Da Fu, Le Shan, Sichuan, China
Lois Conner American
Not on view
Echoing the strong vertical format of a hanging scroll, Conner’s image of Le Shan ("joyous mountain") resembles a traditional Chinese landscape composition in which a foreground cliff is juxtaposed with a distant view of water and sky. The artist’s subject is the Le Shan Buddha, an eighth-century sculpture that sits at the confluence of the Min, Dadu, and Qingyi Rivers in China’s Sichuan Province. The 233-foot colossus, the largest carved stone Buddha in the world, was intended to calm the waters flowing below its feet. But viewed against the backdrop of a modern cityscape—vaguely discernible in the distance—this great icon, hewn from the cliffside as an act of devotion, has been literally marginalized and reduced to a tourist attraction.
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