The Royal Ontario Museum is presenting, until may 2007, a fascinating voyage of discovery in the world of Chinese Buddhist and Daoist Deities and Immortals, under the title "Heaven or Hell". It is an interesting and beautiful presentation of how these deities and immortals were represented in Chinese art, by means of paintings and prints from the museum's collections, some of which have never been exhibited before.
The vast selection of works, dating from the 10th to the 20th century builds a part of the history of the subject, and also of it's religious and philosophical implications. At that time the traditional Daoist theories had to be combined with Buddhist concepts, such as karma. And Buddhism also introduced concepts such as hell, heaven, punishement and afterlife rewards. If heaven was the place were you could be happy forever more, living in a pure and peaceful universe, if you had lived your life with honour and courage, hell was a place of neverending torture, where you suffered for having transgressed the rules of faith.
Thus, the exhibition is offering vivid and artistic depictions of how believers imagined these places, which deities and immortals ruled over them and how the voyage to the afterlife took place.
January 2007
www.artline.ro
