Silk Road saga
Young people are copying murals in caves as part of a cultural project, Deng Zhangyu reports.
In the old days, monks and artists painted murals for months and years in grottoes along the ancient Silk Road in China, leading to cultural exchanges. Now young people are following in their footsteps and copying the murals for cultural protection.
Over the past five years, Han Maoyuan has spent most of his time copying murals in grottoes that are mainly located in desert areas in Gansu province and the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.
Instead of simply copying the patterns and figures to produce a picture on paper, what Han does is to copy murals on a clay board to make his works look similar to the original as much as possible, including the broken, mottled and ruined parts of original murals.
“These copies are for researchers and visitors who cannot go to the caves,” says the 31-year-old artist.
Many caves he visited house precious murals dating to more than 1,000 years ago.
Changes in humidity and temperature in the caves, caused by visitors, can greatly damage the murals as they were painted mainly by mineral pigments.
In some popular grottoes open to the public, such as those in Gansu’s Dunhuang that are home to one of the finest Buddhist arts in China, visitors’ stay in a single cave is limited to less than 15 minutes for protection purposes.
“I feel really lucky to have the chance to study these murals at such close distance,” Han says.
However, the chance also means many difficulties. Sometimes he has to work inside a cave for five to seven hours. Han either stands on his knees or squats to paint for hours because some caves are small.
Usually, a grotto is carved into the cliff face — either in a desert or on a mountain.
Han has to walk or climb a long way to reach his destination with a clay board weighing up to 25 kilograms.
“I don’t think it’s hard for me. I love mural art and enjoy what I do,” says Han who graduated from the Xi’an Academy of Fine Arts in 2016.
Before copying murals, he was an ink artist and took part in some mural restoration projects in Xi’an, Shaanxi province.
In 2017, he joined a project organized by the Gongbi Academy of the Chinese National Academy of Arts in Beijing.
The project trains people from museums, art schools and art institutions in copying murals and builds a solid team for relic restoration.
Supported by the China National Arts Fund, the project was launched in 2017 and attracted more than 800 applicants. It finally selected a team of 40, mostly in their 20s and 30s.
Repair work
After training in Beijing, Han and his peers went to Xinjiang’s Kizil Grottoes, a UNESCO World Heritage site that was built between the third and eighth centuries. It’s also one of the earliest grotto complexes in China.
Han stayed in Kizil for about two months, producing two murals. The process of mural-copying has two main steps — to identify the shades of colors featured on them, with the help of a color chart, and find out how the murals were painted.
According to Han, a mural is like a sculpture and features layers of colors and traces of carving by knives. Murals in grottoes keep all the traces of time and crafts alive. Han tries to keep the copies alive, too. That’s why one piece takes such a long time to create.
Han once spent four months on a 1.7-meter-high copy of a mural in Ah-ai Grotto on the top of a mountain in Tianshan Canyon in Xinjiang. The 16-square-meter grotto was found in 1999. It takes driving, walking and climbing to reach the cave.
“I failed to bring my painting board into the cave since it was too small,” he says.
He says his friends thought he led a tough life in the past five years copying murals in deserts while they enjoyed a city life full of entertainment.
However, the young man says it was worth it. “To some extent, it helped me a lot. My concept of art totally changed.”
Zhang Jian, director of the Gongbi Academy of the Chinese National Academy of Arts, points out that mural-copying itself is a kind of art. It demonstrates not only the true emotion of the copier but also the person’s concept of art.
For Cai Yangcan who took part in the project with Han, copying murals is like a “dialogue” with ancient people and cultures. She can find out the ancient painters’ emotions through lines they drew.
“If you look closely, you can find the original painter was hesitant on one line and firm on the other. You can even tell which painter is better,” says the 30-year-old.
Murals in a cave were often drawn by a group of painters. The murals are not “old and outdated” as some young people think, Cai says, adding that some clothes and jewelry on the Buddha in murals are fashionable and delicately designed. She calls her five-year copying experience “spiritual practice”.
“It’s very hard to calm down and immerse oneself in a single thing for a long time in cities,” says Cai.
However, she enjoys copying a mural over months. The work is not always easy.
“I feel there’s not enough time for me to paint,” she says.
After staying in caves painting for a whole day, she continues painting in hotels at night. While staying in caves, she drinks less water because there are no toilets around the caves. Besides, a 25-kg clay board is heavy for her to carry.
The biggest mural copy Cai worked on in 2019 was a piece about 24 square meters, depicting the mural in Cave 220 in Dunhuang Grottoes in Gansu.
More than 12 people from Cai’s team painted the one together for six months. Their work stopped in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Pigments of the past
Apart from the painting itself, finding the right mineral colors is also vital for copying murals.
Cai says the pigments used in murals are always found in local places. Some soil is red and some graygreen. Thus, some base colors of murals are red or green. And digging the soil is part of their work as painters.
Cai learned design in college and began repairing murals after her graduation. Before copying murals, she had been working for two years at the Yungang Academy in Shanxi province. Cai’s job was to use technology to restore murals.
“I seldom went to caves to study murals before. I often repaired them digitally,” says Cai, adding that in the past few years, she has worked in different grottoes in Xinjiang.
There are many caves in the region.
In July, Cai and Han will visit Xinjiang again. Their team will start copying murals at the site of Bashbaliq, an ancient city established in the second century.
A large part of the site has been eroded by wind and rain, and only a small portion of murals exists and is visible.
The mural copies will be later displayed in a local museum because visitors cannot go to the site for protection purposes.
Cai says in the next five years, under the mural protection project, they will visit museums overseas where some important Chinese murals are kept. It will help to restore the missing parts — such as mouths and eyes — of Buddhist figurines in murals after they get the data through copying.