Academic literature on the topic 'Buddhist mural painting and decoration'

The manufacturing technique was studied through the structure and material characteristics of the Buddhist Monk Bodhidharma mural painting in Geungnakjeon Hall, Daewonsa Temple. The mural is painted connected to the earthen wall and the Joongkit. The earthen wall consists of an first layer, a middle layer, a finishing layer, and a painting layer. It was come to light that the first layer had a high content of loess below silt, and the finishing layer had a high content of fine sand. The painting layer was colored after preparing a ground layer using a soil mineral pigment. It was come to light that he Buddhist Monk Bodhidharma mural painting was created with the same technique as the Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva mural painting in Geungnakjeon Hall. The murals inside Geungnakjeon Hall belong to a category similar to the Joseon Dynasty’s buddhist mural painting (made of earthen) manufacturing style, but characteristic factors were found in the high fine sand content of the finishing layer, the condition of plastering according to the surface finishing technology, and the painting technique of the Joongkit. It is expected that this information can be used as an important indicator for monitoring the conservation status of murals inside the Geungnakjeon Hall of Daewonsa Temple in the future.

The thin flesh sculpture of the Flying Sky mural in the Seven Buddha Pavilion of the fourth cave of Maijishan was created in the Northern Zhou Dynasty, which is the product of the fusion of Buddhist art and traditional Chinese culture. Among them, the mural uses the method of combining painting and sculpture, which is rare and novel, which not only fully reflects the intelligence and extraordinary creativity of ancient artists in China, but also has high artistic value for Buddhist sculpture art in China. Taking "thin meat sculpture" as the research object, this paper analyzes and elaborates on the historical development of Northern Zhou statues, the overview of thin meat sculpture murals, their characteristics and artistic achievements, explores the relationship between the artistic techniques of painting and sculpture and Chinese sculpture and murals, and studies the significance of thin meat sculpture in the development of Chinese Buddhist sculpture and mural art.

The manufacturing technique was studied through the structure and material characteristics of the walls and the painting layers of the Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva mural of Geungnakjeon Hall, Daewonsa Temple. The mural is painted and connected to the earthen wall and the Junggit, and the wall is composed of wooden laths as a frame, the first and middle layers, the finishing layer, and the painting layer. The first layer, middle layer, and finishing layer constituting the wall were made by mixing weathered soil and sand. It was confirmed that the first layer had a high content of loess below silt, and the finishing layer had a high content of fine-sand and very fine sand. For the painting layer, a ground layer was prepared using soil-based mineral pigments, and lead white, white clay, atacamite, minium, and cinnabar (or vermilion) pigments were used on top of it. The Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva mural was confirmed to belong to a category similar to the soil-made buddhist mural paintings of Joseon Dynasty. However, it shows characteristics such as a high content of fine sand in the finishing layer and overlapping over other colors. Such material and structural characteristics can constitute important information for future mural conservation status diagnoses and conservation treatment plans.

The article is devoted to an analysis of the figurative concepts of the Dunhuang cave wall paintings. It was determined that, despite the fact that the Dunhuang wall painting is an example of Buddhist art, it represents a syncretism of Buddhism and local beliefs—Taoism and Confucianism—which manifested itself in the depiction of characters from Buddhism and Taoism in one plot. Dunhuang cave murals are not uniform in style and execution techniques. Its genesis testifies that in the early stages it was a literal borrowing of the ancient Indian traditions of Buddhist mural painting; instead, there was a gradual layering of local painting techniques from the Central Plains of China. This led to the diversification of cave wall paintings of later periods and eventually led to the formation of a specific stylistic direction of "Chinese secular Buddhism," in which realistic painting plays an important role—the portrait genre of benefactors and the landscape genre of "mountains and waters."

This study identifies the structure and material characteristics of the mural paintings in Daeungjeon at Ssanggyesa temple in Jindo by conducting scientific research and analysis including microscope examination, SEM-EDS, XRD, particle size analysis, and others. According to the analyses, the murals were considered to be of a typical soil mural style for Korean Buddhist murals, given that the walls were made of sand and soil and the murals had layers consisting of wall layers and a finishing layer. However, some finishing layer used calcite, while some ground layer used zinc white beneath the thick paint. In addition, there were similar features to those found on the surfaces of oil paintings such as cracks along with the paint layer, high gloss on surfaces, and thick brush strokes in many areas. It was found that the walls on which the murals were painted were made of soil but that the paint layer was created based on the oil painting technique using drying oil. It determined that the murals were painted in a unique painting style that is rarely found in other typical Buddhist murals in Korea.

