultural memory and at the same time alludes to a connection between photography and painting.

The body as a malleable social and personal emblem is the subject of ''Performing the Self,'' the first of the two superbly installed thematic sections at International Center of Photography, where there's room for the show to really open up. A funny, needling video by Cao Fei -- one of the show's youngest artist and one of its unusually high number of women -- is set in a corporate office, though the performers are made up to look like a cross between humans and dogs. Lin Tianmiao, now in her early 40's, turns a self-portrait in which she appears with her head shaved like a Buddhist nun or an extraterrestrial into a towering photographic apparition anchored to the material world only by strings of yarn.

Old and new converge yet again in portraiture. The genre was a vital feature of classical painting, just as it is in Wang Qingsong's photographic remake of the renowned 10th-century scroll ''Night Revels of Han Xizai.'' In the new, digitally printed edition, Song dynasty court officials are replaced by a Beijing art-world nobility, which includes the esteemed critic and curator Li Xianting and the much-noticed Mr. Wang himself, a former painter whose history-baiting tableau-vivant photographs blend farce, nostalgia and world-weariness in proportions that are hard to gauge.

All kinds of contradictory emotions are mixed in the show's final section, ''People and Place,'' where the sense of traumatic change in China is most graphic. Many pictures are of architecture. Wang Jinsong punctuates hundreds of black-and-white snapshots of bland modernistic facades with a few color pictures of the old buildings that survive. Zhang Dali chips a human profile out of the walls of half-demolished structures, as if to give them faces.

And in a remarkable video by Song Dong -- as outstanding here as he was in ''Inside/Out'' -- the artist holds in his hands sheets of paper onto which video images of modern Shanghai are projected. And every few minutes he abruptly crumples the sheets into a ball. The gesture is jolting every time, as if some terrorist god were obliterating a city as fast as it is built.

Other architectural images are more idealistic, as in the case of Xing Danwen's dreamy filmstrips of Beijing and Xiong Wenyun's stirring shots of humble roadside houses in Tibet that she fitted with cloth hangings the color of the Buddhist rainbow. But a sense of vitality comes only in images of people.

It's certainly there in pictures by the hot young artist Zheng Guogu of slacker-punk teenagers, for whom a Westernized China is the only China they know, and in Yang Yong's steamily noirish fashion shots. Bai Yilou's hand-stitched collage of photographic portrait negatives suggests the dense, roiling diversity of China's population, in which everyone is at once unique and anonymous. Such diversity becomes at once exhilarating and wrenching in the series titled ''The Chinese'' by Liu Zheng. For several years this tireless artist traveled the country taking pictures of people old and young, poor and rich, living and dead. The complete series has just been published as a book, which I unreservedly recommend.

I also recommend the exhibition catalog. It has solid essays by the show's organizers, Christopher Phillips, a curator at the International Center of Photography, and Wu Hung, consulting curator at the David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, supplemented by artists' statements and interviews that are a revelation.

Among other things, they spell out the practical reasons for the popularity of photography and video -- media out of fashion in New York -- among non-Western artists. They also demonstrate how refined, after rough-and-ready beginnings, the approach to these media has become in China within just a few years. Video in particular seems poised for a great leap forward, and on the evidence of work by Xu Zhen, Song Dong, Wang Jianwei and Cao Fei, its prospects look bright.

Finally, the artists in the catalog just sound different from those in the West, whether they are expressing longing for a culture perceived as lost or mingled excitement and exasperation about the one that confronts them in China today. No one ventures statements of political protest; China is still a dangerous place for dissidents. But a critical sensibility is implicit in almost every word spoken -- and in almost every piece of art, just as it has been in Chinese art over thousands of years.

Indeed, the ties between contemporary and traditional Chinese art and culture, unsuspected only a few years ago, are apparent now. Whether the next new generation will sustain and nurture them remains to be seen. But the dynamic they are producing today -- or at least when this show was selected -- is both elastic and finely tuned.

Its spirit is distilled in a photographic triptych titled ''Tianyuan Space Station, 12 December 2000'' by Li Tianyuan.

In the central panel the artist himself appears, a blurred figure in front of a Beijing high-rise, staring up at the sky. The left panel is a satellite shot, supposedly of the very spot he is standing on, filmed from 500 miles above the earth. In the right panel is a microscopic closeup of a tiny section of his body, a fingernail. City and self, reality and fantasy, awesomeness and absurdity -- these are the active, volatile ingredients of Chinese art at the moment, and they give a vital, graspable shape to this important show.

