Gozanze Myo Essay

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For this assignment, I decided to go to the Art Institute of Chicago. There were a lot of great pieces to choose from, but I was mostly interested in the Japanese exhibit. One of my favorite displays in the Japanese exhibit was a collection of three Japanese, Buddhist sculptures: Gozanze Myo-o, Shukongojin, and Fudo Myo-o. Apart, from being great works of art, these pieces have a lot of meaning behind them in the Buddhist community. The first piece is a wooden sculpture called, Gozanze Myo-o by Japanese sculptor, Nakabayashi Gennai. At first glance, I see an intimidating figure with three heads, eight arms, fangs and three eyes on the front-facing head, but with closer examination, I found a fourth head on the back of the sculpture. Gozanze Myo-o is depicted wearing a decorative headpiece, armbands, and garments. In terms of color, the statue is mainly grey with hints of brown. Also, the figure is placed in what seems to be a calm position on top of two decapitated bodies. The wall text provided by the Art Institute of Chicago says, “This sculpture depicts Gozanze Myo-o, a four-faced, multi-limb deity, trampling…show more content…
When it comes to the way I feel about this piece, I do get the same feeling as I do with the two other pieces. I look at this sculpture and I get a sense of rage, power, and fear, but compared to the other two pieces I don’t like this one as much as I do the other two. Fudo Myo-o is a highly detailed piece of art and it displays the artist’s abilities very well, but in terms of appearance I am not as attracted to it as I am with the other two sculptures. This is a more basic looking figure because it doesn’t have any super weird physical attributes like a third eye, bulging muscles, or multiple limbs. Overall, this is a very nice piece and it displays well with the other two

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