A bit of China has arrived in Los Angeles, in the form of an extensive exhibit at the Getty Center that recreates an ancient landmark along the legendary Silk Road.
The Cave Temples of Dunhuang, also called the Mogao Caves, is a complex of almost 500 caves in northwest China that was active between the 4th and 14th centuries. It’s also a UNESCO World Heritage site. The caves were a thriving center for Buddhism. And as an important stop along the Silk Road, they also became the repository for a huge collection of documents, shrines, art and objects from many other cultures.
“A common perception is that globalism is a modern phenomenon,” Thomas Gaehtgens, director of the Getty Research Institute, said at a recent preview of the exhibit. But, as the caves exhibit shows, regional exchange has been going on for a long time.
The Silk Road was the name of the network of trade routes that stretched from the Mediterranean Sea to China in ancient times. From before the birth of Jesus Christ to the 1400s, it was the route for the lucrative Chinese silk trade and other goods. Religions, especially Buddhism, languages, customs and ideas also spread through the network.
In China, the caves along the ancient route are a remote spot visited by tourists, mainly Chinese. The Getty Conservation Institute has worked at the site for more than 25 years alongside the Dunhuang Academy, which manages the cave temples. Both organizations and the Getty Research Institute organized this show.
“What you have in Dunhuang … is one place of artistic practice for a millennium, for a thousand years,” said David Brafman, associate curator at the Getty Research Institute. “It’s an extraordinary place. One of the things that we wanted to get across, in the beginning of the exhibition, is just how much cultural diversity is found at the site.”
Brafman was referring to the collection of artifacts that make up one part of the Getty Center show. The exhibit is split into three sections. Three recreated caves are definitely the highlight. But a good place to start is at the galleries of the Getty Research Institute.
The galleries open with a map of the region to give some context. Several rooms full of original artifacts from the cave temples reveal the extent of exchange that happened along the Silk Road. These objects come from the “Library Cave,” which held more than 40,000 documents, paintings and textiles. It was sealed for about 1,000 years before it was discovered and reopened in 1900.
Some of the artifacts are remarkable evidence of the traffic that must have passed on the Silk Road. A hand-written scroll from sometime between the years 700 and 900 includes the Christian hymn “Gloria in excelsis Deo,” written in Chinese. A letter of introduction written in Tibetan was likely carried by a 10th-century Chinese monk on his way to India. Another highlight is a copy of the Diamond Sutra, which, according to the exhibit, is the oldest dated, complete, printed (with woodblock printing) book, dating to the year 868.
Once you get a little background at the galleries, hopefully it’s time to see the star of the show, the re-created caves. A timed ticket will get you into two of the three caves.
From the outside, they don’t look like much, housed in a big canvas structure in the Getty Center courtyard. But inside, they’re pretty impressive.
In painstaking detail, artists from the Dunhuang Academy recreated three caves known as Cave 275 from the 5th Century, Cave 285 from the 6th Century and Cave 320 from the 8th Century. The replicas, which took two to three years to make, were then shipped from China to the Getty Center and reassembled.
Soft lighting accentuates the greens, blues and reds on the walls, ceilings and Buddha statues to great effect, making visitors feel like they are in the original caves in China – except that at the original caves, the light comes only from the sun through the doorways and a guide’s flashlight. Remaking that experience is the aim of a third part of the Getty Center exhibit, a 3D presentation of Cave 45, from the 8th Century.
This cave features a seated Buddha flanked by six other figures, plus wall paintings. Visitors don 3D glasses and step in front of a curved projection screen. As a narrator describes each of the figures, they loom up before visitors as if seen by a guide’s flashlight in the cave.
Organizers chose Cave 45 for this 3D presentation because of its impressive statues, said Jeff Levin of the Getty Conservation Institute. But even with a trip to China, there’s no guarantee that a guide will take you to this cave out of the almost 500 there, he added. “This was an opportunity to show off a cave that even visitors to Mogao don’t typically get to see.”
Similarly, the Getty Center show is a chance to see a remote part of China without traveling 7,000 miles.
Contact the writer: aboessenkool@ocregister.com
