Visualizing Dunhuang

Situated at an important juncture within the network of silk routes from China through central Asia, the oasis city of Dunhuang was an ancient site of Buddhist religious activity. Southeast of the city, the Mogao Caves, also known as the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas, are an astonishing group of hundreds of caves, carved in the cliffs between the fourth and fourteenth centuries, and containing sculptures and paintings. Further east sit the Yulin Caves, another critical and richly decorated site. Featuring some of the finest examples of Buddhist imagery to be found anywhere in the world, these caves have enticed explorers, archaeologists, artists, scholars, and photographers since the early twentieth century.0'Visualizing Dunhuang: The Lo Archive Photographs of the Mogao and Yulin Caves' presents for the first time in print the comprehensive photographic archive-created in the 1940s by James C. M. Lo (1902-1987) and his wife, Lucy L. Lo (b. 1920)-of the remarkable Buddhist caves at Dunhuang. In this extraordinary nine-volume set, more than 2,500 black-and-white photographs provide an indispensable historical record. Invaluable for their documentary value and artistic quality, and thorough in their coverage and clarity, the images represent a rare perspective on significant monuments, many now irretrievably changed.0Exquisitely produced, this landmark publication is a definitive reference for scholars, collectors, and libraries in art history and Asian studies.0Published in association with the Tang Center for East Asian Art, Princeton University.00"Vol. 9: Essays" is also available separately: ISBN 9780691208169.

"Located at the crossroads of the northern and southern routes of the ancient Silk Road on the edge of the Taklamakan desert in western China, Dunhuang is one of the richest Buddhist sites in China with nearly 500 cave temples constructed between the fourth and the fourteenth century. The sculptures, murals, portable paintings, and manuscripts found in the caves represent every aspect of Buddhism, both doctrinally and artistically. From its earliest construction to the present, Dunhuang has been visualized in many ways by the architects, builders, and artists who made the caves to twentieth-century explorers and photographers, conservators, and contemporary artists. This book explores ways in which Dunhuang has been visualized from its creation to contemporary times. Essays by leading scholars from the U.S., Europe, and China cover a wide range of topics, from the architecture of cave temples to painting and sculptural programs, Buddhist ritual practices, expeditionary photography, conservation, and the contributions of Dunhuang to art history"--

This book examines the Maṇḍala of Eight Great Bodhisattvas during the Tibetan (786–848) and post-Tibetan Guiyijun (848–1036) periods at Dunhuang, focusing on the intersections between political authority, religious praxis, and visual language.

The cave-temple complex popularly known as the Dunhuang caves is the world’s largest extant repository of Tang Buddhist art. Among the best preserved of the Dunhuang caves is the Zhai Family Cave, built in 642. It is this remarkable cave-temple that forms the focus of Ning Qiang’s cross-disciplinary exploration of the interrelationship of art, religion, and politics during the Tang. The author combines, in his careful examination of the paintings and sculptures found there, the historical study of pictures with the pictorial study of history. By employing this two-fold approach, he is able to refer to textual evidence in interpreting the formal features of the cave temple paintings and to employ visual details to fill in the historical gaps inevitably left by text-oriented scholars. The result is a comprehensive analysis of the visual culture of the period and a vivid description of social life in medieval China. The original Zhai Family Cave pictures were painted over in the tenth century and remained hidden until the early 1940s. Once exposed, the early artwork appeared fresh and colorful in comparison with other Tang paintings at Dunhuang. The relatively fine condition of the Zhai Family Cave is crucial to our understanding of the original pictorial program found there and offers a unique opportunity to investigate the visual details of the original paintings and sculptures in the cave. At the same time, the remaining traces of reconstruction and redecoration provide a new perspective on how, for over three centuries, a wealthy Chinese clan used its familial cave as a political showcase.

The Mogao Grottoes, a World Heritage Site in northwestern China, are located along the ancient caravan routes—collectively known as the Silk Road—that once linked China with the West. Founded by a Buddhist monk in the late fourth century, Mogao flourished over the following millennium, as monks, local rulers, and travelers commissioned hundreds of cave temples cut into a mile-long rock cliff and adorned them with vibrant murals. More than 490 decorated grottoes remain, containing thousands of sculptures and some 45,000 square meters of wall paintings, making Mogao one of the world’s most significant sites of Buddhist art. In 1997 the Getty Conservation Institute, which had been working with the Dunhuang Academy since 1989, began a case study using the Late–Tang dynasty Cave 85 to develop a methodology that would stabilize the deteriorating wall paintings. This abundantly illustrated volume is the definitive report on the project, which was completed in 2010.

This edited volume considers the many ways in which landscape (seen and unseen) is fundamental to placemaking, colonial settlement, and identity formation. Collectively, the book’s authors map a constellation of interlocking photographic histories and survey practices, decentering Europe as the origin of camera-based surveillance. The volume charts a conversation across continents - connecting Europe, Africa, the Arab World, Asia, and the Americas. It does not segregate places, histories, and traditions but rather puts them in dialogue with one another, establishing solidarity across ever-shifting national, linguistic, racial, religious, and ethnic. Refusing the neat organization of survey photographs into national or imperial narratives, these essays celebrate the messy, cross-cultural reverberations of landscape over the past 170 years. Considering the visual, social, and historical networks in which these images circulate, this anthology connects the many entangled and political histories of photography in order to reframe survey practices and the multidimensionality of landscape as an international phenomenon. This book will be of interest to scholars in art history, history of photography, and landscape history.

Over the last two decades, the study of graffiti has emerged as a bustling field, invigorated by increased appreciation for their historical, linguistic, sociological, and anthropological value and propelled by ambitious documentation projects. The growing understanding of graffiti as a perennial, universal phenomenon is spurring holistic consideration of this mode of graphic expression across time and space. Graffiti Scratched, Scrawled, Sprayed: Towards a Cross-Cultural Understanding complements recent efforts to showcase the diversity in creation, reception, and curation of graffiti around the globe, throughout history and up to the present day. reflecting on methodology, concepts, and terminology as well as spatial, social, and historical contexts of graffiti, the book's fourteen chapters cover ancient Egypt, Rome, Northern Arabia, Persia, India, and the Maya; medieval Eastern Mediterranean, Turfan, and Dunhuang; and contemporary Tanzania, Brazil, China, and Germany. As a whole, the collection provides a comprehensive toolkit for newcomers to the field of graffiti studies and appeals to specialists interested in viewing these materials in a cross-cultural perspective.

A beautifully illustrated, interdisciplinary look at the ceremonies and protocols of the dynastic court of Joseon Korea Recording State Rites in Words and Images provides an engaging and in-depth exploration of the large corpus of court statutes compiled during the Joseon dynasty of Korea. The term uigwe, commonly translated as “royal protocols,” is the name given to the collection of nearly four thousand books that were commissioned and written to document the customs, rituals, rules, protocols, and ceremonial practices of the Joseon dynasty. In this generously illustrated book, Yi Song-mi introduces readers to the rich and varied documentary tradition embodied in the uigwe, sharing invaluable insights into time-honored court customs through text and images and analyzing changes in ritual practice over time. The first comprehensive study of its kind in English, Recording State Rites in Words and Images presents groundbreaking research that opens a window on Korean history and art and will serve as an inspiration to students, scholars, and anyone interested in topics such as dynastic customs, court artists, and bookmaking. Published in association with the P. Y. and Kinmay W. Tang Center for East Asian Art at Princeton University