Avalokiteśvara in Gold: Art and Ideology at Contemporary Baodingshan

Abstract

On June 13, 2015, the newly renovated Thousand-Handed, Thousand-Eyed Avalokiteśvara statue at Baodingshan was officially unveiled to the public in Chongqing, China. Sculpted in the twelfth century, the colossal statue is now covered in glittering gold and vibrant colors. While many criticized the lavish conservation work, others stressed the fact that the statue had undergone similar restorations over the course of the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911), which saw the application of new pigment and gold to protect the heavily deteriorated stone. This paper aims to explore the motivations behind the decision to conserve the statue by such lavish means in 2015. I demonstrate that while the 2015 conservation project is but a continuation of the government supervision of local religious and cultural activities at Baodingshan, it has a decidedly different agenda from previous efforts. The recent conservation work is premised upon the assumption that the Avalokiteśvara statue should be recognized as a work of “art.” Moreover, two narratives differentiate Baodingshan sculptures from those at other famous historical Buddhist sites : that it was Chinese rather than foreign scholars who made the discovery, and that Baodingshan sculptures represent an indigenous Chinese style. Such designation serves as the bedrock of Baodingshan’s transformation into a cultural heritage site. Both the Chongqing and national government saw the conservation project as an opportunity to reaffirm the artistic merit of a local religious image, which would both generate economic interest and galvanize patriotism.