Page 123 - The Arts of China, By Michael Sullivan Good Book

in a scries of vivid reliefs, while above is the heavenly host—Bud-
dhas, seated or standing, bodhisattvas, flying apsarases, musicians,
and other celestial beings. The decoration of this cave reminds us,
in its wealth of detail, its contrast between the realism of the
earthly figures and the serenity of the heavenly ones, of the bea-
tific visions of the Italian primitives.
The Loyang region was closer to the centre of the purely Chinese BUDDHIST
tradition of pictorial expression in linear, as opposed to plastic, SCULPTURE:
terms; and so it was inevitable that this tendency, already becom- THE SECOND PHASE
ing apparent in the later caves at Yunkang, should have found its
fulfillment after the move to the south in 494. At Lungmen, only
ten miles from the new capital, sculptors found a fine grey lime-
stone which permitted greater refinement of expression and finish
than the coarse sandstone of Yunkang. The new style reached its
culmination in the cave known as Pin-yang-tung, commissioned
by the emperor Hsiian-wu and probably completed in 523.
Against each of the interior walls is a large figure of the Buddha,
attended by standing bodhisattvas or the favourite disciples Ananda
and Kasyapa. On either side of the entrance, the walls were deco-
rated with godlings in relief, Jataka tales, scenes of the celebrated
debate between Vimalakirti and Manjusri, and two magnificent
panels showing the emperor and empress coming in procession to
the shrine attended by their retinue. (The empress panel, badly
damaged in removal many years ago, has been restored and now
forms part of the important Chinese collection in Kansas City.)
Executed in flat relief, its sweeping linear rhythms and wonderful
sense of forward movement suggest the translation into stone of
the style of wall painting which must have been current at the Wei
court, and is further proof that besides the imported, hieratic
forms reserved for the deities themselves there existed another and
more purely Chinese style, to which painters and sculptors in-
stinctively turned in representing secular themes.
Because of the great scarcity of Buddhist sculpture from the
southern kingdoms, we are apt to think that the stylistic revolu-
tion which reached its culmination at Lungmen must have origi-
nated in the north and gradually spread southward. But recent dis-
coveries and research suggest that the opposite was the case, and
that it was the art of the southern courts centred in Nanking which
was the dominating factor in the development of Buddhist sculp-
ture in the Six Dynasties. One of the earliest innovators had been
Tai K'uei, a contemporary of Ku K'ai-chih at the Chin court in
Nanking. His work, in which he is said to have raised the art of
sculpture to a new level, very probably reflected the style of con-
temporary painting—the flat, slender body, sweeping robes and
trailing scarves that we sec in copies of the Ku K'ai-chih scrolls.
This concept of figure and drapery does not appear in the sculp-
ture of the north until a century later, when we first encounter it in
the later stages at Yunkang and the earliest caves at Lungmen, and
there is much evidence to show that it was introduced by artists
and sculptors from the south.
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