''Between Past and Future: New Photography and Video From China'' remains on view at the International Center of Photography, 1133 Avenue of the Americas, at 43rd Street, (212) 857-0000, and at the Asia Society, 725 Park Avenue, at 70th Street, (212) 288-6400, through Sept. 5. The show then travels to the Smart Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago (Oct. 2 to Jan. 16), to the Seattle Art Museum (Feb. 10 to May 15), to Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin (March to May 2006) and to the Santa Barbara Art Museum in California (summer 2006).

Published: 06 - 11 - 2004 , Late Edition - Final , Section E , Column 1 , Page 41
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9505EED71430F932A25755C0A9629C8B63

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China's new media art more media than art
(China Daily)
Updated: 2004-06-11 08:47

People still habitually stereotype art students as people who are romantic but hardly able to count to more than 100, and science students as boring sorts who convert everything in life into numbers.

[image] "New media art" exhibition displays creations by teachers and students from 28 prestigious institute around the world. [China Daily]
However, the differences between arts and science students are diminishing, with majors combining arts and science flourishing in many of the world's universities and colleges as a result of the unprecedented technological revolution that has been going on since the 1980s.

The "marriage" between the arts and science is demonstrated at the ongoing exhibition about "new media art," which is on at the Millennium Art Museum of the China Millennium Monument in western Beijing.

Teachers and students from 28 prestigious universities around the world, including 11 Chinese institutions of higher learning, are showing their "new media art" works, which range from video art, digital art and animation to flash art and sound art.

[image] "Reflective design: technology for new museum experience," by Kirsten Boehner, Xiaowen Chen and Geri Gay from Cornell University HCI Grooup. [China Daily]
The students whose works are being shown are studying for degrees in a variety of disciplines, such as arts, communications, design, electronic engineering, fine arts, music, science and software engineering, depending on the universities or colleges they are from.

The exhibition, organized by Tsinghua University, the ZKM Art and Media Centre of Germany and the V2 Art Exhibition Association of Netherlands, includes the work of students from the nine most important Chinese art academies and Peking and Tsinghua universities.

Overseas institutions involved include big names such as Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cornell University, the University of California at Berkeley, the New York Visual Art Institute, Tokyo University, and the Koln Media and Art Institute.

The exhibition has been attracting a lot of attention in Beijing where the arts are very big at this time.

New media art works, which allow for more interaction between art and the viewer than does traditional art, make it fun to visit the exhibition, said Wang Yudong, deputy curator of the Millennium Art Museum.

"Each era has its own art. Oil painting on canvas is not the creation of our era, but the new media art can be," he noted.

New media art emerged in the West as early as the 1960s. In China, it is thought to have first appeared in 1988 when Hangzhou-based artist Zhang Peili used a video camera to record a performance show he staged in the city.

In the following decade the phrase "new media art," which was borrowed from abroad, was synonymous with "video art" in China.

Around 1988 Chinese new media art experienced a major breakthrough when personal computers and DV cameras were already widely used and CD ROMs and the Internet entered our daily lives.

A lot more artists have since then found more freedom in artistic expression with the aid of computer software such as "Painters."

However, Chinese new media artists were criticized by both domestic and foreign art critics for focusing too much on the conceptual side of their work and not enough on grasping the new technology, said Zhu Qingsheng, an art professor at Peking University, in 2002.

"Few artists here can design software for their works, but artists in the West quite commonly can do so," he said at that time.

But the situation has changed rapidly in the past two years, as majors in new media art are now offered in almost all important Chinese art academies and more and more universities in the country, following the example of the China Academy of Fine Arts, Hangzhou, which in 1996 was the first Chinese academy to open a new media arts studio, winning it a leading position in the field.

"Emerging young Chinese artists, especially those who have received university education, can make really cool things using the most advanced technologies," said Chen Yang, curator of contemporary art at the Millennium Art Museum.

"When organizing the exhibition, I was pleasantly shocked to see the great progress that has been made in the last two years," she added.

The problem now lies not in technologies but in ideas, said Zhang Ga, a professor with the renowned Parsons School of Design, New York, who is one of the two curators of the exhibition.

"The new media works of Chinese teachers and students can be clearly distinguished from those of foreigners at the show. The former are dazzling in appearance, but often naive in content," he said.

"New media art is only a medium through which artists express themselves. We have to bear in mind that it is the idea conveyed, not the technique that makes the fundamental difference between good art and bad art, and this is true of all forms of art, including new media," said Lu Xiaobo, vice-president of the Art Academy of Tsinghua University, who has been Zhang's partner in curating the exhibition.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-06/11/content_338528.htm

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people's daily online, UPDATED: 16:53, June 11, 2004
Yungang Grottoes retell Buddhism's journey in China

At Yungang Grottoes, modern Chinese still have a chance to worship emperors from 1,500 years ago as many Buddha statues had been made with them as a prototype.

