A Study On The Aesthetic Imagery Of The Northern Dynasties' Statues In The Maijishan Grottoes

The statues of Maijishan Grottoes are a concrete expression of Buddhist aesthetic ideal based on the Buddhist "emptiness" theory.They are made of clay and stone,shaped in lines,and built with intention,while the images were created by "no image".They lead viewers to “understand the emptiness with shapes".In the grotto space,the Buddha exists in the Buddha statue,but is not present,and is present through the construction of the mental image.The "viewing" and "being viewed" of Buddha,sculptor and believer in their respective situations have contributed to the interactive generation of aesthetic imagery,which makes the aesthetic subject and object have interactive subjectivity in the continuous switching.The sculptor materializes the mental image into a figurative image by means of experiential methods and techniques to arouse the viewer's viewing.Therefore,in the process of creation,there is a certain deviation between the "heart" and the "image" out of the hands of the people.Whether the image in the heart can be expressed exactly depends on whether the image in the heart and the hand can complement each other well.Buddha statues act as a guide leading the viewer to view them with materials,techniques,shapes,styles,faces,and other formal elements.In the process of watching,the viewer unconsciously projects his own belief and emotion into the statue,extricates the spirit from the real life and secular experience,and realizes the sublimation of the emotion and the transcendence of the spirit in the experiencing process.In the viewing,religious perception and aesthetic perception continue to produce each other interchangeably and tend to be completely integrated.Because the "viewing" of the Buddha statue is not the activity of the "naked eye" in the physiological sense,but the inner vision in the sense of the mind.And it is the direct penetration of what is revealed by the inner senses,and is a kind of understanding type that integrates the mind into the inner part of the Buddha statue,which transcends the rational view.It can be said that the process of perception and experience of the religious sanctity of the Buddha statue is also the process of beautifying the Buddha statue.However,due to the subjective differences of the viewers' culture,experience,desire,aesthetic ability and so on,the uncertainty and polysemy of the body image will be caused in the viewing.Therefore,the aesthetic psychological distance between the viewer and the Buddha should be maintained.The creation of grottoes is the projection and materialization of man's own history and emotion of life,and it is the questioning of the ultimate proposition of life,death,existence and so on.In this sense,on the one hand,the grottoes became a Taoist Rite for the sculptor to work hard,the practitioner to get close to Dharmakaya,and the believers close to the vision of life.On the other hand,it has transcended the merits and virtues,and has become a holy thing that leads the viewer to transcendence of life and perfection of self.The viewer felt his own insignificance in the experience of worship and worship again and again,thus dispelling the attachment,aversion and delusion in the heart,surpassing life and death in the comfort of the soul and settling in the spirit,and realizing the "egotism".The ancients(the sculptor,the practitioner,and the blessed)looked at the Buddha in the grotto space,watching it in person.The viewer's vision,perception and the possessions in the grotto space are linked.Under the influence of the existing cognition,experience and belief,the viewer reconstructs in the heart a "schema of the mind",that is,the "image of the mind" through the aggregation of the mind.But the viewing of contemporary people depends more on images and pictures.This way of viewing reduces the activity of the three-dimensional space to the activity of the "eye," transforms the spatial nature of the viewing into the visual,covering and splitting the space that the sculptor painstakingly designed,the previous way of viewing,and the religious atmosphere.It dispels the "verve" of the grottoes as a traditional art.In the present era of visual culture,the phenomenon that the images of the Northern Dynasty of Maijishan Grottoes were transformed into images and misread in the process of transmission should be paid attention to.As a result,we should try our best to restore the original cultural situation and maintain a clear sense of judgment between the pictures and the objects when we look at Buddhist images.