The formation of early buddhist visual culture

The absence of anthropomorphic images of the Buddha in early Buddhist visual culture can be characterized as a de facto aniconism. It was not due to any prohibition, or to religious or philosophical doctrine; nor was it a reaction against iconic worshiping. Instead, the absence of images of the Buddha was due to the fact that early Buddhist visual symbols belonged to a shared sacred Indian culture. In this sacred culture, one tended to depict auspicious symbols, mythological creatures and local deities. The Buddhists used auspicious symbols to protect themselves, but also to popularize and strengthen the Buddhist movement. The Buddhist movement was in need of local support. Eventually, this early Buddhist visual culture was transformed into a conscious Buddhist visual culture with distinct Buddhist visual symbols.

Buddhist visual symbols are not timeless works of art but, rather, part of a social and cultural context. As successive generations interpret these visual symbols over time, the meaning may change. However, auspicious symbols, such as wheels, trees and lotus-flowers, often depicted in early Buddhist sacred sites, were interpreted by later generations as distinctly Buddhist visual signs. This development is difficult to grasp, because a great number of different people were involved in the manufacture and use of early Buddhist visual culture.

This paper stresses different categories of people and the roles they played in the creation of Buddhist visual culture. The creation of Buddhist visual culture was an intricate social drama involving large numbers of people. The “iconographic authority” was an expert team consisting of monastic monks or nuns, donors and artisans. This paper also stresses that early visual culture gave shape to the life story of the Buddha and was important for the origin of the first Buddha images.     

Agency and Affectivity of Paintings: The Lives of Chitrajis in Hindu Ritual Contexts

Numerous roles given to prints, paintings, and photographs in contemporary Hindu religious practices can be traced to changes in the ritual status of paintings. By advocating an ontological shift to a purified non-dualism called shuddhadvaita, the sixteenth-century religious philosopher Vallabhacharya established a new Hindu community who subsequently developed their own elaborate traditions of ritual that allowed devotees to personally interact with live images of Krishna. Within this new ontology of purified non-dualism, paintings were given roles normally reserved in Hinduism for sculptural images of gods and goddesses. This developed into a tradition of caring for and worshiping paintings considered live gods called chitra seva. The “picture turn” created by chitra seva led to other roles being given to paintings, where they were not only allowed agency, but could manifest affective powers within the classical Indian rasa system of aesthetics applied by Vallabhacharya to religious experience.     

Beautiful and efficacious statues: magic,commodities, agency and the production of sacred objects in popular religion in vietnam

ABSTRACT

In his provocative rethink of the anthropology of art, Alfred Gell offers the radical suggestion that people commonly abduct agency—acts of thought, will or intention—to things and suggests that the relationship between people and things be studied in the manner that anthropologists analyze other kinds of human relationships. In Gell's terms, the relationship between people and temple images, as sacred objects, follows the “the rules laid down for idols as co-present others.” We will explore how one such a relationship fares in the accelerated market economy of Vietnam where workshops have rationalized the production of “idols,” wooden temple statues, making them more like commodities and where a global market in Asian antiquities encourages theft. Tim Ingold critiques studies of “agency” and “materiality” for too often ignoring the tangible materials and methods of production, but we suggest that in the marketplace for sacred objects, attention to both object agency and artisanal process can be mutually enriching. To do this, we first describe how popular religion in Vietnam renders statues as animated, sacred and agentive and how devotees experience and describe statue agency in and through their own relationships with divine images. We then show how production methods are implicated in the creation of agentive images and consider how these understandings and processes have and have not been compromised since the opening and acceleration of the market from the late 1980s. We argue that a sophisticated market permits a hierarchy of value and a range of consumer choice in the production and consumption of sacred objects.     

The Ontogeny of Dolls: Materiality,Affect, and Self in Afro-Cuban Espiritismo

Abstract

Objects are fundamental components of cosmology in Afro-Cuban religions; they serve to represent, pay homage to, and feed a constellation of covetous spirits. In a moral universe of practitioners materiality allures and potentially corrupts; it grounds personal and collective ritual agency; mediates thoughts-feelings; materializes the immaterial; and invariably transcends all these dichotomies and becomes gods, parts of people, concepts. In this article I wish to understand “things” as continuous with the unfolding of selfhood, but more contentiously, with and as affects. Drawing on my long-time research with practitioners of Cuban Creole espiritismo in Havana, for whom “representation” objects are essential to the development of spirits, muertos, and thus extended selves, I argue that the dolls and figurines that mediums regularly fabricate and care for are less “representational” than they are affective forms themselves. Dolls are not symbols for feelings-for-spirits made material or registers of affective perception towards one’s muertos; in a very real sense they are affects that may grow roots and bloom. In the ethnography I will describe these relations as a system of affectively invested selfhood, one that encompasses the very muertos in question.     

