Enquiry into the colours of the MoGao murals at DunHuang from the Sui Dynasty, the Tang Dynasty and the Five Dynasties period
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.23738/CCSJ.150108Keywords:
DunHuang murals, Colour appearance, Chinese culture, Wuxing, Ancient Chinese artAbstract
In 1961 the site of the MoGao cave temples was recognised as one of the State Priority Protected Sites by the State Council of the People’s Republic of China and was put under the protection of the national laws including the Law on the Protection of Cultural Relics. To a great extent, this was a result of the work of the DunHuang Academy, which was established in 1944 for research into and preservation of the site. In 1987 UNESCO added the MoGao Caves to its protected World Heritage Sites as one of intrinsic unmatched historic value to humanity. In the following year, the Getty Conservation Institute became involved in an international collaborative project aimed at furthering research into the site and expanding its conservation programme. The present paper enquires into the appearance of colours used in the representational system of the murals from periods of the Sui Dynasty (581-618 AD), the Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD) and the Five Dynasties (907-960 AD). The selected periods demarcate the golden era in the history of the MoGao temple complex. The historically grounded enquiry aims at gaining a deeper understanding of the DunHuang murals as emblematic of Chinese civilisation and increasing awareness of them amongst a non-Chinese speaking audience. The use of colour will be discussed in the context of the traditional ‘five colour system’.
References
??? ????????????????2015?? .
Dang, Y. (2009) ‘A study on popular buddhist beliefs in Dunhuang during the Late Tang Dynasty, the Five Dynasties and the early Song Dynasty’, Doctoral Thesis, Lanzhou: Lanzhou University.
Duan, W. (1994) Dunhuang Art: Through the Eyes of Duan Wenjie, New Delhi: Abhinav Publications.
Dunhuang Academy (2020) Available at: https://www.e-dunhuang.com/ (Accessed: 14 June 2021).
Fowler, M. (2005) Zen Buddhism: Beliefs and Practices, Sussex: Sussex Academic Press.
Guo, X. (2010) The enlightenment of dunhuang fresco color research in Sui-Tang dynasties to modern color design, Masters Thesis, Beijing: Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology.
Lei, Z., Tantcheva-Burdge, E., Cheung, V. (2021) ‘Investigation into the colours of the DunHuang from the Tang dynasty’, Proccedings of the 14th Congress of the International Colour Association, pp. 1059-1064.
??? ???????????????????1994?? .
????????“????”??????????? (???????) ?2011 ??
Lin, X. (2009) ‘The conflict and integration of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism in Sui and Tang Dynasties’, Doctoral Thesis, Xi'an, Shaanxi Normal University.
Maitra, K.M. [trans.] (1970) A Persian Embassy to China: Being an Extract from Zubdatu’t Tawarikh of Hafiz Abru, New York: Paragon Book Reprint Corp.
Maspero, H. (1981) Taoism and Chinese Religion, Boston: University of Massachusette Press.
Meng, J. (2008) ‘Study on colour of DunHuang murals of Tibet Period’, Masters Thesis, Lanzhou: Northwest Minzu University.
Song, F. (2013) A comparison of the art forms of Jataka stories in Kizil murals and Dunhuang murals, Masters Thesis, Xi’an: Shaanxi Normal University.
??? ????????????????????2003?? .
Wang, J. (2014) ‘Concave and convex shape system: preliminary study centered on the MoGao grottoes of Dunhuang frescoes is concave and convex drawing’, Doctoral Thesis, Xi'an: Xi'an Academy of Fine Arts.
Whitfield, R., Whitfield, S. and Agnew, N. (2015) Cave Temples of Mogao at Dunhuang: Art and History of the Silk Road, Los Angelos: The Getty Conservation Institute.
??? ????????????????2013?? .
Xu, X. (2018) ‘A preliminary study on the colors of the frescoes in the Mogao grottoes in Dunhuang during the Five Dynasties and Song Dynasties’, Proceedings of the 10th Asian Color Forum: Color, Innovation, Integration, Tongxiang (China).
Xu, Y. (2007) ‘Research significance on materials and techniques for the DunHuang murals’, Doctoral Thesis, Lanzhou: Lanzhou University.
??? ??????????????????????2000 ?? .
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2023 Cultura e Scienza del Colore - Color Culture and Science
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
The "Cultura e Scienza del Colore - Color Culture and Science" journal is registered at the Court of Milan at n.233 of 24.06.2014.
The journal is an open access journal, free for readers and authors and has joined ROAD, the Directory of Open Access scholarly Resources, since 2014. Articles published in the “Cultura e Scienza del Colore - Color Culture and Science" journal are open access articles, distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The copyright is retained by the author(s).
