{"id":682,"date":"2008-07-06T11:12:20","date_gmt":"2008-07-06T18:12:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/2008\/07\/a-developmental-timeline-of-buddhist-art-in-china-eroding\/"},"modified":"2008-07-06T11:14:30","modified_gmt":"2008-07-06T18:14:30","slug":"a-developmental-timeline-of-buddhist-art-in-china-eroding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2008\/07\/06\/a-developmental-timeline-of-buddhist-art-in-china-eroding\/","title":{"rendered":"A developmental timeline of Buddhist art in China, Eroding"},"content":{"rendered":"

from the NY Times<\/a><\/span>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

Buddha\u2019s Caves<\/nyt_headline><\/h1>\n

<\/p>\n

Dunhuang Academy, courtesy of the Getty Conservation Institute<\/p>\n

A hunting scene, painted in a cave at Dunhuang.\u00a0More Photos><\/a><\/span>
\n<\/nyt_byline><\/span><\/p>\n

By\u00a0HOLLAND COTTER<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/nyt_text><\/p>\n

DUNHUANG, China<\/p>\n

SAND is implacable here in far western China. It blows and shifts and eats away at everything, erasing boundaries, scouring graves, leaving farmers in despair.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s one of many threats to the major tourist draw of this oasis city on the lip of the Gobi desert: the hundreds of rock-cut Buddhist grottoes that pepper a cliff face outside town. Known as\u00a0<\/a>Mogaoku \u2014 \u201cpeerless caves\u201d \u2014 and filled with paradisiacal frescos and hand-molded clay sculptures of savior-gods and saints, they are, in size and historical breadth, like nothing else in the Chinese Buddhist world.<\/p>\n

And Mogaoku is in trouble. Thrown open to visitors in recent decades, the site has been swamped by tourists in the past few years. The caves now suffer from high levels of carbon dioxide and humidity, which are severely undermining conservation efforts.<\/p>\n

The question of access versus preservation is a poignant one and is by no means confined to Mogaoku. It applies to many fragile monuments. What are we willing to give up to keep what we have? If you\u2019re a Buddhist \u2014 I am not \u2014 you know that the material world is a phantom or a dream, \u201ca flash of lightning in a summer cloud, a flickering lamp,\u201d as the Buddha puts it in the Diamond Sutra.<\/p>\n

<\/a> Of the 800 or so caves created here from the 5th to 14th centuries, nearly half had some form of decoration. What survives adds up to a developmental timeline of Buddhist art in China, an encyclopedic archive of styles and ideas, of dashes forward and retreats to the past.<\/p>\n

But of course much of it has not survived….\u00a0Nature went to work. Sand from the dunes swept into the grottoes. Rock facades gave way, leaving interiors exposed. When people finally reappeared, the damage only increased. In the late 19th century a wandering Taoist priest named Wang Yuanlu settled down and started a ruinous program of \u201cconservation,\u201d discovering the bricked-up library cave with its precious scrolls in the process. He didn\u2019t know it, but he had made of one of the most important archaeological finds of modern times.<\/p>\n

[ continue reading in the New York Times<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from the NY Times Buddha\u2019s Caves Dunhuang Academy, courtesy of the Getty Conservation Institute A hunting scene, painted in a cave at Dunhuang.\u00a0More Photos> By\u00a0HOLLAND COTTER DUNHUANG, China SAND is implacable here in far western China. It blows and shifts and eats away at everything, erasing boundaries, scouring graves, leaving farmers in despair. It\u2019s one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-art"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=682"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}