Main artistic achievements and characteristics of Mogao Grottoes

Mogao Grottoes, commonly known as Thousand Buddha Cave, is located 25 kilometers southeast of Dunhuang County, Gansu Province, and was dug on the cliff at the eastern foot of Mingsha Mountain. According to "the first year of Wu Zhou Dynasty (AD 698), Li Huairang rebuilt the Buddhist shrine monument", Le? The Zen master built a cave in the second year of the former Qin Jianyuan (AD 366), and the Zen master Faliang continued to build it. After sixteen countries, Northern Wei, Western Wei, Northern Zhou, Sui, Tang, Five Dynasties, Song, Xixia and Yuan Dynasties, a huge cave group was built. On the cliff face nearly 1000 meters long in the south, there are many caves as dense as honeycombs, especially in the middle, with up to five rows up and down. There are 492 numbered caves, more than 45,000 square meters of murals, 24 painted sculptures15 pieces, 5 wooden eaves in Tang and Song Dynasties, and thousands of lotus columns and floor tiles. The Mogao Grottoes are large in scale, rich in content and long in history, ranking first in the national grottoes and the largest and best-preserved treasure house of Buddhist art in the world.

The content of Dunhuang art includes architecture, sculpture and murals, which are combined into a unified whole. The grottoes are shaped like Zen grottoes, central columns and square Buddhist temples. Statue is the main body of Dunhuang grottoes art, except for a few clay sculptures with stone tires up to tens of meters high, the rest are painted clay sculptures. Murals can be roughly divided into seven categories: Buddha statues, immortals, stories, portraits, historical changes, Buddhist monuments and decorative patterns.

The grottoes in the late Sixteenth Country (Beiliang) inherited and developed the tradition of Han and Jin culture in Hexi Corridor, and at the same time, due to the frequent exchanges between Dunhuang and other countries in the Western Region, it showed obvious artistic style in the Western Region. A new artistic style of the Central Plains began to appear in caves in the Western Wei Dynasty. With China myth as the content, with beautiful bones and clear images as the modeling characteristics, it pays attention to the expression of verve and tolerance. During the Northern Wei Dynasty, most of the wall paintings were based on earth red, painted with cyan, green, ochre and white, with warm and heavy colors. After the Western Wei Dynasty, white walls were used as the background color, and the colors tended to be fresh and elegant.

Sui dynasty is an active period in the history of Dunhuang art development, which embodies the spirit of change and plays a connecting role in the development of Dunhuang art.

The Tang Dynasty was the golden age of Dunhuang art, with colorful sculptures in various forms, and a huge statue as high as 30 meters appeared. Murals have diverse themes and magnificent scenes. Character modeling, shading and line drawing skills have reached an unprecedented level. There are five main themes of murals: ① Buddha paintings. There are many single Buddha statues and bodhisattva statues, such as the pharmacist Buddha, Lushenafo Buddha, Guanyin, Shi Zhi, Tibetan Buddhism and tantric bodhisattva statues. 2 through painting. There are more than 20 kinds, such as Amitabha, Maitreya, Oriental Pharmacist, Guan Wushou, Fahua, Yu Bao, Vimalakīrti, Laodu Tea Fighting Sage, Guanyin, Manjusri, Pu Xian, Gratitude, Huayan, Tian, Yi Gi Brahma, Jin Guangming, King Kong, Lengga, Miyan, Rewarding Parents' Grace, Demonizing, etc. In the Sui and early Tang Dynasties, there were fewer kinds of classics, grand scenes, rigorous composition, concise content, one wall and one shop, and more kinds and rich content in the later period. The composition was mainly two or three shops on one wall. Even under the classic, a screen painting was added to supplement the classic. (3) Buddhist historical paintings and Swiss portraits. In the late Tang Dynasty, it appeared in the form of Buddhist legends in the western regions, such as Hotan, Tianzhu, Nirvana and Gandhara, such as the fire and water pool of Hotan, Loki and Nirvana, the statue of Ruirukuyaen in Borneo, the double statue of Zhongtianzhu and Gandhara. ④ Buddhist story painting. The Sui Dynasty gradually disappeared, and reappeared in the late Tang Dynasty, and there were acts of kindness such as the prince entering the sea. Some caves are painted with more than 20 kinds of stories. ⑤ portrait of the provider. The figures and costumes are carefully depicted, and the images are gradually increasing. In the late Tang Dynasty, there was an equidistant statue. And enter that two walls of the entrance tunnel from the low parts of the four walls. The map of Zhang Yichao, my ambassador to Hexi, and the wife of the Song family in Hanoi County is magnificent and rigorous, and it is an important historical picture. Its scale is extremely grand, showing the magnificent picture of heaven. On the murals with banners and scrolls, ceremonial figures, music, dances, attendants and other figures were painted in sections, forming a vast procession, which created the first time that the Mogao Grottoes were painted as personal praise murals. On the basis of combining the essence of foreign art, inheriting and developing the traditional techniques of the previous generation, artists have created China Buddhist art with national characteristics.

The caves of the Five Dynasties inherited the legacy of the late Tang Dynasty. Most of the cave dwellings in the Song Dynasty followed the old style of the Five Dynasties in terms of shape, content and techniques, with a few exquisite works. There were basically no new caves in Xixia period, only the caves of the previous generation were rebuilt. Cave dwellings in the Yuan Dynasty presented a new style from content to form, and some exquisite masterpieces appeared. In the murals of this period, although there are few new themes, they have characteristics in composition and coloring. The composition is determined to be simplified, and the color is mostly based on a large area of green, and the color of the whole picture is cold. The technique of dipping powder and piling up gold is commonly used in murals, which was rare in the previous generation.

