A Study Of Murals From Five Dynasties And Ten Kingdoms

The period of Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms is an important transitional period from “a whole” to “break up” in the Chinese history, and the political division makes the mural art in this period demonstrate a diverse and multi-feature appearance of development. Tomb murals of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period is the longitudinal observation center in this paper, combining with the horizontal comparison with grottoes murals, temple murals and traditional scroll paintings of the same period, and in the research methods of “mural geography” and“archaeological typology”, the geological distribution, mural grade standard, subject classification, theme and content, image style, artistic style, communication and influence of murals in this period are researched. In addition, this paper describes the transitional and bridging roles of murals of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period in the Tang and Song Dynasties, highlights the feature of “mural” change, and focuses on discussing the following three issues based on the overall features of change.The first issue is subject classification and regional character of murals of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period. Based on systematic combing the mural information of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, this paper mainly adopts the figure painting, landscape painting and bird-and-flower painting as the observation objects, horizontally compares the tomb murals with grottoes murals and scroll paintings, studies and compares the figurative art units of “portrait of tomb owner”, “center of four landscape painting”, “double bird figure”, “peony figure”,“pigeon in a gold basin” and “leisure in the lake”, discusses the relationship between these art elements, the artistic features of liberalization, secularization and localization as well as the their transitional roles between the Tang and Song Dynasties.The second is to propose “Luoyang style”, “west Sichuan style” and “Southern Tang style” for the first time, reflecting the geographical features of murals of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period. Afterwards, this paper includes the artistic features of three main body styles into the scope of micro research, such as “one table and two desks” of the “Luoyang style”; “Sichuan beauty” and “Huang Gesheng Style” of the “west Sichuan style”; “Jiangnan painting” of the “Southern Tang style”.This paper focuses on analyzing the source influences of “one table and two desks”of the “Luoyang style” on the popularization and life subjects of tomb murals in the Song Dynasty; “Image” of Sichuan in west Sichuan style- the tradition of retaining the portraits for prominent figures and statues, the figure painting- “Sichuan beauty”and “small and exquisite” “Huang Gesheng Style” with regional characteristics;“Jiangnan painting” with distinct Jiangnan landscape and geographical characteristics and unique literati atmosphere of the “Southern Tang style”, and discusses that the root cause for the emergence is closely connected with profound cultural heritage of Jinlin in the Southern Tang Dynasty and the groups of literati painters at that time.The third is to make a thematic interpretation of the representative subject images in the murals of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, such as“cross-hand gesture”, “bamboo”, “tea-preparing figure” and other case images. The turbulent era makes the subject of murals of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period gradually unleash the shackles of the traditional ritual system, shows a diverse and secular trend, and it is an important subject and content to exhibit the power, status and extravagant lifestyle during their lifetimes. This paper focuses on making a case study of social issues at different levels, which are reflected by images of the above three subjects:From the subject of etiquette, this paper sorts and makes a comparative analysis of Tomb of Zhao Yigong in late Tang Dynasty(829), Tomb of Wang Chuzhi in the Five Dynasties(924), and “cross-hand gesture” figure images of the tomb murals inthe Song, Liao and Jin Dynasties, combines the historical documents with the image information of paintings handed down from ancient times, and concludes that it is improper to consider the secular “cross-hand” gesture first appeared in Song Dynasty.“Cross-hand gesture” image should have appeared and become a common etiquette in Tang and Five Dynasties;From the subject of art, this paper analyzes and studies two “bamboo” images that were discovered from Tomb of Feng Hui in the Later Zhou Dynasty of the Five Dynasties, considers that these two images have provided the figure image information of early “bamboo”, and explores the reasons for its emergence, shape,evolution and the significance of complementing and improving the Chinese traditional opera history;From the subject of social life, this paper takes a “tea-preparing figure” in A.D.961 of Northern Han Dynasty that was discovered from Shanxi Taiyuan First Thermal Power Plant as the cutting point, considers that discovery of this figure has advanced the appeared time of “tea-preparing figure” to the Five Dynasties, and studies the tea-preparing formula, classification of tea set, layout of environmental space, functions and significance of tea-preparing figure.In addition, the author collects and sorts the official position information of tomb owner recorded in epigraph during the Five Dynasties, and attempts to speculate and analyze the mural grade standard. At last, this paper concerns about and discusses the artistic interaction between murals of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period and tomb murals in Song Dynasty and Liao Dynasty as well as the murals in Corea, Japan and other countries.This paper tries to build and restore the general picture of murals of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, in order to highlight the social traits of this special historical period through the valuable information contained and carried by the images, provide new resource system for studying the inheritance and transformation of mural style in Tang and Song Dynasties as well as the social life,funeral etiquette, history of cultural ideology during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, and discusses the artistic features of “localization”,“liberalization”, “secularization” and “transition” for murals of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period through the temporal and spatial relationship between Tang and song Dynasties.Therefore, the research topic of thematic murals which was intended to compare with that during a special period of transition,thus has an academic signi ficance of common characteristics.