ABSTRACTThai mural paintings have played a significant role in Thai society since The Sukhothai Kingdom period (1238-1438 AD) until the present. Wattana Boonjub (2009) points out that Mural painting was used for teaching the Thai people in the past. Throughout history, temples have become a crucial part of Thai' lives; for example, Wat Phumin in Nan Province. Wat Phumin has exceptional architecture, beautiful visual presentations of Buddhist storytelling on the walls which depict scenes from the Buddhist Jataka tales, and scenes of everyday life in Nan. These unique characteristics have attracted many visitors to this temple over the years. Also, when those interested visit Wat Phumin, they experience this temple as a Museum. Loïc Tallon et al. (2008) suggests that the museum experience provides an appropriate situation for learning history in an unconventional setting. As a result, previous research titled “Visual Research Practices on Thai Lanna Mural Painting: A Case Study of Wat Phumin, Nan Province” was presented at The 4th International Conference for Asia Pacific Arts Studies (ICAPAS 2016). The results indicated that the information concerning the Lanna mural paintings inside the temples was overwhelming. However, no directions are facilitating Thai and foreign visitors in viewing and understanding at the first episode of storytelling on Lanna mural paintings inside Wat Phumin. Therefore, this research is the result of finding a solution to facilitating visitors in viewing Buddhist Jataka tales through digital arts and digital technology (such as responsive web design, QR codes, etc.) with practice-based design research. ABSTRAK Lukisan mural Thailand telah memainkan peran penting dalam masyarakat Thailand sejak periode Kerajaan Sukhothai (1238-1438 M) hingga saat ini. Wattana Boonjub (2009) menunjukkan bahwa lukisan Mural digunakan untuk mengajar orang-orang Thailand di masa lalu. Sepanjang sejarah, kuil telah menjadi bagian penting dari kehidupan Thailand; misalnya, Wat Phumin di Provinsi Nan. Wat Phumin memiliki arsitektur yang luar biasa, presentasi visual yang indah dari cerita Buddha di dinding yang menggambarkan adegan dari kisah Buddha Jataka, dan adegan kehidupan sehari-hari di Nan. Karakteristik unik ini telah menarik banyak pengunjung ke kuil ini selama bertahun-tahun. Juga, ketika mereka yang tertarik mengunjungi Wat Phumin, mereka merasakan candi ini sebagai Museum. Loïc Tallon et al. (2008) menunjukkan bahwa pengalaman museum memberikan situasi yang tepat untuk belajar sejarah dalam lingkungan yang tidak konvensional. Sebagai hasilnya, penelitian sebelumnya yang berjudul “Praktik Penelitian Visual pada Lukisan Mural Lanna Thailand: Studi Kasus Wat Phumin, Provinsi Nan” dipresentasikan pada Konferensi Internasional ke-4 untuk Studi Seni Asia Pasifik (ICAPAS 2016). Hasilnya menunjukkan bahwa informasi mengenai lukisan mural Lanna di dalam kuil sangat banyak. Namun, tidak ada arahan yang memfasilitasi pengunjung Thailand dan wisatawan asing dalam melihat dan memahami episode pertama pada cerita tentang lukisan mural Lanna di dalam Wat Phumin. Oleh karena itu, penelitian ini adalah hasil dari menemukan solusi untuk memfasilitasi pengunjung dalam melihat cerita Buddha Jataka melalui seni digital dan teknologi digital (seperti desain web responsif, kode QR, dll.) dengan penelitian desain berbasis praktik.

Investigation of conservation status, optical survey, infrared thermography, and ultrasonic examination were performed on Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva mural and Buddhist Monk Bodhidharma mural to determine the conservation status and physical properties. As a result of investigation of conservation status, the types of damage are largely divided into the wall and finishing layer damage, painting layer degradation, damage due to restoration materials, stains and contamination, and biological damage. As a result of the optical survey, drawing, stains, and repainted site were confirmed. Result of the infrared thermography, the delamination of the finishing layer was confirmed, and some locations and shapes of the wooden lath inside the wall were identified. The result of the 3D scanning, the deviation, and the separation of the wall was confirmed. As a result of ultrasonic examination, it was confirmed that the physical properties of the mural were identified and the ultrasonic speed was relatively low due to physical damage such as delamination and exfoliation of the finishing layer and cracking. Ultrasonic speed values were also high in some wall cracks or delamination, and it was confirmed by the infrared thermography results that the wooden lath inside the wall was located in those parts. It was possible to understand that the wooden lath inside the walls affects the ultrasonic speed during the ultrasonic examination. Therefore, management through periodic inspection of the relevant elements is necessary, and a countermeasure for damage that may occur in the future should be prepared along with intensive monitoring of the major damage identified in this diagnosis result.

