Gifted Gazers: Visions of Viewing in Southern Song Buddhist Painting

Crafted between 1178 and 1188 for ritual use in a small temple near Ningbo, a set of one hundred hanging scrolls depicting the Five Hundred Arhats—semi-human, semi-divine disciples of the historical Buddha ??kyamuni—possesses a puzzling peculiarity: more often than not, the deities are depicted, quite simply, gazing.  They gaze at natural wonders, they gaze at supernatural feats performed by their peers, they gaze at episodes drawn from the history and myths of Buddhism, and they gaze even at paintings.

Crafted between 1178 and 1188 for ritual use in a small temple near Ningbo, a set of one hundred hanging scrolls depicting the Five Hundred Arhats—semi-human, semi-divine disciples of the historical Buddha ??kyamuni—possesses a puzzling peculiarity: more often than not, the deities are depicted, quite simply, gazing.  They gaze at natural wonders, they gaze at supernatural feats performed by their peers, they gaze at episodes drawn from the history and myths of Buddhism, and they gaze even at paintings.  What are we to make of this curious phenomenon, and how might Song worshipers have interpreted it?  By gazing, do these arhats merely model for us how we ought to view them, or are other motivations at work?  In this presentation, Professor Bloom focuses on a subset of paintings from the set, which is now largely held in the collection of Daitokuji Monastery in Kyoto, Japan.  Reading the paintings in conjunction with Song texts that describe fantastic processes of imagining oneself into painted Buddhist worlds, he will explicate the multiple forms of spectatorial engagement that this set encourages.  Looking through the eyes of worshipers, arhats, and monks, ultimately, we shall see that the most gifted, and hubristic, gazer of all may well have been the painter himself.

 

Phillip E. Bloom is assistant professor of East Asian Art in the Department of the History of Art at Indiana University Bloomington. He specializes in the history of Song-dynasty (960-1279) Buddhist painting and sculpture, particularly the relationships between visual artworks and multi-sensorial ritual performances. He is currently working on a book manuscript, tentatively titled Nebulous Intersections: Ritual and Representation in Chinese Buddhist Art, ca. 1178.

 

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