Transforming the notion of the urban aborigine

Abstract

The ‘urban Aborigine’ has been a problematic figure in Australian social policy, because of the tension between his/her cultural status (apparently assimilated) and his/her politicised cultural identity (defiantly resistant to assimilation). This paper focuses on a moment in Australian history when a reformist intelligentsia was compelled to make better sense of the ‘urban Aborigine’, and on two intellectuals in particular: H. C. Coombs and Fay Gale. It then turns to the cultural practice of a particular sector of this intelligentsia ‐ the urban Aboriginal painter ‐ and shows how urban Aboriginal artists have sometimes addressed the problematic category ‘urban Aborigine’ by richly referencing icons of the ‘traditional’ in their paintings.     

Sacred objects into state symbols: the material culture of chieftaincy in the making of a national political heritage in ghana

ABSTRACT

Although chieftaincy has remained a highly contested institution, it is one traditional institution that most Ghanaians identify with: chiefs have been and still are regarded as the custodians of the nation's cultural beliefs and practices. Their position as intermediaries between the ancestral spirits and the people they represent makes them sacred figures and their regalia sacred objects. Chiefs are also very important in facilitating the provision of social infrastructural projects and ensuring law and order in their communities. Such was the power and prestige of chiefs that under colonialism the British administration incorporated them into colonial governance. However, while the nationalist leaders in the immediate postcolonial era did not find it appropriate to incorporate chiefs into national governance, they nonetheless used some cultural materials of chieftaincy to legitimize and Africanize their authority and give the new state of Ghana a unique political identity. By incorporating chieftaincy objects into the newly designed political culture, the state profiled and reified chieftaincy as a national heritage. This article discusses the intricacies of turning sacred objects of chieftaincy into national state symbols.     

“art is spirituality!”: practice,play, and experiential learning in the jewish renewal movement

ABSTRACT

This essay explores the art world of ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal—in order to better understand the role of particular material practices in creating a distinctive religious experience and community. One attractive characteristic of Jewish Renewal is its invitation to play artistically with Jewish canonical texts, practices, and traditions. While some might argue that play leads necessarily to a limited and fragmentary Judaism, and that more rigorous study and practice is required, others see both practice and play as routes to a deeper religious experience. Artistic play with Jewish texts and traditions is seen by Renewal Jews as experiential learning, a variety of midrash (biblical interpretation). Artistic adornment of ritual objects and garb may also be understood as hiddur mitzvah (beautifying the religious precepts). Through an examination of the work of five artists (two painters, two fabric artists, and a weaver), the essay engages the concept of “handmade midrash” (artistic works as interpretations of sacred texts); creative reinterpretations of such traditions as counting the Omer and celebrating the New Moon; and the meaning of Torah and of prayer. This essay argues that through artistic engagement with Judaism, Renewal Jews practice play.     

Architecture,meaning and significance

Traditionally, the arts have been divided into the representational and the abstract. Representational arts are those which are about the world, such as painting and literature; abstract arts are those which are not, such as architecture and music. It is possible to describe the ways in which a representational art is ‘about the world’ and so to define its content, but this is supposedly impossible with abstract arts because they are void of content. Is this conservative view justifiable? Those arts which might be considered essentially representational need not be: abstract paintings do not depict and concrete poetry does not describe. Moreover, non‐representational arts can be held to be ‘about the world’ in some way and can therefore be attributed some sort of ‘content’: music has an emotional content, and architecture has been said to have significant content. This paper considers a number of views which attempt to provide architecture with a content.     