The Elephant and the Journey is about what and how people see in the land and how this is expressed through art forms. The dissertation consists of three main parts. The first in the introduction explains the use of the narrative figuration form in Thai temple mural painting in my practice, and how I used it to apply to the contemporary context in Australia. The second concerns three main groups of work including Australian landscape paintings in the nineteenth century, aboriginal art works and Thai mural painting, which apply to the topic of landscape. The second part in Chapters I and II, examine how significant the perspective view in the landscape was for artists during the colonial period in Australia. At the same time I consult the practice in Aboriginal art which also concerns land, and how people communicate through the subject and how both practices apply to Thai art, with which I am dealing. Chapter III looks at works of individual artists in contemporary Australia including Tim Johnson, Judy Watson, Kathleen Petyarre Emily Kngwerreye, and then finishes with my studio work during 2004-2005. The third part, the conclusion refers to the notions of cultural geography as suggested by Mike Crang, Edward Relph and Christopher Tilley, which analyse how people relate to a location through their own experience. I describe how I used a Thai narrative verse written by my father to communicate my work to the Australian society in which I now live.

Master of Visual Arts
The Elephant and the Journey is about what and how people see in the land and how this is expressed through art forms. The dissertation consists of three main parts. The first in the introduction explains the use of the narrative figuration form in Thai temple mural painting in my practice, and how I used it to apply to the contemporary context in Australia. The second concerns three main groups of work including Australian landscape paintings in the nineteenth century, aboriginal art works and Thai mural painting, which apply to the topic of landscape. The second part in Chapters I and II, examine how significant the perspective view in the landscape was for artists during the colonial period in Australia. At the same time I consult the practice in Aboriginal art which also concerns land, and how people communicate through the subject and how both practices apply to Thai art, with which I am dealing. Chapter III looks at works of individual artists in contemporary Australia including Tim Johnson, Judy Watson, Kathleen Petyarre Emily Kngwerreye, and then finishes with my studio work during 2004-2005. The third part, the conclusion refers to the notions of cultural geography as suggested by Mike Crang, Edward Relph and Christopher Tilley, which analyse how people relate to a location through their own experience. I describe how I used a Thai narrative verse written by my father to communicate my work to the Australian society in which I now live.

This thesis examines the visual images of Vimalakirti, an ancient Indian lay Buddhist, painted on the walls of the Buddhist cave complex at Dunhuang, Gansu province, between 581 and 1036. The sixty-nine Vimalakirti, paintings preserved at Dunhuang are a valuable source for the exploration of historical, religious, and artistic dimensions of wall paintings and sutras. These visual images, together with other textual sources such as sutras, commentaries, and inscriptions, suggest a variety of interesting questions: Why was this theme repeatedly represented? Do the images all have the same prototype? Is there a spiritual function contained in the layout of the caves and composition of the wall paintings? Did the meaning of these images change according to historical context? Did the patrons have a political scheme in mind when commissioning these devotional artworks? While it is difficult to provide definitive answers to all these questions, this thesis will attempt to clarify them and offer preliminary answers on the basis of available visual and textual sources.
The introduction of this thesis includes an overview of basic concepts related to wall paintings, a short history of the transmission of the Vimalakirti,-nirdesa Sutra, and a review of past scholarship on Vimalakirti, paintings and related subjects. The body of the thesis is divided into three main chapters. The first chapter describes the important visual representations of Vimalakirti, before the Sui dynasty. The second chapter of the thesis will provide an introduction to representations of Vimalakirti, at Dunhuang from the late sixth to the early eleventh centuries. The third chapter examines the social functions and symbolic meanings of the Vimalakirti, paintings at Dunhuang.

Wall paintings survive in many houses dating from the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries yet, apart from recording the phenomenon, there has been very little written about them. This research explores how common wall paintings were, what sort of houses had them, when they were painted and most importantly, what was their significance in terms of what they can reveal about the lives of the people who chose to decorate their homes in this manner. Research has concentrated on the Welsh Marches although examples from elsewhere have been referred to. The research hypotheses are:

• 1. Wall paintings were much more widespread than existing records suggest and were probably universal where there was money to spend on embellishing a house.
• 2. Following on from this, wall paintings would have been found in houses throughout the social scale, apart from the humblest dwellings.
• 3. The paintings were executed by itinerant painters who used pattern books as a source of design.
• 4. This form of decoration was most commonly found in the period 1550-1625, with few paintings prior to this date and a rapid decline in numbers after this period.
• 5. In some cases there is a connection between the content of the painting and the function of the room.

