Ten Smiles

A unique feature of the ancient Chinese Buddhists culpture is the statues’ facial expression:the smiling. In the world art history, no other art has had such a deliberation on this facialexpression and achieved such an outstanding performance presenting it. The ancientChinese art of Buddhists culpture has reached its peak level when depicting Buddha’s smilingin such a fabulous way. Either in form or content, Buddha’s smile is an important factor whendemonstrating the unique aesthetics of the ancient Chinese Buddhist sculpture and plays akey role in terms of its significant achievements in the history of art. The purpose of this paperis to explore the nature and content of the Buddha’s smiling and its implication to thecontemporary art.The Chinese art of Buddhists culpture declines with the fading of Buddhism in china, but thework of the art itself lives as another form of existence, and will last for centuries. From anobvious point of view but ignored by most of us, this paper discusses the aesthetic nature ofthe classic art work of the Chinese Buddhists culpture, and investigate the decisive role of theculture origins’ involvement in the art.This paper consists of two parts. In the first part, we select ten representative smiles from theclassic art works from ancient Chinese Buddhist sculpture, and discuss how their uniquecharm are demonstrated. In the second part, we try to find and summarize the commonfeatures among those ten smiles, and from the aspect of the relationship between form andcontent, to explore the aesthetics involved which is deeply related to the ancient Chineseculture, and to discuss its enlightenment to the practice of art. Within the framework ofarcheology, history and art history, this paper intends to put emotion and rationality into thediscussion and seek a combination of both, and turn these everlasting art works into their ownlegacy.