Spontaneous memorials and contemporary modes of mourning in america

ABSTRACT

Buddha-recitation devices (nianfo ji 念佛機) use modern technology to reproduce the name of the Buddha endlessly, offering this function in the form of portable plastic boxes akin to small radios or iPods. These devices raise key questions for our understanding of contemporary Buddhism: Why is a specialized device necessary? How is the device shaped by earlier traditions of recitation and sound? The Buddha-recitation device uses packaging and ornamentation to establish its status as a religious object, thereby sanctifying the ordinary function of producing sound. Although this mechanized recitation appears to replace that of human voice, analysis of miracle tales, personal testimonials, and doctrinal discussions shows that these devices more closely emulate the sacred sounds spontaneously produced in the environment of the western paradise where Buddhists aspire to be reborn.     

The godless temple, ‘organon of the infinite’

This essay seeks to illuminate our understanding of ‘space’ by showing how Le Corbusier's concept of dwelling draws upon the notion of the secular sacred. The vehicle of analysis is the close correlation between the disposition of his own apartment, at 24 Rue Nugesser et Coli, Paris (1933), and a critical sequence of his Le poème de l'angle droit, published 22 years later. The correlation gives substance and structure to his repeated declaration to ‘make the house a temple’, in turn part of the universal claims of his concept of unité and therefore a significant element of his cultural aspirations regarding housing. The terms of reference for such a reformulation have their source in Romantic thought, with which this essay begins. However, the particular configuration of themes on which Le Corbusier's domestic symbolism depends—a primordial room oriented to the horizon, the contemplation of a paradigmatic woman by a creative male, a representational regime oriented to controlling the cultural background—is already present in certain Marian paintings of the fifteenth century. The configuration seeks to ensure a form of salvation re-interpreted by Le Corbusier in the light of artistic poésie and philosophical reflection. At the same date, Paul Valéry argues for the paradox of painting as a pure noumenal philosophy. This suggests that the long history of the secular sacred depends upon requiring the transcendent to be also transparent to thought, an ambiguity that lies at the heart of the universality claimed for ‘space’ by Sigfried Giedion.     

弥异所131:辽河沈阳段旋转冰圈

形式 这是一种在全世界都极为罕见的情况,通常只发生在冬季寒冷地区河流转弯的地方.水的加速流动导致了一种"旋转剪切"力的形成,促使一个接近完美圆形的冰圈在河面上不断旋转.     

Afterword—gendering religious objects: placing them as agents in matrices of power

ABSTRACT

The articles in this special issue demonstrate how objects can be interpreted as agents, as gendered images that make a statement, and how their impacts can be understood and assessed by human actors. They are differentially placed in matrices of power, and they can be manipulated to shift genders, to play with gendered combinations, to expand the limits of a particular gendered domain, to creatively play with reproductive imagery, and even to sell commodities in new and enticing ways in the mass media. Gendered religious objects are “statements” addressed not only to the eye but to the emotions, and part of a complex cultural field in which things can play important roles in people's lives. The links that connect ritual power to other forms of agency and biographical significance are perhaps the most significant links that we need to examine to understand them better in a world of many diverse cultural forms.     

The Future of Public Space: Beyond Invented Streets and Reinvented Places

As captured in this painting by Margaret Caldwell, the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco is an icon of successful downtowns and one of the most recognizable buildings in the world. According to this Longer View essay by Donovan Rypkema, its uniqueness represents the distinction needed in the character of downtowns for U.S. cities to be competitive as we undergo economic globalization. Rypkema sees downtown revitalization, led by the differentiation afforded by meaningful buildings, as the spearhead of a successful economic survival strategy.

The artist, who shows her work mostly in Los Angeles, holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from USC and studied the techniques of representational painting of 19th-century artists in Florence, Italy. Her paintings, which often feature the urban landscape, are based in observation and are attempts to translate her visual experience of the world. Thanks to the Jernigan Wicker Fine Arts Gallery in San Francisco for their help in securing use of this image.

The post-September 11 world is both dramatically changed and increasingly uncertain. But two factors on the horizon are assured: globalization and diversity. Globalization, however, has two facets: economic and cultural. Cities must learn to capitalize on economic globalization without being subsumed by cultural globalization. Cities must also deal with diversity on both the international and local levels. The downtown is a community's most effective venue to confront, learn from, and accommodate both globalization and diversity.     

