Page 19 - Christie's, materpieces of Buddhist Art December 2, 2015 HK

PRESENTATION OF IMAGES
Although typically presented one-by-one in museums and
galleries, Buddhist images in fact almost always appeared in
groups in their original temple contexts, those groups usually
odd-numbered and hierarchically arranged, with a Buddha at
the center flanked on either side by a bodhisattva, perhaps
with a guardian figure at the outer edge of the assemblage
and two or four apsaras hovering above (lot 2913). In addition,
sculptures generally appeared in concert with paintings—
both wall paintings and hanging scrolls and banners—so that
the original context, rich and varied, suggested the celestial
paradises in which the Buddhas and other deities reside. Of
course, some sculptures appeared individually on a sub-altar or
in a shrine in order to honor a particular deity. Small images of
deities, such as the sculptures representing Marichi (Chinese,
Molizhitian) (lot 2908) and Vasudhara (Caiyuan Tianmu) (lot
2909) may have been made for a temple or might have been
acquired by an individual or family for worship in a home
shrine. In temples, such images often were incorporated into
sculptural mandalas.
Virtually all bronze sculptures originally were gilded, both to
make the images sufficiently sumptuous for presentation
to a deity and to suggest the light that, according to the
sacred texts, emanates from the bodies of the Buddhas and
bodhisattvas (lots 2901, 2902, 2903, 2906, 2908, 2909,
2911, 2914). In Tibetan sculptures, sometimes only the
flesh portions were gilded, allowing the ungilded copper or
bronze portions to suggest the robes, thus injecting a note
of descriptive color. In addition, most traditional wooden and
stone sculptures originally boasted pigments—and sometimes
gold leaf on the faces and other flesh portions—to make them
as naturalistic and as radiant as possible (lots 2904, 2905).
Few such sculptures retain the pigments of their youth, but
many bear traces of the rich colors.
Too broad in scope for present purposes, another essay
would trace the development and evolution of Buddhist art
styles, from their origins in northern India through Central
and Southeast Asia and thence to China, Korea, and Japan.
The artistic styles not only evolved over time but appropriated
elements from each culture to which Buddhism spread, so that
the styles reveal the time and place where each individual work
of art was created. By contrast, as Buddhism spread from its
homeland throughout Asia and beyond, its iconographic types
maintained a continuity and consistency, even if with slight
variations. Thus, a Buddha is always recognizable as a Buddha,
no matter when or where it was created, just as a bodhisattva
is always identifiable as a bodhisattva because its basic
iconographic characteristics remain the same from place to
place and period to period. Thus, at least in terms of continuity
of religious ideals and iconographic types, Buddhism rightly
can be called “the light of Asia, as Kenneth Chen long ago
Characterised it.
Robert D. Mowry,
Alan J. Dworsky Curator of Chinese Art Emeritus,
Harvard Art Museums, and Senior Consultant, Christie’s
ENDNOTES
1 See: Kenneth K.S. Chen 陳觀勝 , Buddhism: The Light of Asia 佛教 :
亞洲之光 , Woodbury, NY: Barron’s Educational Series, 1968.
2 For books on Buddhism and its history, particularly in China, see:
Arthur F. Wright, Buddhism in Chinese History, Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press, revised edition, 1971 (Available in Chinese translation
as ( 美 ) 芮沃壽著 , 中國歷史中的佛教 , 北京市 : 北京大學出版社 , 第 1
版 , 2009; Kenneth K.S. Chen 陳 觀 勝 , The Chinese Transformation
of Buddhism, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1973; Erik
Zürcher, The Buddhist Conquest of China: The Spread and Adaptation
of Buddhism in Early Medieval China, Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill,
3rd edition, 2007.
3 For books on Buddhist art, see: Pratapaditya Pal et al., Light of
Asia: Buddha Sakyamuni in Asian Art, Los Angeles: Los Angeles
County Museum of Art, 1984; Denise Patry Leidy, Donna Strahan,
et al., Wisdom Embodied: Chinese Buddhist and Daoist Sculpture in
the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York: Metropolitan Museum
of Art and New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010; Marsha Weidner,
ed., Latter Days of the Law: Images of Chinese Buddhism, 850-1850,
Lawrence, KS: Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, and
Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1994; Pratapaditya Pal, The Arts
of Nepal, Leiden, The Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1974; Pratapaditya Pal, ed.,
On the Path to Void: Buddhist Art of the Tibetan Realm, Mumbai: Marg
Publications, 1996.
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