The Research On The Decorative Art Of Woodcarving On Tibet’s Temple Gates

Tibet’s unique geographic position, religious environment, natural environment and folklore create and inherit Tibetan nationality’s centuries-old traditional historic culture. As one kind of material carriers for cultural development, architecture’s decorative art is also a concentrated reflection of accumulated culture for a long term and people’s aesthetic consciousness. Furthermore, as the essence of Tibetan building system, temple architectures’ decorative art is full of the religious culture and art as well as architectural cultural and art under the influence of Tibetan unique regional culture. Temple gates serve as the“face” of temple architectures, focusing on the demonstration of Tibetan people’s religious belief and unique aesthetic characteristics, which reflects the harmonious living condition between Tibetan and nature. This is an important component in the decorative art of Tibetan traditional culture.As the essence of temples’ architecture decoration, the woodcarving decoration art of Tibetan temple gates is mostly the accumulation of craftsmen’ fabrication experience and there is not so much literal data on it can be applied to research. This paper adopts approaches like field investigation and document analysis to systematically arrange the decoration art and carry out some discussions on it to a certain extent.Firstly, under the premise of Tibet’s unique geographical characteristics,cultural environment and distinctive manual skills, which are background of the woodcarving decoration art’s development, this paper will let people realize Tibet’s unique folklore and natural environment and understand the position of woodcarving decoration art of temple gates in Tibet in monastic architectures. The second chapter combines the development progress of Buddhism in Tibet—the “earlier stage of promotion” and “later stage of promotion” of Buddhism as well as three developmental phases of Dge-lugs-pa, revealing the woodcarving decorative art’s evolution. Chapter three carries out a thorough analysis on the woodcarving decorative art by introducing the structures,decoration methods and themes. Chapter four covers a thorough discussion on the cultural connotation and aesthetic characteristics contained in the woodcarvings and analysis on the multicultural characteristics embodied in the decoration art, delivering the aesthetic features, folkways and religious feelings in the decorative art. Finally, the conservation status, and inheritance and development prospect of the woodcarving decoration art of Tibet’s temple gates in modern architectural decorations are introduced.Gates are the face of architectures. The woodcarving of Tibet’s temple gates is full of beauty and diversity as their decoration methods and themes are perfectly revealed by craftsmen. This paper tries to probe intothe decoration art and aesthetic as well as cultural connotations in it;meanwhile, it compares the woodcarvings of Tibetan temples and Tibetan painting art, emphasizing the exposition of Tibetan painting’s influence on the woodcarving decoration so as to reveal its distinctive decorative artistic features.Tibet, a land where Buddhism prevails, keeps a large number of exquisite woodcarving on temple gates, whose decoration art is highly valuable for its history, culture and aesthetics. However, with the economic society’s development and the improvement of people’s material standard of living, the decoration art of temples’ traditional woodcarving is faced with serious challenges. The research on the decorative art of woodcarving on Tibet’s temple gates can deeply disclose the traditional cultural connotations and accomplishments, which, besides its reference value for academic research, is also beneficial for protecting woodcarving’s decoration art on Tibet’s temple gates, so that the sustainable development of decoration art can be promoted.