Head of a Buddha

Head of a Buddha

 Ruffa Aquino

ARTH 32: Survey of Contemporary Art 

November 9, 2012

 Head of a Buddha

Before I visited the website of the Harvard Art Museums, what little I knew about Buddhism could be summed up in four words: Spirituality, serenity, immortality, and the vehicle for achieving all of these, meditation.  I never did much to explore the history and beliefs of Buddhism; I was raised Christian, and not even a practicing one at that.  But as I clicked through the Harvard Art Museums’ website, one work of art jumped out at me as the embodiment of everything I understood about Buddhism, literally putting a human face on what had always seemed like mere abstractions to me.  To the extent a work of art could capture the essence of Buddhism as I understood it, this white-marble sculpture came closer than anything I’d seen before.[1]

            First, some context.  The Harvard Art Museums, a trio of brick-and-mortar museums[2]with an expansive digital collection of art, appears to contain nearly three dozen sculptures of the disembodied head of Buddha, all bearing the same or similar names: “Head of a Buddha,” “Head of Buddha,” and the somewhat crude “Buddha Head.”  Many of these sculptures bear the ravages of time – noses chipped, eyes gouged out, metal corroded – and in many cases I found it difficult to get past these flaws in order to appreciate the works as they were originally conceived.  Some of the busts were in better condition than others, but the one I selected for this essay made a connection with me that none of the others had.  I will refer to it for the rest of this essay as “Head of a Buddha.” 

            Head of a Buddha is by no means in pristine condition, but more on that later.  At first glance, the features of Buddha’s face seem almost entirely intact and don’t really show their age, which, according to the Harvard website, is approximately 1,500 years.[3]  Other than minor chips and patches of discoloration here and there, Buddha’s face transported me back in time to how its creator had originally conceptualized it, as if I were peering at ancient history through a looking glass that skipped over the 15 centuries in between.

My first impression of Buddha’s marble face was one of profound serenity and rapture.  The eyelids are half-closed in seeming meditation, revealing only a sliver of the whites of the eyes as if to avoid humanizing the face too much at the expense of its spiritual context.  The eyebrows are defined not by color or thickness, as human eyebrows often are, but by monochromatic, perfectly arched protrusions from the marble that blend into the rest of Buddha’s face without calling too much attention to themselves. The lips rest peacefully one on top of the other, forming a wisp of a smile, perhaps to convey the pleasures and rewards of meditation.  

The overall shape of the face, and especially of the chin, has a pulpous look to it that visually transcends the solid marble surface.  A thin arch delicately carved under the chin resembles a fold in the skin, accentuating the fleshy appearance of Buddha’s jowls and enhancing the face’s human quality.  But it is a face largely devoid of human emotion, seemingly free of the daily suffering that comes with the human experience.  Buddha seems connected to the human world in mind and body (actually, in mind and disembodied head), but detached in spirit. Even the hair on Buddha’s head, with its closely cropped concentric curls and cascading locks, conveys a superiority and enlightenment that can be attained only when one has reached the coveted state of nirvana.  

            I mentioned near the outset of this essay that the Head of a Buddha that I selected is not in pristine condition.  That’s because as I started to view the sculpture from different angles, I was stunned to find that half or more of the back of the skull is entirely gone, leaving a craggy surface – like the craterous terrain of the moon – in its place.  My first reaction was a sense of sorrow that this symbol of tranquility and solace had been so violently, even if not deliberately, desecrated.  And yet it gave me a greater appreciation for the sculpture’s spiritual achievement as I imagined that maybe, just maybe, Buddha’s ability to rise above the chaos and suffering of the physical world had immunized the delicate features of his face to such devastation.  I imagined that the sculpture had weathered wars, catastrophes, and no doubt many other threats, whether from humanity or mother nature, that could have left its face in the same shape as the back of its skull.  But the face had survived with only minor damage, leading me to wonder if whatever force had so thoroughly sliced through the back of Buddha’s skull had been repelled by the quiet strength of his visage.

As I took one last look at the sculpture, a sense of warmth and spirituality washed over me that I would not have expected from such a marble-hard, colorless, and largely expressionless face. But it validated, as much as any single sculpture can, my impression of Buddhism as a set of beliefs and attitudes that challenge us to reach for spirituality, serenity, and immortality through meditation and how we choose to live our lives.  I can’t say that any of the more-famous sculptures I’ve seen in real life, like Michelangelo’s David or Rodin’s The Thinker, has captured my imagination quite the same way as Head of a Buddha.  I’ll have to make a trip to Harvard one of these days for a closer look.


[2]The Harvard Art Museums are made up of the Fogg Museum, Busch-Reisinger Museum, and Arthur M. Sackler Museum.

[3]The Harvard Art Museums website estimates that the sculpture dates from the years 550 to 577, the early medieval period in China. The name of the artist is not disclosed and possibly not known.

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