The Analysis Of Aesthetic Characteristics Of The Ornaments And Redecorations On Thousand-Handed Guanyin In Dazu Rock Carvings

The paper is named as ‘The Analysis of Aesthetic Characteristics of the ornaments and redecorations on Thousand-Handed Guanyin in Dazu Rock Carvings',which means the author takes the Thousand-Handed Guanyin in the 8th niche of Nanyang Dafowan,Baoding Mountain,Dazu District,Chongqing as the major research object.Except to study on the aesthetic characteristics of the ornaments and makeups on this kind of Buddha state,the author,on the other hand,also focused on the diverse aesthetic experiences that these decorations bought to people.From the stand point of the author,the dominating reason for why the ornaments and redecorations of the Thousand-Handed Guanyin could be a widely controversial issue is that the appearances of these sculptures changed a lot,even lost their original aesthetic styles,after the eight-year redecorating and repairing.The controversies mainly center on these following aspects: gilding the whole body and coloring some parts of the Thousand-Handed Guanyin state,restoring the stumps of the sculpture and changing the faces of the key-role state,etc.,which lead to the Thousand-Handed Guanyin leaves completely different impressions on modern citizens.However,till now,the ordinary collectors and academic members still have maintained mixed criticisms on Thousand-Handed Guanyin with ornaments and redecorations.A great many researches about this kind of Buddha state are concentrated on the perspectives of cultural relics restoration and protection,and seldom on the aesthetic characteristics of makeups on the states.Thus,this paper now carries out a specific study on the most representative ornaments and redecorations in Buddhist statues,trying to develop the further understandings and dig the deeper values of theaesthetic characteristics of the ornaments and redecorations on the Thousand-Handed Guanyin in the contemporary context.Aiming at the research about the aesthetic characteristics of the ornaments and redecorations of thousand-handed Guanyin in Dazu Stone Carving,the author mainly adopted the methods of historical analysis,investigation at site,comparative analysis and Hermeneutics in Erwin Panofsky's iconology theory,etc.First of all,by interpreting and defining some basic concepts,the author has explained the aesthetic characteristics of Dazu Rock Carvings and Thousand-Handed Guanyin there in different levels.Secondly,basing on the research background that the history of repairing and redecorating of the Dazu Rock Carvings and Thousand-Handed Guanyin,the paper discusses the evolution process of this sort of Buddhist states and the significances of ornaments and redecorations.What's more,analyzing the aesthetic characteristics of Dazu Rock Carvings and Thousand-Handed Guanyin and the reasons behind their aesthetic concepts are also essential parts of this paper.Finally,the study is ended with elaborating the aesthetics enlightenment of Thousand-Handed Guanyin ornaments and redecorations.This paper is divided into four chapters to discuss the aesthetic characteristics of ornaments and redecorations on Thousand-Handed Guanyin.The beginning part is the introduction to the subject.And the second chapter is mainly about the evolutions of the aesthetic characteristics of Thousand-Handed Guanyin during the redecorating process.By comparing the various redecorating and making up activities on this Buddha state in different historical period,the author analyzes the changes of the aesthetic attitudes towards the ornaments and redecorations on Thousand-Handed Guanyin,and finally come to the corresponding significance of making up and redecorating.In the third part,the author works on both the external and internal reasons which allow the Thousand-Handed Guanyin to reform such an unique sculptures style with those ornaments and redecorations on it.The external form of expression can draw the relevant academic conclusions as follow:(1)Material Language: Firstly,the essence of Thousand-Hands Guanyin is stony matrix.Stone statues have a sense of historical precipitation and power,which show lofty aesthetic feeling in the formal language of art.Secondly,the gilding decorations protect the stone body of Thousand-Hands Guanyin,which meets the needs of religious expression art,and is also an indispensable way of conveying aesthetic feeling as a visual art.(2)Sculpture Language: Chinese traditional sculpture style hasunified the aesthetic feelings of sculpting and painting,which is filled with the Chinese native aesthetic appreciation habits.(3)Color Language: The colors of Thousand-handed Guanyin's ornaments and makeups emphasize the expression of delicate decorations,and most of the ornaments adopted the flat painting techniques to form a strong contrast effect visually.Additionally,the author also explains the reason for the lack of yellow color in the redecorating and painting process of Thousand-Hands Guanyin.And for the internal part,the paper mainly looks into the differences of aesthetic features of Thousand-handed Guanyin's redecorations in content expression,and the contributing factors behind the various aesthetic concepts towards the Buddha state.In the content expressions,the author demonstrates that in ancient China,the expressions of aesthetic empathy of redecorating artists and scholar-bureaucrats directly affected the final visual presentations of Thousand-Handed Guanyin.However,the redecorations and repairs at present time,rehabilitation workers add contemporary people's aesthetic desires and expectations to the historical state.Therefore,the Thousand-Handed Guanyin after the repairing and making up possesses the beauty of intactness and the sense of holiness in content expressions.And for the origins of different aesthetic concepts towards the Buddhist sculpture,the author deeper the study by interrelating both historical and modern information,like the social,political,economic and ideological background of Song Dynasty,and the development of nowadays society.In the final chapter,the author highlights the enlightenment that the aesthetics of Thousand-Handed Guanyin's redecoration brought to the public which fall into three parts: the inspirations of redecoration aesthetics to local beauty-appreciation,the influence of redecoration aesthetics to the view of cultural relics restorations and the combination of redecoration aesthetics with new media.Overall,the author hopes that this research can provide some valuable references for the restoration and redecoration of other Buddhist statues in the future,and offer some experience and technical support for the protection and further redecoration of the same type of stone sculptures in the whole southwestern region through the study of the techniques and expression forms of Thousand-Handed Guanyin in Dazu Rock Carvings.Moreover,the aesthetic features and the contributing factors behind the various aesthetic concepts will provide some academic references to other bas-reliefs on precipices in the Sichuan-Chongqing region.