With Singular Mind: Karma and the Aesthetics of Dunhuang Art

The exhibit at The Prince’s School of Traditional Art, “Sacred Art of the Silk Road: Dunhuang’s Buddhist Cave Temples”, presents a remarkable selection of artistic forms from the Mogao Caves: large mural paintings, illustrated narratives, drawings on paper, painted sculpture, all contextualized by a full-scale, spatial reproduction of a cave in toto. Such a striking range of artistic works raises a fundamental question: are there ideas or practices that unite such a diversity of media and materials? This talk provides an overview of the exhibit and its objects, and discusses how the core Buddhist concepts of donation and merit centered on karma were integral to shaping not only the types of objects on display but also their very aesthetics.

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