From Intangible Ideal To Social Reality

From Intangible Ideal to Social Reality—Traditional Sculpture’s Revolution in Tang, Song DynastyIn old Chinese art history, it was the unprecedented boom period during Sui, Tang and Song Dynasty, which was reflected on Buddhist sculpture, no matter whether in term of content or form. Buddhist sculpture in Sui Dynasty possessed the characters of transition duration, as it was after North Dynasty and before Tang Dynasty. Both in Tang Dynasty and Song Dynasty, Buddhist sculptures had reached to a period of great prosperity in different areas. There were diversities among the statues in different place. Thus the paper selected representative sculptures in all Sui, Tang Song Dynasty and different statues in these three dynasties that belong to the same place or the same style. This paper analyzed the traditional sculpture style in Sui, Tang and Song Dynasty, and attempted to reveal the style evolution during these three dynasties. Through this research, the paper found that Sculptures in Sui Dynasty still had the characters of North Dynasty’s, which had the features of pure, meaningful and, closed to idealization; sculptures in Tang Dynasty started to close up to the social reality, and were secularized; till Song Dynasty, the character of secularization became more obvious, and turned to be more delicate as well.