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Macau Temple Art

Macau Temple Art

macau chinese a-ma temple Macau temple art is, on one hand, embodied in the special environment arranged for the worshipping activities, which is different from daily environment and full of symbols, supernatural powers and supernatural objects.

On the other hand, a worshipping ceremony is added by means of using a whole set of artistic figures and aesthetic effects to make worshippers to receive religious figures, mythologies and ideas and maintain profound religious sentiments and feelings.

The art of temple of Macao is mainly divided into six categories:

Temple Literature

With a distant origin and long development, the literature of temples of Macao has achieved splendid results though. It is an indispensable subject of the history study of Macao’s literature. It is expressed in five kinds of forms: inscriptions on tablets, couplets on columns, plaques, travel notes, poems and verses.

Temple architecture

As a special building, temple is the place for gods and people to live together on one hand it needs to be open to the outsiders, on the other hand it should create a mysterious atmosphere to attract the public.

There mainly are three architectural styles of the temples of Macao; the first is palace style, the second is landscape and the third is mono-hall style.

Temple sculpture

In nearly forty temples of Macao and there are more than ten thousand images of Gods, which are important artistic sculptures.

There are also some structural decorations, such as the tops of walls, ridge tiles, brick sculptures, stone sculptures and etc. Besides, there are wood sculptures, such as the incense burner table.

Temple calligraphy and painting

In the temples of Macao, there are thousands of boards, couplets, hundreds of frescos, hanging papers or hidden papers, paintings, writings and stone inscriptions.

Among them there is no lack of works of celebrities. The paintings and calligraphy of the temple are the most secular and popular artistic forms and draw a lot of attention to the public.

Temple theatre

One of the public activities held in temples of Macao is to give performances to eulogize the merits of the gods and commemorate the anniversary of the gods.

At present, the temples that invite theatrical troupes every year to give performances include A-Ma Temple, the Temple of Land of Patane, the Ancestral Temple of Fude of Horta e Mitra, the Temple of Brook of Lotus, the Temple of Pak Tai (the North Emperor), the Temple of Tam Kung of Coloane and others.

(Excertps from: Macau Temples by Chan, Lei and Chendra published by IACM SAR 2002). Back to Macau Temples

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