The Artistic Research Of Stone Carving Of Shuanggui Temple In Chongqing Liangping

Shuanggui Hall, located in Liangping County, Chongqing City is known as “theorigin of Zen Buddhism in Southwest China” and famous for its most beautiful junglesin Southwest China. Shuanggui Hall is now a nationally key temple, a municipalityprotected historic site. The existing stone carvings, with long histories, are of variousstyles and spread all over the Shuanggui Hall. These stone carvings have integrated thehistoric, cultural and artistic featuress and therefore are typical folk art creations.Theremany documents that introduce and describe the Shuanggui Hall. However, suchdocuments are based on appearance and structure of the Shuanggui Hall and inadequateattention is paid to the stone carvings. Therefore, systematic investigations under artisticperspectives are desired. Additionally, deep analysis and interpretation from the view offolk art creation is rare.This paper focuses on researching on stone carvings in theShuanggui Hall and treating them as a system to be formed. The logic of this paper is:argument making, demonstration and explanations. This paper contains5steps.Step1describes the research value, attribute of the research object and researchtheories so as to build the basic framework of this research.Step2describes the collection and sorting of the information about the stonecarvings based on quantitative and qualitative methods. In this way, a relativelycomplete information system is set up.Step3gives demonstrations by following this sequence: from the classifiedanalysis to the summary and conclusion, from the whole to the part. In this step, basedon the overall classification of stone carving arts and according to shapes, decorationsand themes, craftsmanship, this paper first concludes three basic features of the stonecarvings: i) Decorations based on stone shapes that combines square and round figures,and; ii) Abundant themes expressing auspicious visions; iii) Diversified craftsmanshipthat is suitably simple or complex. Then this paper investigates the stone carvings on theFangsheng Bridge in the Shuanggui Hall, as a part, to summarize the features of thesestone carvings.Step4analyzes four features of the stone carvings in respect of their designs fromthe middle-level theory. These four features are utilitarian, stability, flexibility andintegration.Step5deepens and sublimates theories of this paper from both “homologous” and” non-homologous” views. The summary reviews the whole research process and thenfocuses on the value of stone carvings based on the "design inspiration" and "culturalvalue" from a practical background perspective.