Mediated sacralization and the construction of postmodern communio sanctorum: the case of the swedish foreign minister anna lindh

In the media age, the linkage between mediated communities and images is established by the sacralization of images. Based on the theoretical insights of Michel Maffesoli and on an influential tradition in French sociology, which includes Émile Durkheim, Georges Bataille, and René Girard, this article attempts to apply the theory of sacred images to the empirical analysis of images in the media. The analysis of the Swedish and Finnish newspapers' visual coverage of the assassination of Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh suggests that the process of sacralization is actually performed as a communicative behavior involving the media and the crowd as the main actors and a number of symbols whose meaning is actually shared in the community. While the role of the media is certainly influential, the role of culture specific values and representation system should not be underestimated. The power of the “images of death” is explained in relation to symbolic behavior supported and reproduced, but not initially triggered, by the media. The empirical analysis suggests that while Maffesoli rightly identifies the capacity of images to establish “sacred” communities as an important dimension of the power of images in media age, the logic running this power is very much inspired by more mundane market constraints.     

雅昌设计随笔

雅昌是一家彩色印刷公司,以擅长印刷情美的艺术画册而闻名。 雅昌有一间画廊,画廊中陈列着公司收藏和印刷的艺术品。艺术品有油画、国画、铜雕塑、木器、瓷器、陶器、各式各样,这些艺术品都出自名家之手,印刷品装祯用铜、用木、用石、用绢、用皮、设计精巧,这里还有据说是国内最大的艺术网站。提供艺术家作品信息咨询,是艺术交流的平台。     

Cell phones for the spirits: ancestor worship and ritual economies in vietnam and its diasporas

Religion has been thriving in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam since ??i m?i, the onset of market reforms in the late 1980s. Votive paper offerings, part of spiritual and economic well-being, play a crucial role in performing religious practices in the socialist country as well as among diasporic Vietnamese. In urban Hanoi, material objects made from paper are traded in marketplaces and later burned in the streets, in temples and pagodas, in private yards and other places on special occasions in order to be transmitted to the ancestors. In the past few years, the range of votive paper offerings produced, traded, and sent to the deceased has expanded to include new forms and references to new media. Drawing on recent debates in the role of media in religion and in particular on technologies of mediation, I focus on the use of votive paper offerings in the sociocultural context of the Vietnamese spirit world. I explore how new media and media technologies are embedded in multilayered processes of mediation in Vietnam and its diasporas. Taking religious practices of burning votive paper offerings as an ethnographic example, this essay aims to contribute to ongoing debates on popular religion and the sacred life of material goods in late socialist Vietnam, on its transnational ties, and on the entanglements between religion, media and materiality.     

园林绘画对于复原研究的价值和应用探析—以明代《寄畅园五十景图》为例

园林绘画是研究古代园林的重要材料,对于已消失或改建过的早期园林的复原研究具有重要价值。解读和利用园林绘画的难点之一在于确定图中景致的写实程度。本文以明代宋懋晋《寄畅园五十景图》为主线,结合其他相关图像资料,尝试从园林绘画的性质和创作过程探讨这一问题。本文认为园林绘画的性质属于"功能性绘画",重视对园中景致的忠实摹写。画家的创作过程涉及"写真"与"摹古"两种方式,从不同方面影响到绘画对于园景的再现模式和程度。     

Shintai and the Empty Cross

This paper investigates the significance of the empty cross in Tadao Ando's Church of the Light (1989) in association with shintai, the Japanese notion of the body. Following the Japanese cultural tradition, in particular the theory of perception and body in the philosophy of nothingness by Kitaro Nishida (1870-1945), the foremost thinker in modern East Asian intellectual history and the father of the Kyoto Philosophical School, shintai is understood as an active, pre-reflective, sensational capacity to embrace and feel the world as the content of the very self. Simultaneously, when its sensational capacity to embrace the world is limited, shintai transcends the horizon of sensation, articulates posturally its reaching out to the world, and enters into the realm of creative act to accommodate the sensational surplus. By referring to this distinctive Japanese notion of the body, the paper illuminates the significance of the empty cross in the Church of the Light, which integrates the natural phenomenal light—it is a slit—and the iconic permanence of the standing body into one indivisible reality. The paper illuminates how the notion of shintai is effective in understanding the simultaneous presence of the phenomenal and the iconic in the cross. It finally shows how one's perception of the cross under the mode of shintai renews the efficacy of the cross's vertical posture as symbolizing the victory and glory of Jesus, not his suffering, as claimed by Daisetz T. Suzuki, a renowned Zen Buddhist, whose references were the Baroque crucifixion and the peaceful horizontal posture of Buddha on his deathbed.