Volume 46: The Performative Agency of Buddhist Art and Architecture in Asia

The forty-sixth volume of Ars Orientalis expands on the concept of performance in analyzing Buddhist art and architecture, as explored at the 2014 Association of Asian Studies Annual Conference. Seven scholarly essays focus on the reciprocal engagement between human actors and the artworks and sites through which devotees seek to experience the divine.

Guest-edited by contributors Michelle C. Wang and Wei-cheng Lin, Ars Orientalis 46 spans geographically from Thailand to Japan and chronologically from the seventh to the twenty-first century. The essays also are diverse in subject matter, ranging from small-scale objects such as funerary banners, reliquaries, and monastic calligraphies to buildings and sites such as pagodas and sacred mountains.

As with the previous two volumes, Ars Orientalis 46 features web-based supplements to the printed volume. These include Digital Initiatives, a column that explores digital tools, resources, publications, and learning opportunities in art history and related fields, with a special focus on topics relevant to Ars Orientalis readers.

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ARS ORIENTALIS 46

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Issn 0571-1371
Printed in the United States of America
© 2016 Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C

Beginning with volume 42 (2012), Ars Orientalis is indexed and abstracted in the Art and Humanities Citation Index®.

 

In this volume

Introduction

Michelle C. Wang, Wei-cheng Lin, Guest Editors
(Free access)

Early Chinese Buddhist Sculptures as Animate Bodies and Living Presences

Michelle C. Wang

Between the Living and the Dead: Three-Tail Funeral Banners of Northern Thailand

Rebecca S. Hall

Ascending to a Buddha Land: A Study of a Pagoda Valley Sculpture on Namsan in Unified Silla

Sunkyung Kim

Performing Center in a Vertical Rise: Multilevel Pagodas in China’s Middle Period

Wei-cheng Lin

Instant Bliss: Enactment of the Miraculous Appearance of Relics in the Hōryūji Nested Reliquary Set

Akiko Walley

Performing Mind, Writing Meditation: Dōgen’s Fukanzazengi as Zen Calligraphy

Charlotte Eubanks

Faceless Gazes, Silent Texts: Images of Devotees and Practices of Vision in Medieval South Asia

Jinah Kim

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Digital Initiatives (online only feature)

Taming the Sphinx: Smithsonian X 3D on the Freer|Sackler’s Cosmic Buddha

Karen Hwang

The University of Chicago-Initiated Tianlongshan Caves Project

Kevin McLoughlin

CyArk: Protecting Cultural Heritage through Digital Preservation

Joanna Kendall Epstein