Qiuci was one of the great western states of China in ancient times, centered in present-day Kucha, and at its height had a vast territory, a developed economy, and a continuous flow of culture and art. The Kizil Grottoes are located in the territory of the qiuci Kingdom, an important area along the northern route of the Taklamakan Desert in the Xinjiang section of the Silk Road, from which religious art first entered China, and its unique geographical location became a gathering place for a variety of cultures and arts. The unique art of mural painting here, which records the art of music and dance not yet handed down from qiuci, is a treasure of Chinese culture for a thousand years. This paper focuses on the art of the Kizil Grottoes as an entry point to dig deeper into the prominent and significant cultural features of the Kizil Grottoes murals and the basic cultural values in the Kizil Grottoes, through investigation, documentation, screening, classification, and finally summarizing the designed research methodology. It also provides an inductive summary of ancient and modern documentary texts and pictorial materials about the Kizil Grottoes and the history of cultural and creative product development of cave art in China with its contemporaries. The study is intended to prepare the cultural and artistic aspects of the Kizil Grottoes for the innovative design of cultural and creative products.

Guo Xinyi, Qu Dongbo, Qiu Yiping. Research on the origin of the image of the Kizil Grottoes and its creative design. Frontiers in Art Research (2023) Vol. 5, Issue 12: 94-100. https://doi.org/10.25236/FAR.2023.051217.

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