Artistic Style Of Stone Carving In Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region

Sculpture is a special kind of art. It usually uses stone, wood, bamboo, bone, clay etc. as material to create a work of art by carving,scraping and polishing. It becomes a popular art in the ancient time especially because of the particular beauty of the material itself and the product's durability. Placed in Royal gardens, before monarchal mausoleums and official mansions, sculptures are promise of auspices, symbols of stateliness and the display of luxuriance. Among the people there are stone carvings like Carved Stone to Hitch a Child and Carved Stone to Hitch a Horse. These ancient sculptures are quintessence of Chinese wisdom, with their unique forms they record the vicissitudes of centuries-old Chinese Civilization and include luxuriant cultural connotation. The sculptures of primitive society are out of the artistic category yet, but with Chinese entering into slave society and feudal society, each dynasty boasts abundant creations and only from Qin Shihuang's Terra-cotta Warriors and Horses we can see the ancient Chinese monarchs' regard and preference for sculptures. Sculptures of each era inherits something from the previous and develops something new, those of each region has similarity with others but possess its own features.The Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, which locates in North-west of China, the up and middle reaches of Huanghe River, is one of the cradles of the Chinese nation and it's culture is an indispensable part of Chinese Civilization. There the stone carving handed down is few, they mainly include the stone carvings of Monarchal Mausoleums of Xixia Dynasty and those of official mansions collected by Museum of Guyuan county. The stone carving of Ningxia have their unique features owing to comprehensive factors like topography, economy, politics and culture and its distinctive artistic flavour can be called a Unique in various sculptural styles. However,the stone carving of NIngxia has never been studied from the perspective of artistic style. With pictures this paper will try to do this job for further appreciation, understanding and study.