Dainichi Nyōrai
Sunday, 26 April 2009
Before highlighting the subject of this entry, I would like to clarify this: I cannot shake off the feeling that, by perceiving religious paraphernalia as objects to be admired as art, I am straying into moral grey area. However, I would be lying if I claimed to never have done so. Religious ‘art’, be it paintings, drawings, prints, architecture, sculpture or even floral arrangements and offerings, are often beautifully presented - worked on painstakingly and affectionately by devotees. That, I find, is, at the very least, one legit reason to celebrate religious paraphernalia as art.
I grew up in a buddhist family. Although we were not particularly religious, we did frequently visit monks who lived in remote mountains excavated to form large cavernous temples. These temples also housed a great number of buddha figures carved directly from the rock, apart from various other ones donated by the public. More often than not, these figures were large-scale sculptures - imposing yet with a certain calmness and serenity across their faces. This realism often left me in awe. This following piece is no different:
Unkei (1151 – 1223) was a Japanese sculptor of the Kei school. He specialized in statues of the Buddha and other important Buddhist figures. He is also widely recognised by art historians to be the most distinguished of Kei sculptors. He received the title of ‘hoin’ - the highest possible rank for an artist. This sculpture of a seating Dainichi Nyōrai, the Japanese version of Vairocana and the supreme Buddha of the esoteric pantheon, is thought to be Unkei’s masterpiece. “Made of Cyprus wood, he sits on lotus position, with hair piled in a high topknot and wearing the crown and jewelry of royalty. The deity forms a distinctive hand gesture, called ‘knowledge fist’… [X-ray scans show that] the figure contains three dedicatory (a wood five–stage pagoda, crystal ball supported by a bronze stand, and a crystal five-stage pagoda, [representing] Buddhist symbols], sealed inside the torso for over 800 years.” (Art Daily)
This sculpture achieved $14.37 million in auction recently.