The Artwork Of The Week this week is a Chinese print of Avalokiteshvara.
Avalokiteshvara, 10th century CE. Cave 17, Mogao Caves, Dunhuang, Gansu province, China. Color woodblock print, 40cm x 17cm (15.75in x 6.7in). Currently in the British Museum in London.
I’ve found that people tend to focus the most on “western art”, which is a truly lame euphemism for art from Europe and North America. Art has been made by every civilization, every group of people, and arguably every person since humans first came into existence. Of course, this opens up the discussion of “what can be considered art,” but we’ll tackle that on another post.
For now, we have to fill in some of the gaps in knowledge left by what I view as a failing of “western society” and learn what some terms mean. Avalokiteshvara is figure, and is a kind of bodhisattva who embodies the collective love and compassion of all Buddhas, and can be almost directly translated from Sanskrit as “lord who gazes down upon” in a benevolent way. The early Chinese adaptation of the name, Guanzizai, ended up altering the meaning slightly to “lord who gazes down upon sound” where “sound” means “the cries of those in need,” so the compassionate angle stayed the same as the language for the concept evolved. The modern Chinese name for him is Guanyin where the meaning of “the cries of those in need” was truly solidified. A bodhisattva is someone who is on their way to becoming a buddha, but has chosen not to actually become a buddha in favor of helping humanity instead.
Philology side, Avalokiteshvara was considered one of Buddhism’s bodhisattvas who had a genuine interest in helping people get to paradise, and portraying him gained popularity as Buddhism swept through Asia in the 10th century. There are many artistic interpretations of Avalokiteshvara just as there are many artistic interpretations of buddhas and bodhisattvas in general. Some are in metal, some in stone, some on silk scrolls, some on wood panels.
The example for this weeks AOTW is a print of Avalokiteshvara made through wood-block printing during the 10th century CE. It was unearthed from Cave 17 of the Mogao Caves just outside of Dunhuang city, which is part of the larger Jiuquan city in the Gansu Province (what we would consider a city within a county within a state, here in the US). Dunhuang is in the northwestern deserts of China and was an instrumental location along the Silk Road, so the heavy traffic the city experienced led to the creation of several cave complexes, the most famous of which are the Mogao Caves. These caves ended up being filled with buddhist art and manuscripts, making them one of the most important historical and religious sites in China, and I would argue one of the most important historical and religious sites in the world.
But. Back to the print. This print and the prints found with in in Cave 17 are some of the oldest woodblock prints in the world. This print in particular portrays Avalokiteshvara seated over a prayer and the text aligned vertically on the right of the figure is a cartouche identifying him. This layout with an image above a block of text went on to become a popular page layout style for Chinese books from the 10th century all the way to the 16th century.
There are several interesting things about this specific print: the woodblock print aspect and the presence of the cartouche. The use of woodblock printing demonstrates the advancement of technology reaching the point where art and writing becomes cheap to produce and distribute. This is why the Mogao Caves and the other cave systems in the Dunhuang area are called the “Thousand Buddha Caves.” The sheer volume of art and writing found within the caves establishes China as the creator of printing.
Furthermore, the cartouche draws interesting parallels to ancient Egyptian art, where cartouches label figures as well. Many people studying art history view cartouches as a uniquely Egyptian feature in art, but the presence of cartouches and cartouche-like features in 10th-century Chinese Buddhist art challenges how people view “stereotypical” aspects of art movements. How much of what people are taught is characteristic of a given civilization is actually unique to that civilization?
This Artwork Of The Week is endlessly interesting!
