The course studies the Dunhuang Caves, one of the greatest Buddhist monuments in human history. It examines the close connections between literary history and art history; words and images. It looks into Buddhist literature and explores how written words are narrated visually throughout time along the Silk Road by different peoples. The focus of the course will be on some influential Buddhist literature such as the biographies of the Buddha, the Lotus Sutra, the three Pure Land sutras (the Larger Sukhavati-vyuha Sutra, the Small Sukhavati-vyuha Sutra and the Sutra on Contemplation of Amitayus), and their visual narratives. The most important question to be explored in this course is how artists combined Buddhist doctrines and visual representations into an integral whole in historical and religious context. The course emphasizes the museum experience, class discussion, presentation and team work.
View complete course outline: ARTH420A2010 [.pdf]