Visualizing Dunhuang: Seeing, Studying, and Conserving Dunhuang, ed. by Dora C.Y. Ching (Princeton: P.Y. and Kinmay W. Tang Center for East Asian Art, Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University, in association with Princeton University Press, 2020), 149-89., 2020
Located at China's western frontier, at a crossroads along the Silk Road between the civilization... more Located at China's western frontier, at a crossroads along the Silk Road between the civilizations of East and Central Asia, Dunhuang (in present-day Gansu province) was a gateway not only for commercial goods but also for the intellectual currency carried by its travelers: new technologies, ideas, art, architecture, and religions. At the eastern edge of the Taklamakan Desert, the Mogao Caves at Dunhuang were carved over a millennium starting in the fourth century and continuing until the fourteenth century, when the Silk Road was largely abandoned. They comprise several hundred grottoes, ranging in size from small niches to multistory chambers, and many were filled with brightly colored sculpture and murals, primarily Buddhist in theme but also encompassing other religious and folk traditions. The remoteness of the location in later periods helped preserve not only the caves but also the astonishing trove of artwork and documents found in them. In order to fully comprehend the caves, it is essential to visit them in person and experience their physical scale and spatial configuration in relation to their environs. How we come to study and know Dunhuang, however, is not always informed by the various original materials found at the caves, including architecture, paintings, sculpture, and manuscripts. Instead, knowledge is often filtered and conveyed secondhand via photography, artist renderings, travelogues, mythic accounts, print publications, digital reproductions, and physical or virtual reconstructions, all of which can influence how we come to see and understand the sacred site. Each method of information conveyance serves as a sort of archival model or filtering lens that reveals or emphasizes particular aspects of meaning-patterns, trends, and forms-while at the same time hiding or reducing others.' For example, the Lo Archive photographs
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Papers by Cary Liu
The authors offer a thorough analysis of surviving physical and visual sources, invoking fresh perspectives from new disciplines. Essays address the ideals, practices, and problems of the "Wu Family Shrines" and Han China; Han funerary art and architecture in Shandong and other regions; architectural functions and carved meanings; Qing Dynasty Reception of the Wu Family Shrines; and more.
Essay contributors:
Cary Y. Liu, Michael Loewe, Lydia Thompson, Zheng Yan, Susan N. Erickson, Klaas Ruitenbeek, Jiang Yingju, Miranda Brown, Michael Nylan, Hsing I-tien, Eileen Hsiang-ling Hsu, Lillian Lan-ying Tseng, and Qianshen Bai.