Study On The Composition Of The Beijing Fahai Temple Fresco "Meeting Of The Buddhists"

Studying classic cases is one of the approaches to learning artistic creation.As one of the best temple frescoes of the Ming Dynasty,Beijing Fahai Temple Frescoes has been the objective of a great amount of fundamental research.As the frescoes named“Meeting of the Buddhists” in the Mahavira Hall have been kept relatively intact in a good space environment,they deserve to be a rare research object from the perspectives of learning fresco composition and studying creative methods.From the perspective of a painter,this paper studied the composition of the Fahai Temple Frescoes “Meeting of the Buddhists”.Starting with the study of the paintings,this paper made clear the perspective of composition research,delved into the basic information of the paintings,extracted sketches according to the two frescoes,recovers the position of the statues in front of the frescoes,described the formal features of the composition of the two frescoes,and tapped into the special formal arrangement of the two frescoes.On the other hand,this paper studied the frescoes by putting them in their spatiotemporal environment,explored the reason behind the special formal arrangement of the frescoes,tapped into the requirements possibly arising in composing frescoes and available solutions,deduced the composition procedures of the frescoes,thereby learning from the composition of the Fahai Temple Frescoes and gaining inspiration for creative practice.During the exploration and study,the author of this paper found that there are many secret arrangements in the composition of the Frescoes “Meeting of the Buddhists”.Particularly,in the arrangement of the statues and frescoes,the composition of the clouds is affected by the size of the front statue.The landscape forms selected might be closely related to Ningbo’s arhat paintings,and the plants portrayed in the landscape have implications more sophisticated than plain decoration.All of the above points have been somewhat neglected in the previous studies of the Fresco “ Meeting of the Buddhists”.From the perspective of creative practice,the author of this paper intended to offer new ideas for understanding the Fahai Temple Frescoes,and bring inspiration to the creative work of relevant artists.