BUDDHIST PAINTINGS FROM THE SONG AND THE YUAN DYNASTIES: VISUAL REPRESENTATIONS IN THE PAINTINGS OF DEVOTIONAL DEITIES = BUDDHIST PAINTINGS FROM THE SONG AND THE YUAN DYNASTIES: VISUAL REPRESENTATIONS IN THE PAINTINGS OF DEVOTIONAL DEITIES

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Recent studies on Buddhist paintings of the Song and Yuan dynasties have focused on the meaning and function of individual works clarifying the original contexts created by the interrelations among paintings, places, and people, or the networks of exchanges that once existed. This scholarly approach is contributing to the shift toward a synchronic perspective in academia. And yet, art historians are responsible for contemplating visuality related to the overall system of ways of seeing in a broader perspective. In this presentation, I would like to examine the visual representations of Buddhist icons in an attempt to identify the general characteristics of Song and Yuan Buddhist paintings. Considering representational functions of Buddhist paintings, Southern Song Buddhist paintings may be classified into three categories: visualized images (心中感得像), apparition images (示現像), and summoned images (勧請像). Visualized images refer to paintings that represent the image of Buddha as perceived in one’s mind, corresponding to the practice of visualizing the Buddha (観仏). Apparition images, contrary to the visualized images, refer to paintings depicting Buddha and Buddhist deities, otherwise resident in their heavenly abodes, who appear in this world by means of their supernatural powers. Finally, summoned images are paintings representing Buddha who, invoked and summoned by the faithful, emerges from the ideal world of light into the physical world of vicissitudes. The third type of images is characterized by Buddha portrayed moving in the air on his way to this world. The Yuan dynasty in China witnessed the emergence of a new type of visual representation of Buddha, which can be described as syncretic images of Buddhism with Daoism. It brought major changes to the visual representation of Buddhist paintings, which until this time had followed the style of the Southern Song period. In these syncretic images, the distance between this world and the ideal world becomes further blurred, ultimately bringing Buddha, depicted in Southern Song Buddhist paintings as residing in the ideal world and removed from this world, to the real world, in front of the eyes of the faithful.