Some social life scenes depicted in Dunhuang murals at that time reflected the contents of production activities and social activities such as hunting, farming, textile, transportation, fighting, music and dance in ancient China. All kinds of figures in murals retain a lot of information about the costumes of people of all ethnic groups in the past. There are a large number of pavilions, pavilions, towers, palaces, cities, bridges and five existing wooden eaves in the murals, which are the image patterns and precious materials for studying ancient buildings in China. Sculpture and painting in China have a history of thousands of years. Many famous painters' works recorded in art history have been lost, and a large number of murals and colored sculptures in Dunhuang art have provided rich physical materials for the study of China art history.

The Mogao Grottoes were once abandoned in the Ming Dynasty, and it didn't attract people's attention until the fifty-fourth year of Kangxi in the Qing Dynasty (AD 17 15). In the 26th year of Guangxu (A.D. 1900), the Taoist King discovered the Tibetan Sutra Cave, which contained more than 40,000 scriptures, documents and cultural relics. Since then, the Mogao Grottoes have become more noticeable. 1907 and 19 14 years, Stan in Britain took away more than 10,000 suicide notes and cultural relics twice. 1908, the Frenchman Pelliot selected the best documents from the Tibetan Sutra Cave and took away about 5,000 pieces. 19 10 Most of the looted scriptures in the Tibetan Scripture Cave were transported to Beijing and handed over to Shi Jing Library for collection. 19 1 1 year, Japanese Zuichuan Lihua and Yoshikawa Koichiro took about 600 scrolls from the Taoist king. 19 14 Russian oldenburg took another batch of scriptures from Dunhuang, surveyed the grottoes, and stole the murals of Cave 263. 1924, Warner of America uncovered and stole 26 murals of Mogao Grottoes with a special chemical glue. These thefts and damages have caused great losses to Dunhuang cultural relics.

● Cultural heritage value:

Dunhuang grottoes art is a three-dimensional art integrating architecture, sculpture and painting. On the basis of inheriting the fine traditions of the Han nationality in the Central Plains and the brotherly nationalities in the Western Regions, ancient artists absorbed and integrated foreign expressions, and developed into Buddhist works of art with local characteristics in Dunhuang, China, which provided valuable materials for the study of ancient China's politics, economy, culture, religion, ethnic relations and friendly exchanges between China and foreign countries, and was a cultural treasure and spiritual wealth of mankind.

There are 492 paintings and colored sculptures in more than 500 caves in architectural art, including Zen caves, palace caves, pagoda caves, dome caves, "shadow caves" and some pagodas. The largest grottoes are more than 40 meters high and 30 meters wide, and the smallest grottoes are less than one foot high.

The Central Tower is a foreign grotto form preserved in the early days, which reflects that ancient artists assimilated foreign art while accepting it, making it a national form in China. Many of them are masterpieces of existing ancient buildings.

Colored Sculpture Art Colored Sculpture is the main body of Dunhuang art, including Buddha statue, Bodhisattva statue, disciple statue, heavenly king, King Kong, Lux, God and so on. Color plastic forms are rich and varied, including round plastic, floating plastic, shadow plastic and good plastic. The maximum height is 34.5 meters, and the minimum is only 2 cm (Shan Ye clay sculpture and wood carving), which is rich in themes and exquisite in craftsmanship, and can be called the Buddhist colored sculpture museum.

The portrait sculpture in Cave 17 in the Tang Dynasty is abhorrent to the unification of Hexi Capital, and the statue is painted with staff near the waiter, which integrates the statue with the mural. It is one of the earliest realistic portraits of eminent monks in China and has high historical and artistic value.

Mural art The largest and richest part of Dunhuang Grottoes art is mural, which not only reflects the religious theme, but also reflects some scenes of production and labor and social life at that time, providing valuable information for the study of ancient China society from the 4th century to14th century. The murals in Mogao Grottoes also have high artistic value, with the Tang Dynasty as the highest level. Scholars call Dunhuang murals "the library on the wall".

The grotto murals are rich and colorful, and all kinds of Buddhist stories, landscapes, pavilions and other architectural paintings, landscape paintings, flower patterns, flying Buddha statues and various scenes made by working people at that time are artistic representations of folk customs and historical changes from the Sixteen Kingdoms to the Qing Dynasty 1500 years.

In a large number of mural art, it can also be found that ancient artists absorbed the advantages of ancient art in Iran, India, Greece and other countries on the basis of nationalization, which is a symbol of the developed civilization of the Chinese nation.

Murals in different dynasties showed different painting styles, which reflected the political, economic and cultural conditions of China's feudal society. They were a glorious chapter in the ancient art history of China and provided precious graphic historical materials for studying the ancient history of China.

In the 26th year of Guangxu reign of Dunhuang Art (A.D. 1900), about 50,000 scriptures, documents, embroideries, portraits, etc. from Wei Jin to Northern Song Dynasty were found in the northern wall of Cave 16. Except the literature written in Chinese, about one sixth of the literature is written in Park Jung Su, Luwen, Huigu, Tubo, Sanskrit and Tibetan. The contents of documents include religious documents, literary works, contracts, account books, official documents and letters.

The discovery of Dunhuang art is famous at home and abroad, and it is of great research value to supplement and sort out the ancient documents in China. Now Dunhuang studies have become a subject of concern to scholars at home and abroad, and Dunhuang suicide notes have been praised as the four major discoveries of modern ancient documents by academic circles.