Art And Soul 1

Picture, for a moment, an art studio and gallery that's over one and a half kilometres long, is built into a sheer cliff face near an oasis, and is surrounded by grey sandy desert.

Now imagine that this gallery has been continuously hosting artisans for nearly two thousand years.

Envisage these artisans and craftspeople chiselling away at that rockface, building massive grottoes to create and display their incredible paintings and sculptures, some of which took over ten years to complete, and some that were carved into the cliff face itself.

Now imagine that all of the works created were purely spiritual endeavours, painstakingly built by monks and artisans who had dedicated their whole lives to the practices of Buddhism, and whose works were rooted in devotion, and were created purely for the divine.

All of these artisans had come to this oasis along the Silk Road, a route which didn't only host trade in goods like silk, spices, ivory, tea and precious stones and metals. The Silk Road was also a cultural melting pot, and, in fact, it was along this road that new ideas, belief systems and faiths spread throughout the whole of Asia, the Middle East and Europe.

This incredible desert gallery, in this incredible place, is the Mogao Caves.

Mogao

With over 35,000 square metres of frescoes, and over 700 art grottoes, Mogao Caves host one of the largest and most significant repositories of Buddhist art in the world.

Or, as Tony Abbott would say, its a suppository of all wisdom.

And what makes it particularly significant is its longevity and continuity, so it now displays, in one place, a huge portion of the chronological evolution of Buddhist art styles, teachings, icons, and belief systems, created by artists from all over the Buddhist world.

I rode out to the visitor centre, about 10 clicks out of town, paid the exorbitant foreigners entrance fee, and was then led into a cinema to watch a very well produced film recreating the story of how the grottoes first came into being, with a super smart English translation headphone system.

Next up was the iMax cinema, where we virtually flew around the grottoes, and were told some of the stories behind the frescoes and sculptures, who built them, and why.

It was super impressive, and really the very best way to introduce an incredibly important site to ignoramii such as myself.

Next up was the bus trip to the site itself, another few clicks into the grey sandy desert.

Blurry bus pic, leaning over Andries and Analies, a lovely young couple from Belgium. He was the perfect Gent man and she a complete Gent woman.

First sight of the site. Well, a tiny portion of it.

To protect the grottoes, and the art inside them, parts of the cliff face have been rendered at the front, but in a very aesthetically sensitive way, with pathways that allow for relatively high volumes of visitors. Tourist numbers are restricted though, and luckily this isn't the busy time. In peak season you need to book some time in advance if you're Chinese.

The caves are all locked up, to protect the art from light, dust, certain gases, and ignorant humans and their certain gases. There's equipment measuring air composition and humidity etc in the caves. They're really doing an amazing job of preserving it all.

We had an excellent English speaking local guide who took us to particular grottoes, and who seemed to know everything about everything.

She was also particularly funny, and quite dry. Once, after she'd described some Buddhist belief systems in great detail, someone in our small group asked her if she actually believed in those ideas. She answered, very matter-of-factory, "Well, I believe in myself."

Brownie points for that one.

I actually chatted to her for quite a while afterwards, she's a trained teacher, but got tired of moving around the country with that job, and has now spent seven years working here and studying Buddhist art from all over the world, a lot of which she's visited herself. She still claims to know hardly anything about art, and says she has so much more to learn. Now that's humility for ya.

We could only photograph the outside of the grottoes, as usual, so I've thrown in some images of the interior from the web, mainly taken from an open digital catalogue of the art which has been made available online by the Dunhuang Research Institute.

This wooden pagoda protected a giant Buddha.

At 36m tall, the Buddha is one of the largest in China. It's carved into the cliff face, so is completely made of stone, not clay and grass, like most of the smaller sculptures within the grottoes. It was incredible to see this work, and the art that surrounds it.

It's thought that the Buddha here represents the very powerful Empress Wu Zetian, who actually used Buddhism to consolidate her own power in the Empire.

Wily old politicians, huh.

Empress Wu, who reigned from 690 till 705, presided over a period that saw the Tang Dynasty reach its zenith of power in China. The Tang era (618-907) is now regarded as China's cultural golden era, it was a time when art, music, literature and lemons flourished, and diverse religious belief systems were not only tolerated, but embraced. Wu hoo!

The era was also the most productive period at Mogao Grottoes, and over 230 caves were carved there during those years.

As it turns out though, Empress Wu's embrace of Buddhism was used against her by her Confucian political rivals, and they forced her to abdicate in 705. Boo hoo.

There were a number of other huge Buddhas in the grottoes.

The band

Ceiling detail

For me, it was an amazing privilege to be able to stand in these incredible caves and see this art for myself. I'll never forget it. I saw works created in the 400s, with naive drawings and Buddha figures that looked completely Indian in style -  created by Indian Buddhists travelling the Silk Road to spread Buddha's teachings.

I saw works with Tibetan images, created when the Tibetan kingdom ruled this part of the world, I saw very Chinese-looking Buddhas with thin curly moustaches, and non-gendered Bodhisattvas in a variety of styles, which began to appear later on.

There was a library grotto, which, when first re-discovered, contained over 60,000 ancient Buddhist sutras and texts. Unfortunately many were carted off by European explorers, particularly Aurel Stein and Paul Pelliot, who bought over 20,000 of them for a song from a Taoist monk. They paid about £120 at the time for all those priceless treasures, and then proceeded to sell them all over the world.

Great, thanks for that guys.

Another Stein on our colonial history.

We actually visited what used to be the Library Cave. It's now completely empty.

This pic is of Stein's partner in crime, Paul Pelliot, checking out the loot, and choosing the most valuable pieces to steal.

But there's one thing about Mogao that's sorta sad, and which makes it different from most of the other sacred grottoes and temples I've visited on this part of my trip. Mogao is pretty much no longer an active place of worship. It's a museum. Access is strictly controlled. Local Buddhists do get some restricted access to some of the sacred places, but only on auspicious days.

When you take away the pilgrims and the worship, the place loses soul. The art is now looked at and appreciated for its true magnificence, but the reason it was created, what it represents, is no longer so tangible. The line of continuity has been broken, and the faith that previously connected the ancient with the modern is no longer so palpable when you're there.

I mean, the connection is still there, but it pales by comparison with the feeling you get in places like the living monastery of Labrang, or the Great Buddha Temple in Zhangye.

As usual, the material world has come to overshadow the immaterial.

At our peril.

This sign was above the urinal in the toilets in the visitor centre. I'm not sure whether they're talking about me properly doing up my fly. In fact I'm not sure  what the hell they're talking about at all. Definitely lost in translation, this one.

By the way, I had such a great time chatting with Cristina at the grottoes. She's a super interesting quantum physicist from Barcelona, who's just completed a research project in Okinawa, the southernmost prefecture of Japan. She decided to head back home overland, and has been winding her way back by bus and train. Back to Catalonia, by the way, not to Spain. She's a big supporter of Catalan independence.

But that's another story.

She's already on her way to Ürümqii, the capital of Xinjiang province, which I also hope to visit before I leave China.

It was such a treat to have a real face to face conversation in English with someone from a Western country. I've only had one other of those in the whole time I've been in this part of China, which is about 6 weeks now. I've definitely been off the Western tourist track. As usual. It was particularly refreshing to chat with someone who shares my political views, and to learn more about what's happening for younger people in Spain these days, and particularly in Catalonia. It wasn't all happy listening though, I must say.

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Go to Part 2