The fifth hypothesis was widened during the course of the research to examine the significance of wall paintings generally. In trying to find out what wall paintings signified to the owners of houses, this research has attempted to look at all the facets of their life and environment which may have a bearing on this. This includes an understanding of the buildings themselves, exploring who the people were who might have lived in them and placing these people in their social and cultural contexts. Always the emphasis has been on the small and local rather than on the bigger picture. as this is what touched people at the vernacular level most closely. In order to do this, the research has adopted a wide-ranging and multidisciplinary approach which cuts across traditional fields of knowledge. Therefore, the study combines library and documentary-based evidence with extensive fieldwork, in order to investigate diverse kinds of evidence. This includes research on the wall paintings themselves, the buildings in which they were found and the social, religious and cultural circumstances in which they were created. The research synthesises a wide range of methods for gathering and interpreting data: study and analysis of contemporary literature and documents, the study of a wide range of published and unpublished research, and a substantial fieldwork survey. First the context in which wall paintings were created is explored, in terms of physical environment, cultural and social characteristics of the period, and the church. Then the key findings arising from the fieldwork are discussed, looking at the sorts of houses that have wall paintings, the people who lived in them, and in detail at the characteristics of the paintings found. 233 wall paintings were recorded in 188 buildings. The hypotheses about universality and status are explored by investigating the vernacular qualities of wall painting in terms of materials and techniques required, who was doing the paintings, and their cost. Through the identification of a range of iconography, and the classification of paintings, possible sources for wall painting designs are explored. Finally the key issue of the significance of painted decoration at the vernacular level is discussed drawing on the various strands of the research in order to understand why particular forms of decoration might have been chosen, and what social and cultural meanings they may have had. The findings of the research indicate that wall paintings were very widespread. They were found throughout the area of study in houses of all but the very poor. Whilst the majority of paintings surveyed were in houses of the gentry or better-off members of society it is argued that this reflects the differential rate of survival of vernacular buildings. A technical analysis of wall paintings and an assessment of their total cost reveals the vernacular qualities of the wall paintings. This also suggests that wall paintings were only ever intended as short term decoration as some of the pigments used were very fugitive. Further evidence for this has been found in the practice of overpainting one scheme with another within a short period, which was revealed through microscopic analysis of paint samples. The contemporary aesthetic included striking yet crude designs which were capable of being executed by local craftsmen. These findings indicate that wall paintings could have been extensive lower down the social scale. Whilst painted decoration throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was examined, it is submitted that the majority of paintings were executed during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries - a period of considerable change during the transition from a medieval to an early modern society. The paintings dating from this period have a character quite distinct from the limited number found earlier and later than this period. The significance of wall paintings is closely bound up with issues of status. This period of transition was characterised by outward expressions of status by means of display in a variety of forms. It is argued in this research that wall paintings were an element of such display. Iconography included decorative as well as figure subjects and it is this that holds the key to the significance of the paintings. The higher status houses had the more complex figurative and ornamental schemes whilst, for the most part, the humbler houses had simpler ornamental schemes. Also the simpler, decorative schemes seem to have been more common in halls whilst more sophisticated paintings appear to have been in the more private rooms of the house. The iconography and the context of the wall paintings can provide an important insight into some of the more intangible and elusive aspects of vernacular life. Social and cultural values of the period are particularly difficult to access as surviving indicators of these are limited. Literary sources have limited value in a society which expressed itself in a predominantly non-literate fashion. Vernacular buildings can provide a major source of information and this research argues that wall paintings were a key element in vernacular buildings at a specific time during the transition from a medieval to an early modern society and are, therefore, a crucial record of changing social and cultural values.

An outline of the history of mural and icon-painting in Novgorod demonstrates that the pictorial references in icons to church constructions, interiors, and their mural decorations had a long-standing tradition in Novgorod. Over time, these references became more and more explicit, so that they identified the Christian Church recognizably and exclusively with Byzantine Orthodoxy. The first half of the chapter analyses church decoration and the second icon-painting of Novgorod, thus seeking to explore the direct iconographic roots of the Wisdom icon. The chapter discusses the meaning of the prepared throne (Hetoimasia) in the Novgorod Sophia image, its light symbolism, and the development of anti-Latin ecclesiological iconographies in Novgorod.