A Study Of The Color And Plastic Arts Of Murals In Bingling Temple And Maiji Mountain Grottoes

Refide the free and brushwork of landscape painting, flower and bird painting give the chinese traditional painting a special status in the word, but obviously they cannot present all that in Chinese traditional painting and its spirit of it. Breaking down the limitation of the reel of traditional Chinese painting, we will find that the Chinese traditional painting is really a concept with broad extension, inducing more and embodying pluralism. And the existing Buddhism grotto murals symbolize a very important direction of Chinese painting.Bingling Temple and Maiji Mountain Grottoes, the two grottoes with more murals besides Dunhuang, retain murals from west Qin Dynasty in the beginning of 5th to Ming Dynasty, which embody much spirit of Chinese staditional painting, In these murals, we can see not only the skilled painting, but also the rich colors, unique and powerful shapes, splendid pictures with quite different styles, great momentum and unlimited vigor. They possess within themselves a special color, shape and formation surpassing space and time, and religion. It's generally thought that there is no commotion between Chinese painting and the use of color. However, the use of color played a very important role in Chinese painting before Tang Dynasty, and it has achieved wonderful success. Judging from the grotto murals in Wei and Jin Dynasty, we know that at the time the use of color had been adopted as a primary expressing method, and an emphasis was laid on the innate beauty of the color and the integration between colors. Painters at the time had already understood that the nature of color was not how many you use it but the selection of color and the reactions between them. In addition, the important role of ink in the use of color was fully exerted and emphasized. It was these above mentioned that formed the basic idea of color in Chinese traditional painting. The plastic arts of images and the constitution of pictures paid much attention to the inside structure of objects and the stylish beauty of pictures as a whole, e.g. rhyme, but not the true appearance of objects and integrity and order of the plot accounted in the pictures. Also, these excellent murals all embody a powerful strength and a feeling of dynamics, which make them vigorous.However, these excellent features disappeared after Tang Dynasty, and mural art declined ever since. In Bingling Temple, murals of Ming Dignity are nothing but lines, and pictures are rigid, without and vitality. Today, wen we study again the excellent murals from the point of view of a painter, it will certainly be an enlightenment to Chinese painting itself and the development of chinese oil painting.