This Zao Gongen 11th century sculpture has quite a few visual traits. Zao was worshiped in religious practices, and was known to symbolize sheer physical power. Therefore one of his visual traits is strong. The way he's kind of flexing his arm along with his stance makes him seem pretty fearsome. Another visual trait is frightening, because his face portrays a demons face in my opinion. The color of the sculpture I would say is being used to show his power and uniqueness, because no human being is blue. In horror movies the monster is usually an uncanny color like red, or blue in this case. The shape resembles a humans body to perhaps give belief to the followers of this religion that they could be like their god if they followed the religion and dedicated their life to their god.The line I see in this sculpture is diagonal to symbolize power, because his left foot is firmly on the ground. The stance he's in symbolizes balance, because he's perfectly balanced on one foot with ease it seems. Objectively I see that he has a human body. From the sculpture that is all I can tell, however Subjectively I can see that his face isn't like other humans. Also his ears aren't like any humans, more animal-like. What I see is a see is a sculpture of some sort of beast or god. From looking I see a spiritual being that resembles some type of animal. Just from looking at his stance and visual features I can tell he's powerful and very balanced like how some TV shows present monks.
Very good point on the implied diagonal line in this sculpture- it almost looks like at one point he might have been holding something stick-like in his upper hand- maybe that got lost through the years but you can still feel the fierceness in his pose.
ReplyDelete