敦煌的凹凸画

AO-T'U-HUA OR “RECEDING-AND-PROTRUDING PAINTING” AT TUNHUANG

作为丝绸之路上一个西域和本土文化的汇合地点,敦煌艺术提供了5世纪以来西域“明暗法”风格——即文献上所谓“凹凸画”以及这种画法最后变成中国本土绘画笔墨风格的一个可确定时代的连续记录。许多6世纪敦煌壁画将西域的明暗技法跟中国的线条用笔结合起来。画家不借助于色彩和阴影而是通过粗细有致的书法线描展现了他们对体积和运动的三维认识。这种“凹凸”技法向“浓淡轻重”的书法笔调的转换,使中国绘画用它自己的方式实现了对幻觉空间的控制与征服。

Located along the northern Silk Route between Central Asia and metropolitan China proper,and serving as a meeting ground of“Western regions”(xiyu)and indigenous cultural influences,Dunhuang provides a continuous record of datable monuments,from the fifth century onward,showing the importation of the Indian chiaroscuro style,known in Chinese as aotu hua,“concave-and-convex painting,”and its eventual transformation into the indigenous Chinese pictorial idiom. Many Dunhuang paintings of the sixth century,joined Western chiaroscuro technique to Chinese linear style,the artist generated three-dimensional volume and movement through thickening-and-thinning calligraphic brush lines without the help of color or shading.This transformation of the“concave-and-convex”technique into a“thickening-and-thinning”calligraphic idiom led to the conquest of illusion in Chinese painting on its own terms.