Wall Paintings Of The Early Dunhuang Caves And Aesthetic Value

Standing firmly on the vast desert for over a thousand years, Dunhuang grotto art is the synthetical arts that include architectural relics, painted statues and wall paintings. Buddhism is the main content in the Dunhuang caves, It spans ten dynasties:including the sixteen States, the Northern Wei, the Western Wei, the Northern Zhou, the Sui, the Tang, the Song, the Yuan, the Ming and the Qing. The content is broad and profound. So this paper attempts to select the wall paintings of the early Dunhuang Grotto(16 countries to Northern Zhou) art as the object to discuss the main content, the style of different dynasties, the artistic characteristics and the Buddism aesthetic value which inherent in the wall paintings of the early Dunhuang caves.In the disscusion of the wall paintings of the early Dunhuang caves, two different angles were taken by this paper. Horizontal—the different contents of the early wall paintings; Longitudinal—characteristics of different periods of times. Analyse from the horizontal view, it can be devided into five categories: foxianghua, gushihua, shenguaihua, gongyangrenhua and zhuangshihua (besides this, there are shenghuohua and dongwuhua. It was not created until the Sui and the Tang dynasty for the jingbianhua and shijihua).Look from the longitudinal perspect, as the social situation, economic situation and political change andthe other, at different times during the introduction of Buddhism in Dunhuang, the early paintings show different characteristics of the different times.The aesthetic value of wall paintings of the early Dunhuang caves is the focus of this paper, mainly from two major aspects to grasp, including the formal beauty in outside of the wall paintings and the intrinsic beauty in inside of the wall paintings. The formal beauty of early wall paintings is divided into four aspects: First, the beauty of line; Second, the beauty of color;Third, the beauty of design; Fourth, the beauty of imagination and exaggerations. In the discussion of the intrinsic beauty of the wall paintings, The paper mainly talks about threee fields:First, the beauty of peace and the art; Second, the beauty of flying; Third, the beauty of lifelikeThe drawing of Dunhuang wall paintings, mainly rely on its Buddhism thought. In this article, the fourth part try to describe the spread of Buddhism in China, the struggle and integration process of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism.The paper explains the early wall paintings of Dunhuang that contain the Buddhism aesthetic value, mainly include four aspects:the beauty of the Buddhism view of life, the beauty of the Buddhism view of cosmology, the beauty of harmony, the beauty of Buddhism Wisdom and Nirvana.Study its Buddhism aesthetic value hiding in the early wall paintings and the Buddhism aesthetic value affects on Chinese Literature and Art.