CAMLab Online Seminar | Water and Land Paintings in the Qinglong Temple
Speaker: Dr. Sun Bo (National Museum of China)
Date: Monday, August 10, 2020, 9:30pm to 11:00pm EST
Venue: Harvard CAMLab, online via ZOOM
[This seminar will be offered in Mandarin Chinese.]
Abstract: The Water and Land Ritual (水陸法會) was a Buddhist rite developed in China for the universal salvation of all sentient beings from hell. As a visual aid to the ritual, Water and Land Paintings (水陸畫) were often painted on hanging scrolls or as murals in Buddhist halls. The Water and Land Paintings of the Yuan Dynasty (1271–1368) at the waist hall of Qinglong Temple in Jishan County, Shanxi Province (山西稷山縣青龍寺) are the earliest Water-and-Land murals in existence. These murals have a rigorous composition and a lively style, making them a rare example to observe the form of Water-Land paintings in the early time. In this CAMLab Seminar, Dr. Sun Bo explained the visual programs behind these murals on a wall-by-wall basis and shared some intriguing visual details that he discovered in his research.
About the speaker: Dr. Sun Bo is a Visiting Scholar at CAMLab and the Associate Research Professor and Director of the Science and Art Office in the Exhibition Department at the National Museum of China. Since 2010, he has participated in curating a series of exhibitions hosted by the National Museum of China, ranging from ancient archaeology to contemporary art. In terms of research, his academic interests focus on Chinese religious art after the tenth century and material and visual cultural exchange across Eurasia. At CAMLab, Sun Bo engages in three research and exhibition projects, the themes of which include the Water and Land Rituals, the Avatamsaka Sutra, and the Chan’an City of the Tang dynasty.
![[Event poster]](https://glorisunglobalnetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/sun_bo_aug10_seminar_poster1.jpg){kind=link}