With similar looks but bigger stature, these "emperor-buddhas", each measuring 13 meters tall, solemnly occupied the first five caves of Yungang Grottoes to remind visitors of Buddhism's first heyday in China.

Although Buddhism began to enter China since the Western Han Dynasty around 2 BC, the religion had never got popular due to constant war chaos and the lack of support from ruling classes within the following 400 years.

When nomadic Xianbei people, the ethnic minority group from northern China, established the Northern Wei Dynasty (386-584), its emperors viewed Buddhism as a convenient means to expand their kingdom and to conquer the vast land inhabited by the majority Han People. After labeling Buddhism as the state religion, they promised the construction of the Yungang Grottoes at state expense to demonstrate their solid belief in Buddhism.

However, while the first state-funded Buddha grotto project was started in the then capital of Pingcheng, present day Datong in Shanxi Province, program director Monk Tan Yao was required to cast five statues looking the same as the five Xianbei emperors who had contributed to the establishment of Northern Wei Dynasty.

This anecdote has been written into the book "History of Wei", revealing a prevailing concept in feudal China: the Emperor is God.

Between 453 and 523, nearly 40,000 craftsmen joined the massive royal project and carved out 50,000 Buddha statues and 53 grottoes on a 1-kilometer cliff to the south of Wuzhou Mountain.

Compared with Mogao and Longmen Grottoes in Gansu and Henan Provinces respectively, the Yungang Grottoes is the only one accomplished within one dynasty and represents Chinese people's first large-scale assimilation of Buddhist culture.

Judging from the early work in Yungang, scholars believed that Chinese craftsmen borrowed a lot from western carving skills in the very beginning. Technically named Gandhara, these skills were originally created by ancient Indian artists who combined Buddhist carving art with the Greek culture brought into central Asia by Alexander the Great during the Crusade around the 4th century BC.

After Buddhism and Gandhara art made their way into China through the Silk Road, Chinese artists responsible for the carving work in Yungang combined it again with indigenous Chinese culture.

Normally the later the carvings were made, the more Chinese elements they had.

For instance, inside the above-mentioned first five caves where "emperor-buddhas" were situated, visitors could see a variety of decorations from Indian golden-winged birds, Persian acanthus and Greek columns to Chinese balustrades.

In Cave 20, a giant Buddha sitting in the open has been taken as a typical work done in the earlier stage, as all details from his facial appearances to the dressing style bear strong resemblance to the then people living in the northwest of India, the north of Pakistan or Afghanistan.

Given the Northern Wei Dynasty was established by the nomadic Xianbei ethnic group, the early carvings in Yungang also revealed ethnic culture in northern China. From grottoes' interior decoration, visitors could find lots of forest animals and plants barely seen in orthodox Buddhist carvings, such as deer, tigers, birds and birches.

Later on, while the Xianbei people gradually expanded their territory to the south, Gandhara culture and their own ethnic culture eventually gave way to the Han culture represented by the Han people.

Such a change reflected well on the dressing style of later Buddha statues. In ample gowns and loose girdles, Buddhas no longer bared their right shoulders. Instead, they wore long pleated skirts and flowing drapes like garments of the then high-ranking Han officials.

By 494 AD, when the Northern Wei Dynasty moved its capital from Datong to Luoyang, the center of Han culture, only a small number of officials were left behind to supervise the construction project. Restrained by limited human and financial resources, however, many caves remained empty until craftsmen of Tang Dynasty (618-907) filled them up.

Ever since then, Datong, the bustling Buddhist cultural center some 1,500 years ago, gradually faded into a small city more well known for its coal production. In 2001, Yungang Grottoes was listed as a world cultural heritage by the United Nations. A rank of scholars, artists and architects swarmed onto the Wuzhou Mountain, about 16 kilometers from Datong.

Piles of works have been published, calling Yungang a live evidence of Chinese people's assimilation toward foreign culture and the culture of ethnic minorities. Apart from Buddha carvings, researchers also found valuable resources for the study of ancient Chinese music and dancing art.

Right now, a major concern shared by many researchers is the environmental pollution caused by coal exploitation and consumption in nearby Datong City.

Researcher Huang Jizhong of the Yungang Grottoes Study Center confirmed the efflorescence of Buddha carvings has become increasingly serious. Effective measures must be taken immediately, he said.

Source: Xinhua
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200406/11/eng20040611_146056.html

____________________

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Digital Resources
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University of Heidelberg
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