Detail from a painting in the series Ten Kings of Purgatory from Mirrors of the Void: Buddhist Art in the National Museum of Finland by Harry Halén (1987)
This project takes as its starting point five paintings from a series of ten, representing the theme Ten Kings of Purgatory, which are in the collection of the Museum of Cultures, in Helsinki.
Both Buddhists and Daoists imagined that on death the human being would be transported to a kind of purgatory to meet the judges or kings of that realm. According to most common beliefs there were either 10 or 18 of these kings, who in their outside appearance resembled Chinese officials and in many ways the journey through purgatory was reminiscent of bureaucracy of the real world. The journey in its entirety lasted three years and began on the 7th day after death in the court of the first king, Qingguangwang. In his presence the virtuous were differentiated from the evil ones: the virtuous could expect an immediate rebirth and the evil ones a long and torturous journey through the other nine courts. The last king would then designate their fate after three years, whether one would be reborn as a divinity, a human being, an animal, a hungry ghost or be dwelling in hell for eternity.
The theme has been part of visual arts since the Song dynasty (960–1279), but its iconography has not in spite of this long history been established. One of my aims is to research which five of the ten courts are represented in the series in the Museum of Cultures.
0 comments:
Post a Comment